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For Kimberly

A hope for a world
where there'll always be
some who are willing to
tilt at windmills

And in memory of
Harry Chapin

Who started to make
that hope a reality
Author's Notes
Quite a bit has happened in the world of Star Trek since I began writing this novel. The major event, of course, was Star Trek: The Motion Picture. After all the year of anticipation, any movie would have been hardpressed to live up to our expectations. If ST: TMP fell short in some areas, it also excelled in others. (I'll never forget the feeling of delight shared with Kirk when he -- and we -- saw the new Enterprise for the first time, cradled in its drydock.)
Critics didn't like the movie much -- but it still went on to become one of the biggest-grossing movies in Hollywood history. It certainly wasn't perfect, and fan enthusiasm has declined some since then, but the essence of what made us love Star Trek before is still there.
That thought hit me recently while watching a rare prime-time rerun. There's something about wee-morning or late-afternoon air times that demeans the repeats of great old TV series. On this night, however, "The Ultimate Computer" (one of my favorites) had a renewed glory, riding head-to-head with network competition, just like the old days. And it didn't seem like a fourteen-year-old rerun. The writing and acting, the look and feel of the show were as fresh and crisp and real as any series currently on the air.
And that's why Star Trek has survived -- and why it will continue to survive. Gene Roddenberry did a wonderful job of creation, and
we have done a wonderful job of being loyal, creative, and critical fans. We managed to keep Star Trek alive through the years of struggling to bring it back, and through whatever disappointments the movie or any of the other books may have caused.
It's important to remember that every piece of Star Trek is just that -- a part of a whole -- and some parts are bound to be better than others. But none of the lesser stories or TV episodes can diminish the sterling quality of the good ones.
The sum of Star Trek's parts is and always will be impressive. It has touched too many peoples lives in too many important ways to be any less. Star Trek has earned its niche of honor in entertainment and science-fiction history. Be proud that you're a fan.

I owe a lot to Gene Roddenberry. Though I've only met him once (at a convention in Washington, D.C., where he graciously bought me a drink), in many ways, he's changed my life.
After all, it was his TV series that made me think about being a writer (you know the show -- the one with the guy with the pointed ears).
Some random memories. . . .When I used to rush to watch the reruns every night during high school, my mother would warn: "The world doesn't revolve around Star Trek." Not the whole world, Mom, but some of it.
On Saturday morning, September 7, 1974, it did-when the second animated season kicked off with "The Pirates of Orion" and thirty people and one dog crammed into my college dorm room to watch, and everyone applauded (except the dog) when the screen flashed "Written by . . . "
That turned out to be a great way to impress a girl on a first date the night before: "Gee, if you're not doing anything tomorrow
morning," I said shyly, "would you like to come over and watch my TV show?" That really happened.
Since then, I've been a guest at more than a dozen Star Trek conventions, talked at libraries and schools, and had a lot of fun. (I'm still available for all these things. . . .)
I've gotten to meet many of Star Trek's cast members, found out they're real people with ups and downs, and marveled at the way they can patiently and consistently charm hordes of eager fans.
Most of all, I've made so many friends through Star Trek, many of whom also want to be writers. There's been a lot of mutual encouragement along the way.
More than a few people deserve special thanks. I wish I could mention them all, but here are some:
The Febcon and August Party Committees, for making me feel at home and bringing an outsider in; to Alina Chu and Bob Greenberger, for the "fan club" and friendship (and Bob's editorial help); to Bonnie MacRitchie, for helpful comment when this was just a wee, scribbled outline; to Frank Pellegrino, whose freshly hatched Honda gave its back bumper that I might shop for shirts in Virginia when all mine were left in New York; to Lynne Perry and the New York Diabetes Association, for the days off to write all this; to Allan Asherman, for commiseration; and Linda Deneroff for defending the cause of the semi-colon . . . 
 . . . Also to David Gerrold, for being a buddy and treating me like a real writer, and for contributing this book's introduction; to my former apartment mate, Joel Pineles, whose slight midriff bulge (he is now svelte) suggested Chekov's dilemma herein; to T. J. Burnside, for being an extra-special friend; to Cindi Casby, for love and encouragement even when I didn't deserve them . . . 
 . . . And to my parents, who didn't pack me off to law or medical
school Not that there's anything wrong with being a doctor or a lawyer, but I'd rather be a writer. Hope you're not disappointed, Mom and Dad.
Last, I'd like to note that this is really for all the fellow-fans I've met, for the ones who've told me what they liked or didn't like about past Star Trek novels and stories. I hope you all enjoy this one -- let me know by writing to me c/o Pocket Books Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020.
HOWARD WEINSTEIN
January, 1981
Introduction
I told Howard that he would have been better off if he had had his mother write this introduction. She would have told you what a fine boy he is, intelligent, bright, alert, clean, respectful of his parents, and a perfect catch for some nice young Jewish girl. And she would have been able to say it a with a straight face.
Me, the best I can tell you is that Howard Weinstein is a credit to his species. Whatever that is.
I think my first realization that Howard Weinstein was a writer to be reckoned with occurred at the banquet of a Star Trek convention, when the Howard Weinstein monks, a group of neo-Hare Krishna worshipers, came marching into the room, all dressed in white robes (bedsheets, I think), threading their way through the tables of astonished banqueteers, chanting a strangely compelling mantra -- the rhythm of which was frequently punctuated by the sound of the worshipers slapping themselves in the forehead with a Howard Weinstein book. It was at that moment I wished that Howard Weinstein had authored War and Peace.
I am not making this up.
Howard Weintein was born on September 16, 1954. This is exactly two hundred and sixty-two years (to the day) after eighty-year-old Giles Corey, charged with witchcraft, was crushed to death in Salem, Massachusetts. I do not suggest that there is any connection
connection between these two event. The facts speak for themselves. Also on September 16 (but of unknown year), Klaatu and Gort arrived/will arive in Washington, D.C. (Had Howard Weinstein been considerate enough to be born two days earlier, I could have noted that it was exactly two years to the day before the first successful prefrontal lobotomy was performed, and done all kinds of wonderful extrapolations on that particular coincidence. As it is, however, there is nothing particularly distinguished about Howard Weinstein's birth, its circumstances, or the day on which it occurred. Which makes it all that much harder to demonstrate the portents and signs that herald his arrival as a serious writer in science fiction.)
Howard -- Howie, to those of us who know and love him -- graduated with a BA in communications from the University of Connecticut in 1975. All historical records of him from the time between his birth and his graduation have been lost (or burned) and there is no proof at all that he really exists, or that the person currently pretending to be Howard Weinstein actually is the one and the same infant who was assigned the name some twenty-one years earlier. For all we know, the current Howard Weinstein is an impostor. A doppelgänger. Perhaps even . . . a clone. (And if so, of whom? The real Howard Weinstein perhaps? Where is the real Howard Weinstein? Who is covering up?)
This pseudo-Howard person claims that he became hooked on Star Trek during its first season and fine-tuned his fannish instincts when the show went into reruns in September of 1969. (At that time he was fifteen years old. For those of you who think that all science-fiction writers are one step removed from gods, let me reassure you that this is not always the case. I have it on the best authority that Howard Weinstein -- or the person pretending to be him -- was just as much a painfully shy, spoiled-brat, four-eyed little
acne-pocked bookworm as the rest of us were when we were fifteen. Perhaps even more so. That he later grew out of it is a source of inspiration for all humanity. Have hope. Everybody was fifteen once; but you don't have to be fifteen forever.)
Because there were no more new Star Trek stories being written for television, he began writing his own.
For fun.

Let me digress a moment.
Many of those who are writing Star Trek novels today started out writing their own Star Trek stories for fun, because there were no more Star Trek stories being written for television. Kathleen Sky, Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath, and so on.
These people would all be considered a little . . .  well, eccentric, were it not for the fact that there are obviously millions of other people who share their desire for more Star Trek stories. (It's a good guess that you are one of those persons. If not, what are you doing reading this book?)
In 1969, Star Trek was one of the few moments of hope in the American experience. The rest of it seemed to be drug overdoses, riots, demonstrations, clumsy politics, acts of terrorism, mass murders, tear gas, napalm, and war.
That Star Trek continues to be as popular today as it was ten years ago (before we solved all of those problems, remember?) is an indicator that there is always a market for hope.
And that is why Star Trek -- as a dream -- is still going strong today.
If nothing else, Star Trek is about hope. Hope for the future. Hope for ourselves, for our nation, for our world, for our dreams. Writing Star Trek stories is a small part of that hope. It's not just a
dream of your favorite TV series; it's a dream of humanity among the stars, willfully choosing to be masters of our own destinies, captains of our own fates.
Sometimes you have to be a little bit crazy -- uh, eccentric -- to hope in the face of massive adversity.
I noted above that sometimes science-fiction writers -- because of their aura of expertise about the future -- seem as gods. Not bloody likely. At best we are a lesser breed of hero, because we are the men and women who listen to the future and report back what we hear.
To be heroic is to dare to be different. Very often, the hero is a social illiterate. If he were well-integrated into his culture, he would be content; he would have no need to be a hero. That he is not content, that he does not fit in, that he does not accept the circumstance of today, mandates that he look to tomorrow.
Dreamers may be misfits, but we are proud misfits.
Dreams are our most important natural resource. They are the source of hope.
End of digression. Now I can talk about Howard Weinstein again.
Howard had a dream.
And what distinguishes each of us is the size of our dreams.
Howard was co-editor of his high-school SF magazine, called Probe. He printed his original Star Trek short story in it, a piece called "The Pirates of Orion." Two years later, in 1973, NBC decided to try Star Trek as an animated revival, so Howard rewrote "Pirates" as a script, having been hooked on the idea of scriptwriting after reading The Making of Star Trek way back in 1969. After a rather roundabout, confused journey that saw the manuscript travel to his agent, to Filmation with D. C. Fontana's name on the envelope (then associate producer of the animated series), to D. C. Fontana,
who was no longer with the show by then, who returned it unopened to his agent, who sent it back to Howard and instructed him to mail it to Norm Prescott at Filmation if he read that the show was renewed for a second season, in which case they would then be interested in actually reading it . . . which it was, and he did, and they did, and finally after he rewrote the ending several times (par for the television course), they bought it and "The Pirates of Orion" was the opening episode of the second season, which Howard is quick to point out is the season the show won the Emmy.
One long run-on sentence later, Howard Weinstein -- or whoever he really is -- had become a Star Trek TV writer at the age of nineteen, and as far as anyone has yet determined, he was the youngest person ever to write for the show -- taking the title away from yours truly, who had previously held that distinction for having sold "The Trouble with Tribbles" at the wizened age of twenty-three.
I will pass over some of the details of Howard Weinstein's and my friendship, they being of interest only to the morbidly curious. However, I should note that it is a sign of my devotion to Howard (at least, I think it's Howard. Howard, is that you?) that I would interrupt my own writing schedule to take the time to tell you what a marvelous person he is. Suffice it to say that I like him anyway.
This novel that you are holding, The Covenant of the Crown, is Howard Weinstein's first novel. (Those monks who were hitting themselves in the forehead with it were obviously time travelers visiting from the future, a sure sign that Howard Weinstein is destined for greater triumphs in the years to come else why bother?) Howard believes that this publication makes him the only writer from either the original or the animated TV series versions of Star Trek to also write a Star Trek novel, certainly the youngest to accomplish both.
The first part of that distinction, he will be able to claim only until I can finish my Star Trek novel (untitled at this writing) and get it turned in.* The second part, he will undoubtedly keep.
Read. Enjoy. Tell friends.
DAVID GERROLD
Chapter One
"It's gray, Jim," said Dr. Leonard McCoy. The ship's surgeon stood before the mirror on his office wall, scratching through his thatch of hair as if searching for the cause of some mysterious medical condition.
It was Captain James Kirk's first inkling that the birthday party might be a major mistake.
At times, Kirk had the feeling the whole universe was aligned against him. There were the big things, like wars or supernovas, events so obviously out of his control he couldn't take them personally. But when the little plans, best-laid as they might be, also went astray, he had to wonder what he'd done to deserve his fate.
In the grand order of history, his medical officer's birthday might not mean much, but Kirk wanted it to be special. After all, McCoy had no better friend in the galaxy, so the captain was determined not to let the event pass unhonored.
Until he discovered that McCoy himself wanted it to pass not only unhonored, but totally unnoticed.
"Completely gray," McCoy repeated, glowering.
"Oh, come on, Bones. A little silver around the temples is hardly completely gray," Kirk said, a glint of amusement in his eyes as he stood behind McCoy.
McCoy glared at the captain's reflection over his shoulder. "It's not
funny, Jim. I'm turning ancient and you're in hysterics."
"You're exaggerating just a bit."
"That," said McCoy tartly, "is also a sign of old age."
His mood failed to improve as he and Kirk stepped out of the turbolift near one of the ship's messes.
"Do you realize how long it's been since anyone's called me 'Lenny' . . . or 'son'?"
"Bones, do you really miss being called 'son'?"
"No. I hated it when I was a kid," McCoy said, pausing as a pretty yeoman came out of the messroom. She smiled at them and disappeared around the curving coridor. "But it was a whole lot nicer when two-thirds of the ladies on board weren't young enough to be my daughters. There's only one solution -- swear off birthdays altogether. Just ignore them."
Oops, Kirk thought as they entered to eat. Should he scrap the birthday plans? The invitations he'd had posted with the duty notices, appearing on everyone's cabin computer screen but McCoy's . . . the food he'd ordered specially programmed, with threats against anyone who might let the secret slip. . . . Cancel a potentially great surprise party just because the man whose birthday it was wanted no part of it?
Certainly not. If McCoy wanted to be a wet blanket, so be it. Most birthday parties on board the USS Enterprise were small affairs, with only the closest friends of the guest of honor. But this was to be a rare, shipwide gathering; after all, even the youngest crew members had come to regard the doctor as a crotchety, eccentric uncle, the kind who scolded you as a kid and then passed you a piece of candy when your mother wasn't looking. Everyone knew McCoy's caring went far deeper than mere professional responsibility.
And Kirk knew that mutiny was a distinct possibility if he canceled the whole idea after all the plans had been made and anticipation built. If he needed a last word to allay his fears, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was there to offer it, with that touch of common-sense insight he often displayed -- whenever he could be coaxed to look away from his engines.
"Put McCoy in a room with the ladies, plenty o' good drink, some fine food, and a bit o' the singin' " said Scott, "and he'll snap right out o' whatever's ailin' him."
Later, Kirk gave the signal on schedule. In twos and threes, off-duty crewmen headed for the large rec room on deck seven. The tough part remained for Kirk himself to master -- getting McCoy to stop counting gray hairs long enough to attend the celebration.

"Let's go, Bones," Kirk said to the inert body curled on McCoys bunk.
"Let me lie in the dark. Maybe I'll stop getting older, McCoy sighed "If I had leaves at least I'd stop photosynthesizing."
"You're a doctor, not a plant," Kirk said, grunting as he grabbed McCoy's arm and pulled him to a sitting position. He felt slightly foolish. "Come on. I have no intention of carrying you."
"Where aren't you carrying me?"
"To the rec room."
McCoy tried to slump back into his fetal position, but Kirk held his arm. "Aww, leave me alone, Jim. What am I going to do in the rec room in this state of mind?"
"You're going to snap out of it, that's what. I've planned a chance for you to engage in one of your favorite pastimes -- baiting Spock while I play chess with him."
McCoy let out a long slow sigh, like a deflating tire. "Well, when
you put it that way." He got to his feet and followed Kirk out. McCoy's glumness made the excursion to deck seven somewhat less cheery than a stroll to the gallows, and Kirk suppressed the urge to go back.
They turned into the rec room and the doors slid open to reveal a completely dark cavern. Kirk pushed his friend forward and the lights suddenly flashed on, strobing in red, blue, yellow and white. Without uttering a sound, McCoy jumped back at least three feet, landing squarely on Kirk's toe. The hidden crowd of crewmen popped up from behind tables and planters, shouting, "Happy birthday, McCoy!"
Braced for a look that might kill, Captain Kirk turned to the doctor. McCoy's eyes were glazed with shock. The shout gave way to applause and laughter, and a lovely lieutenant from the medical staff placed a drink -- and herself -- in McCoy's hand. Finally, he allowed himself to be drawn into the festivities -- but not before he shot a grinning glance back at Kirk. "Jim, I'll get you for this!"
Kirk chuckled and found himself next to his engineer. "I guess you were right, Scotty."
"Well, it's not just engine I know, sir," Scott said, his brow furrowed in false modesty. "The only problem I can see is, he'll want one o' these every time he feels old. Come t' think of it, sir . . . I'm feelin' a wee bit old m'self."
Crew members swarmed around the long tables of cake, hors d'oeuvres, and drinks, and the first trays were picked clean in no time at all. Chekov poked mournfully at a nearly microscopic piece of cake with his fork while Dr. Christine Chapel and Lieutenant Commanders Uhura and Sulu dug into wedges almost too large for their plates.
"Mmmm," Uhura purred. "I didn't think the food synthesizer could make cake like this."
"It couldn't," said Christine. "Not till I changed the programming a bit."
Everyone laughed -- except Chekov. Sulu nudged him. "What's with you?"
"Where's your party face?" said Uhura.
"I have a feeling this is his party face," Sulu said wryly. "You know these gloomy Russians." He slid his fork under a huge hunk of cake and dumped it on the saturnine security chief's dish.
Chekov promptly dropped it back onto the serving tray with a strangled cry of frustration. "It's fattening."
"You're still a growing boy," said Uhura. "Since when are you worried about fattening foods?"
"Since I seem to have put on an extra ten pounds."
"Where? On your toes?"
Chekov shrugged in genuine dismay. "I don't have the slightest idea. I don't feel fat."
"Christine," said Sulu, "is he really ten pounds overweight?"
Christine nibbled her cake with a distinctly guilty countenance. "That's what the scale said. When we get older, our metabolism changes. You put on weight more easily and it goes to different places. Let's face it, Chekov, you're not twenty-two anymore."
"Don't remind me."
The cheery din and clatter of the party promised to last a whole diurnal cycle. After all, McCoy had insisted that all duty shifts get a chance to observe a living relic in the flesh, even if it was a thoroughly soused relic. Kirk was on his way out to return to the bridge when the ship suddenly shuddered. It was a barely perceptible tremor that would go unnoticed by almost anyone on board
except Kirk or Scott. Both felt the surge of rapid acceleration, and they moved together to the intercom as First Officer Spock's voice smoothly said, "Captain Kirk, to the bridge, please."
Kirk touched the wall switch. "Kirk here. Did somebody spirit a case of Scotch up there?"
"Negative, sir. All duty personnel must remain sober."
"Then why are you shaking the ship, Spock?"
"Aye, y'must've gone to warp six."
"Warp eight, Mr. Scott."
"Scotty, I'm surprised at you," Kirk said in mock amazement.
"I guess I've had too much t' drink, sir."
"What's going on. Spock?"
There was an instant of hesitation before the Vulcan replied, and Kirk sensed this was no time for joking "Perhaps you had best report to the bridge, Captain."
"On my way. Kirk out."

The turbolift doors hissed open. Kirk stepped out onto the bridge deck. Spock swiveled in the center seat and stood.
"We have received a Priority One signal from Star Fleet Command, Security Condition Red, ordering us to Star Base Twenty-two by seventeen hundred hours tomorrow. Warp eight is sufficient to ensure arrival by fifteen-forty-five hours. No further information on why our presence is requested so urgently, sir."
"Not even in code, Spock?"
"Negative. The message simply said that you, Dr. McCoy, and I are to report to Fleet Admiral Harrington immediately upon our arrival."
Chapter Two
"If this mission fails," said Admiral Paul Harrington in his crisp British accent, "the whole of Quadrant J-221 could be in Klingon hands by next year."
"For my next birthday," McCoy whispered to Kirk.
Harrington spun on his heel. "What was that, Doctor?" 
"Nothing, sir."
Harrington was a tall man with impeccable posture. He moved with deliberate precision as he paced on the rug, thick and green as a well-kept lawn. But the pacing was not nervous, just smooth, and poised -- a reflection of the man's perpetually active mind. He was English to the core, cut from the same cloth that had produced great seamen and officers for over a thousand years. Harrington had already carved a place in Federation annals with his unflappable handling of crises large and small -- and Kirk was well aware that they faced another such critical juncture now.
"There is no alternate source of tridenite in the region?" Spock asked.
"None," said Harrington, puffing on a curved ivory pipe. 
"Shad provides that ore for twenty or more planets," Kirk said.
"Can't they get energy from something other than tridenite?" McCoy wondered.
They could not, and Kirk knew it. Shad was one of those worlds
with the mixed blessing of having something many other planets needed, wanted, and might even kill for -- a virtually unlimited supply in its crust of tridenite, an energy ore far cleaner and safer than uranium or any of the other isotopes that had provided abundant though perilous power for many civilizations. Even Earth had gone through its early period of reliance on dangerous radioactive energy sources. Kirk knew his home world was dotted with caverns where nuclear wastes had been buried hundreds of years before -- they'd continue emitting deadly particles for thousands of years to come.
But Shad had been spared that. Tridenite had been tailored by nature for producing vast amounts of efficient energy, and the economies and industries of those twenty other planets were built on the assurance of an uninterrupted flow of the ore.
Half those worlds belonged to the Federation, the others were neutral, but all lived in the shadow of the nearby Klingon Empire. Shad, however, was the linchpin, the coveted prize. Take over Shad, cut off the tridenite supply, watch a score of inhabited planets in Quadrant J-221 fall like dominoes, and sweep in to conquer a valuable flank of the United Federation of Planets. That had been the Klingon goal, and they'd pursued it patiently by igniting a civil war on Shad eighteen years earlier.
Kirk rolled the historical details over in his mind. He knew the Shaddan situation as intimately as any officer, bureaucrat, or diplomat, for a simple reason -- he'd been there at the war's inception, in command of Star Fleet advisory detail attached to the Court of King Stevvin. . . .

After five centuries, the Dynasty of Shad had survived longer than most. Now, suddenly, it teetered on the ragged edge of an abyss -- and extinction lay ahead. The young Lieutenant Commander
Commander James T. Kirk felt it in his bones as he hurried to the palace for his regular late-morning meeting with the King. He arrived early and he paced the castle grounds under a somber, sunless sky, waiting; inside, the King tried to control another rancorous Council meeting.
Twelve Cabinet ministers ringed the solid dark-wood table, which had been hewn from a single mighty tree by Stevvin's ancestor, Keulane the Healer. Keulane had begun the Dynasty, and Stevvin was ready to accept that he was going to preside over its end. He banged the jewel-handled gavel on the table until its echo drowned out the dozen voices arguing at once.
Sudden silence. Broken only by the deep sigh of a King. He leaned heavily on the table, looking no one in the eye as he spoke at last.
"The Council cannot function this way. We must have order." His voice was soft and raspy, speaking a plea, not a command.
"There is no order on Shad," said Yon, a pig-faced minister seated at the far end. "Why do you expect it here -- sire?" His last word was clearly intended as a sarcastic afterthought.
Stevvin formed a retort in his mind, but swallowed it unspoken. He dropped the gavel and started for the brass-trimmed double doors.
"Sire."
This voice reached out and held him for a moment, though his back remained toward the Council. The King knew the respectful tone of First General Haim, the tall, stooped, bald-headed man who had been aide and friend since before Stevvin had ascended to the throne.
"Sire . . . the Council can't act without you."
"It can't act with me, either. If twelve men and women responsible
responsible for this world's government can't overcome their differences to reach a goal -- even to speak civilly to one another -- then our cause is lost."
Shoulders slumped, Stevvin left the room.
The Loyalist Coalition was crumbling, and while the Council quarreled petulantly, territory was being lost steadily to the despotic Mohd Alliance.
The Alliance had learned well the lessons of treachery taught by its patron, the Klingon Empire. Its leaders salivated over the prospect of becoming guard dogs for the Empire, enslaving the free population of Shad and biting hunks out of the Federation's flesh as the Quadrant came under their domination, planet by planet. The Klingons had seeded massive amounts of weaponry and money in the Mohd Alliance, and the crops were nearly ready for harvest.
Lieutenant Commander Kirk found the King sitting alone in the meditation chamber, a velvet robe loose on his gaunt body. At the sound of a footfall on the carpet, Stevvin raised his eyes and smiled. This brash young officer could almost make him believe there was some hope.
But the grim set of Kirk's jaw told him, wordlessly, that hope was out of reach this time.
"I'm sorry, sir," Kirk said quietly. "The Federation Council has decided it can't spare more troops or supplies for support now. They're afraid of trouble in the Talenic Sector, and a half dozen other places. Maybe in the near future, the resolution can be brought up again . . ." His voice trailed off.
"These are indeed troubled times, James. Their answer is what we expected." His face was deeply shadowed in the flickering candlelight. A gentle fragrance of incense wafted around them.
"I tried to tell them with a little more help, we could win," Kirk said, bitterness overflowing.
"Not we. It's not your battle, not your world."
Kirk ignored the King's comment. "They don't under stand how close the Mohd is to taking Shad and handing it over to the Klingons. They'll wake up one day, and it'll be too late. I've got to make them see -- "
Kirk began to pace, but the King stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. "No. It's about time for you and your men to leave."
The young officer looked into Stevvin's tired eyes. Words came only after a long moment of hesitation. "Your Highness, I think it's time for you to leave as well."
"This is my world, a world united by my ancestors. They took a hundred battling nations and molded them into one."
"Except the Mohd Province."
Stevvin nodded grimly. "And if the Covenant of Peace is to be broken by those sons of Hell, then I have to stay to see it happen. When I meet Keulane and my other fathers in the next life, I want them to know I stayed till the end."

Kirk's office was high up in a drafty, dark-stone castle that had once served as a Shaddan monastery. The windows were too small and close to the vaulted ceiling to let in much light. He paced as he waited for a pot of chowder to warm up in the little infrared burner on his desk.
In his year on Shad, Kirk had become close to the old King, and he shared the anguish that Stevvin felt now. In the days before battle losses had become daily events, they'd often spent soft summer evenings on the palace balcony, sipping fruitwine, discussing everything from poetry to history, from battle tactics to bawdy Shaddan
tales. When the twin moons set in the coolness of dawn, the two men would more than likely still be out there as witnesses to the night's end.
Kirk was just a young line officer, commanding a force of a hundred men; Stevvin was nearing old age and ruled a planet of a hundred million people. But still they'd bridged the gap with friendship, sharing respect and affection.
And if anything tore Kirk apart now more than his own helplessness, it was having to watch a good and gentle King see his planet weakened by a civil war he was powerless to end.
Kirk sipped a steaming spoonful of the native sea chowder. A fresh-faced ensign entered the open door and set a dispatch cassette on the desk.
"It's from the mountain front, sir. It's . . . it's not good news."
Placing the tape in the viewer, Kirk scowled and watched the image of a map as a field commander's flat voice told him what he prayed he'd never hear. The Mohd's artillery had cut Loyalist defense lines and the enemy was advancing on the King's capital city. There was no time waste.

"I don't care how you do it," Kirk snapped. "Shake a shuttle loose and have it on the palace lawn by fifteen hundred hours. I'll worry about how we get it out of the capital and into space."
He punched the communicator panel button, shutting it off. He rubbed his eyes, stood, and headed down the monastery's ancient stone steps. His feet automatically followed the path across the cobblestoned city square to the palace, looming over the narrow streets from its hillside perch. Kirk's mind wandered to thoughts of the irony of Stevvin's fate.
After five centuries of stability, the Shaddan people, rulers
included, had been bred to believe in lasting peace and security. It had become as natural to them as logic had to Vulcans. But it was false security, for under the blanket of unity and progress a sore festered deep in the heart of the Mohd Province, whose warrior people fancied themselves slighted with an unequal share of the planet's wealth. Since ancient times, the Mohd nomads had ranged far to fight any population that accepted their challenge. To them, the peace forged by Keulane and his successor was an affliction, and they swore never to accept it.
Klingon agents had recognized blood brothers in this province of restless warriors, and prodded them to seek out dissent elsewhere on Shad, nurture it, probe the soft underbelly of the old dynasty -- and slash it with a lightning stroke of rebellion.
Lieutenant Commander Kirk grudgingly marveled at the Klingons' simple view of the order of things -- that discord was ever-present and with the proper encouragement could be made to flare into open war. The status quo was of no use -- the Empire could only gain by taking what belonged to someone else. Victory meant advance -- loss only that they were back to their starting point. The Klingons truly lived by the adage Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
And their Shaddan campaign certainly represented an effective venture. The government under King Stevvin had misjudged the strength of the dark forces in the Mohd Province, unaware that massive clandestine Klingon support in weapons and supplies had created a bristling war machine. So had the Federation miscalculated, perhaps because no Klingon troops were present. Never before had the Empire flexed such power in absentia; meanwhile, other trouble spots needed tending, and Kirk knew that the Star Fleet aid he had brought was too little, too late.
Stevvin had held one goal above all others -- to keep production
and shipment of tridenite ore going. Because Shad had never developed space flight, foreign freighters had to transport the ore to other worlds. As long as Loyalist forces could guard the loading stations against Mohd artillery, tridenite could move and the Klingon grand design remain unfulfilled. So far, he had won that battle -- but perhaps at cost of losing the whole war.
And now the Mohd battalions were marching on the capital. Shipping would soon cease. The Dynasty would be strangled; the King and is family would be among the first killed when enemy troops reached the city. Kirk now had one last task before he could order a retreat of his own men -- to convince Stevvin to allow Star Fleet to help him escape into exile.
Just outside the brick palace rampart, the young aide from his office caught up to Kirk, a handwritten communique clutched in his fist. His face was flushed -- he'd run all the way.
"Sir, this came in just after you left."
Kirk took the paper and prepared himself for a quick glance at another report of negative battle news. He stopped short when he saw it was a message from the Federation Council.
"Why didn't you call me by communicator, Ensign?"
"I didn't want to risk being picked up by Mohd surveillance, sir. The message came in on scramble." He stood at ease as his commander read the page. The Federation had reviewed Kirk's final reports and changed their conclusion -- additional military assistance was on its way.

"I had lost all faith," Stevvin confessed.
"They've decided Shad is worth fighting for, sir. If this new support is enough to turn it all around -- and I think it will be -- we want you to be safe," Kirk said.
"But not on Shad," Stevvin said with a half-smile.
"It would only be temporary. A matter of months at most. We'll bring you back here as soon as your safety can be assured."
The King closed his eyes. "What about the safety of our soldiers, and their wives and children? How can that be guaranteed? They can't go into exile."
"Sir, you aren't just another soldier."
"No . . . I suppose not."
Kirk's voice took on an impatient edge. "You're the dynastic ruler of Shad. You lead the religion of your people, you're their rallying point. Without you, there is no Shad."
"Let's not forget, there hasn't been much with me, either."
"Then think about your wife and daughter, about their safety. Your daughter is Shad's next Queen."
The King finally relented. The shuttlecraft arrived on time and Kirk took over the pilot's seat. Since Shad completely lacked manned flying machines, planetary weapons included no refined antiaircraft capability. Mohd gunners did their best to shoot down the shuttle with large-target missiles when it was detected attempting to reach planet orbit.
Shuttles were never intended for deft evasive motion, and this one groaned in protest as Kirk urged it on a spiral course up toward space. But if they weren't agile, the little ships were sturdy, and Kirk was sure this one would hold together and do what was asked of it. He threaded his way out of missile range and brought the King and his young wife, their five-year-old daughter Kailyn, and four servants within transporter range of the Normandy, itself waiting far out of the orbital combat zone around Shad. The destroyer would spirit them to a new home, just until the Loyalists could struggle back and hold the Mohd Alliance in check. . . .
Eighteen years had passed since James Kirk had said farewell to the King and his family, since he'd watched them disappear in the sparkle of the Normandy's transporter. Still, the battle on Shad dragged on, neither side able to muster the last push to victory.
The Organian Peace Treaty had prevented wholesale intervention on either side. If they tried it, the pure-energy beings from that enigmatic guardian world would effectively disarm both forces, on Shad and throughout the galaxy, no matter where or whom they fought. Neither the Federation nor the Empire wanted to risk total galactic immobilization, so they had to be satisfied with simply supplying weapons and hoping for the best. Like a pair of exhausted warriors, the enemies slugged it out with increasingly weary blows.
But, finally, the tide had turned -- long after Kirk's expectation. "The Loyalist coalition," said Admiral Harrington, "is on the verge of breaking the back of the Mohd Alliance."
McCoy snorted. "After all this time? What could be left to fight over?"
"More than you might think," Harrington said, exhaling a pair of smoke rings. "Don't forget, this was no nuclear holocaust there. It was a war of quite conventional means, almost primitive. Neither we nor the Klingons wanted to destroy the world we were hoping to take."
"How civilized of us," McCoy said, frowning.
"The point, gentlemen, is that the coalition is also on the verge of destroying itself with internal bickering."
Kirk shook his head sadly. "They haven't even won, and they're trying to divide the spoils."
"That's about the size of it, Captain. The only hope for restoring some semblance of unity, as we see it, is to return the one symbol to
which all our Loyalist factions owe allegiance."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "The royal family?"
"Precisely, Commander."
"They're still alive," Kirk said, almost to himself.
"The King and his daughter are. The wife died some years back, not long after the exile began. It's not a pretty planet they went to."
Kirk closed his eyes for a moment, a private memory of Lady Meya's ready smile and warmth. And now the child and the King had lived to return, while she had not.
"Our agents have contacted the King," Harrington continued. "He may be very old, but he's anxious to return. He believes as we do that the presence of the royal family will hold the Loyalists together, allow them to beat down the Mohd Alliance once and for all, and send the Klingons packing. Actually, it's quite simple, gentlemen. Secure Shad and we secure the quadrant. Lose Shad, and you know the consequences."
"Admiral," said Speck, "the Enterprise was assigned to another sector. Star Fleet records indicate three other starships patrolling in this vicinity with no pressing assignments. Why were we given this mission?"
Kirk smiled inwardly -- Spock was applying the same precision of reason to Harrington as he did to his own captain.
The admiral clasped his hands behind his back and faced them, chewing on his pipe stem for a moment. "Because King Stevvin trusts only one man in the whole of Star Fleet to take him safely back to Shad -- Captain James Kirk. Therefore, gentlemen, the mission is yours."
Chapter Three
PERSONAL LOG -- STAR DATE 7815.3 -- We've arrived and entered orbit around Orand, and it's hard to believe I'm going to see King Stevvin again after all these years. On the one hand, I feel like a long-graduated student going back to visit a favorite teacher -- and that makes me happy.
But I also feel a little like a jailer going down to release a prisoner, and that makes me feel guilty. I know the King would've stayed on Shad had it been up to him, and who's to say he would have been wrong? After all this time, I just don't know. Even if he doesn't think eighteen years were stolen from him, I do -- and I'm the one who convinced him to leave.
I'm anxious to see this mission succeed, to restore the King to his rightful place. Spock would call it illogical -- and maybe he's right . . . but even though I know those lost years can never be restored, this mission gives me a chance to make up for at least some of what was taken from my old friend. Politics and diplomacy be damned -- I have to admit my motivation is much more emotional than rational.
"He's not going to make it, Jim." McCoy's face made the words unnecessary, but he said them anyway, gently.
Kirk stared at the tile floor, cool and shiny in this house where
King Stevvin had spent the past eighteen years of his life -- waiting. And now McCoy had confirmed what Kirk had feared, that they were indeed the final years in Stevvin's life -- the King was going to die before he could see his home planet reunited.
"Can I talk to him?" Kirk asked.
"He's sleeping now. In a little while." McCoy shrugged, feeling useless. "Want to take a walk?"
"Yeah, Bones. Alone."
Spock and McCoy let him go without a word.

Kirk walked slowly away from the white stone-and-stucco house, along the rough road that served as a driveway. But here on Orand, there were no motor vehicles to use the gravel and dirt paths, only carts drawn by the native oxen and horses.
Orand and its people were stepchildren of nature. Orbiting a backwater star, the planet hid no treasures beneath its parched surface. Possessed of neither wealth nor strategic location, it held little interest for galactic profiteers and prospectors. But its sparse population of perhaps five million persevered, wringing a subsistence out of an assortment of ventures -- some farming, mining, a little industry and trade.
In a way, Kirk felt sorry for the Orandi natives, with their world doomed to be no more than a speck on a star map. But its very forgettable nature is what made it the perfect place for Stevvin's family to live out their exile. For while Orand would never be rich and powerful, neither would it be a battlefield, as Shad had become. The King would be safe here, able to fade into the drabness that characterized this sad, sandy planet.
At first, the Klingons had kept a full surveillance team on Orand; but when the war dragged on and on, the contingent dwindled to a
few agents, then finally to one Klingon and a pair of paid Orandi informants who watched the King's house and the comings and goings of its occupants. The Klingons had come to believe that Stevvin would never leave Orand, and other vigilance slackened.
They were finally right, Kirk thought with bitterness directed at himself. Had he done the King any good, convincing him to leave Shad? Or had he robbed a proud ruler of his last chance to fight back? He couldn't have known how things would turn out, but that didn't make him feel any better. He wiped beads of sweat off his brow. Orand was hot -- that was what the name meant. Hot as hell, loosely translated. The sun was dipping below the horizon, and a tentative breeze teased the scrub trees squatting on the dunes; but it was still stifling and Kirk retreated to the sanctuary of the house.

Centuries of the sun's ferocity had trained Orandi architects well. This house was over a hundred years old, but looked the same as buildings constructed yesterday -- white exterior, small windows high up on the walls, polished slate floors sunk several feet below outside ground level, and perpetually running fountains and pools in every room.
McCoy perched on the stone rim of the fountain in the library and rippled the pool's surface with his finger. He wondered if the builders had been psychologists, as well -- the sound and feel of the trickling water made the place seem ten degrees cooler than it really was.
Spock sat in a soft chair, flipping through a Shaddan history book. They heard the tired clicking of boot heels, and Kirk entered from the hallway.
"Feel any better?" asked McCoy.
Kirk flexed his shoulders. "Nope. Just hot -- and tired. Go for a
hike, and the thin atmosphere really gets to you."
"You should feel at home, Spock," McCoy said. "This place is just as uncomfortable as Vulcan."
"I find it quite acceptable," Spock said mildly.
"You would." McCoy steered Kirk over to the fountain and sat him on the edge. "Dip your hand in there. You'll feel cooler in a minute."
"Is that a sound medical prescription?"
"Tested by the doctor himself."
Kirk followed instruction, and sprinkled a few drops of the icy water on his face -- McCoy was right. He shook his head to clear it and took the chilled glass of punch McCoy handed to him. "How is he, Bones?"
"He's old, Jim. He just isn't up to taking an extended space voyage. I don't know if he'll die today, or next week. If he stayed here and rested, maybe he could hang on for months. But I don't think he'd make it to Shad. and even if, by some miracle, he was alive, he'd be in no condition to make stirring speeches or lead the big battle."
"Isn't there anything you can do?"
McCoy shook his head helplessly. "I can't reverse old age."
Kirk leaned forward, resting elbows on knees and head in hands. "Hell of a place to spend eighteen years."
"It could've been worse," McCoy offered. "Better than dying on Shad."
"Was it?" Kirk didn't bother to look up.
"Of course it was, Jim. They had some hope while they were here. And look, the King's lived long enough to know that things are looking up."
"But the idea, Doctor," Spock said, "was for the King to return, stabilize the geopolitical situation, and overcome decisive forces.
Your medical report, which I am certain is accurate as usual, has effectively negated our mission."
McCoy glared. "You're so damned cold-blooded. That's a man we're talking about, a great man -- and Jim's friend. Instead of -- " 
"Spock's right," Kirk said, raising a hand to cut him off. He took a deep breath. "And I don't know what to do about it."

"We're going to save Shad -- that's what we're going to do about it, James."
The King's voice was hoarse and shaky -- but his determination was firm. He sat up in bed, supported by several threadbare pillows; his body, wasted by age, looked like a child's under the quilt.
"But you can't go back," Kirk said gently.
Stevvin waved his hand -- feeble yet clearly impatient "I know all that. Dr. McCoy explained it all, even though I already knew it. Y'know, I haven't seen the outside of this house in two months. The servants offer to carry me out, but if I can't go under my own power . . ." His voice trailed off and his eyes closed.
Kirk flashed a concerned look at McCoy -- and the King opened one wrinkled lid in time to see it.
"Just resting, James. Not gone yet."
"Why didn't you tell Star Fleet how you felt? Why did you say you were ready to go back?"
"Because I am ready. You'll all be old, someday, and you'll know that just because you can't do something doesn't mean you won't want to try to do it." He rested a moment again. "What would they have done if I told them I was past the rabblerouser stage? Do you think they'd have sent a starship just to be a king's hearse?"
Stevvin shifted weakly, then frowned in discomfort. "Beds are for sleeping, not living in. The answers is, they wouldn't have sent a
scout ship. Even my servants don't know how soon they may lose this master." Once more, the old King paused.
"Your Highness, I'm glad we got to see each other again. I never thought we would . . . but this mission of unification isn't possible without your return."
"Not my return, James . . . the monarch's return. My health -- as well as the plan I'm about to tell you -- must be kept secret, even from Star Fleet. Only the four of us, and my daughter Kailyn, will know. . . . You will return her to Shad -- to rule in my place."

McCoy paced near the library fountain. "Jim, how can you completely change our mission without telling Star Fleet? They'll court-martial you so fast, you won't have time to change for the trial. It just isn't -- " 
"All right, Bones, all right. You made your point. What about you, Spock? Would you care to add to the list of obstacles?"
The first officer arched an eyebrow and stood for a moment with his hands clasped behind him. "I disagree with Dr. McCoy -- " 
"What else is new?" said McCoy.
" -- but not entirely. I agree that you theoretically risk harsh disciplinary action, altering specific Star Fleet orders on such an important mission. However, in practice, charges are not often proffered when the mission succeeds."
McCoy stared. "A Vulcan counseling disobeying of orders?"
"The captain would not be disobeying. Our circumstances have changed -- markedly -- since those orders were issued. The captain must make a command decision; if he follows the newly proposed course of action, what is the probability of success?"
"Okay," said McCoy, "what is the probability of success?"
"I have not been asked to calculate it, Doctor. But I do believe the
odds in our favor will be reduced considerably if we take the time to confer with Star Fleet and wait for the bureaucracy to deliver its answer. We must act swiftly."
Kirk listened thoughtfully. "Is that your recommendation, Spock?"
"Tentatively. But before any final decision can be rendered, we must hear the King's plan in full detail, and ascertain his daughter's readiness to take her father's place."

The Crown Princess of Shad was tending her garden when Kirk found her.
"It's very impressive," he said, cupping a new blossom in his hands as he knelt on the path between rows of bushes, vines, and vegetables. "I didn't think a cactus could grow on this planet."
"It's not that hard," Kailyn said, averting her eyes as she spoke. Kirk noticed that she found it easier to look at a plant or a patch of dirt as they talked. When he caught her eye, she stammered ever so slightly. 
"You built this whole irrigation system yourself?"
"No. I just designed it. The servants helped me pipe the water from the house and actually make it."
"How old were you then?"
"Twelve, Captain."
The last word -- captain -- caught his ear like a bramble. "Captain? Why so formal? What happened to 'Uncle Jim'?"
She bowed her head. "It's been so long. I . . . I never thought we'd see you again."
He touched her chin and gently lifted her face. She had the deep, dark eyes of her father. "I thought of you a lot," she said. "When Father and I would have our lessons, we'd stop and wonder where
you were. We knew you'd become captain of the Enterprise." She looked away again. "I'd dream about you coming to take us home again."
"Did you mind being here, Kailyn?"
They walked on through the garden. "It's all I really know. I was only five when we left Shad." Her eyes roamed over the greenery and rainbow of petals, seeking plants that might need extra attention. To Kirk, it was all a mass of leaves; to Kailyn, no detail, no drooping branch or encroaching weed, was too small to spot and tend to.
Kailyn was twenty-three now, but she was small and delicate, her manner tentative and cautious, like a lost fawn. Her eyes were wide and dark brown, almost black. And they were always moving; not nervously, but more as if they possessed an overwhelming curiosity all their own. Kailyn herself seemed timid, but the eyes peered piercingly at all they could touch, searching, learning all they could. Most of all, they were sad, even when she wasn't.
"What did your father teach you?"
"All about Shad -- our history, how our family had ruled through times of feast and shortage, the Covenant with our people and our gods. How . . . how the Dynasty has to continue . . ."
"Through you."
"I know."
"Then you know what your father has planned?"
"Yes." She reached down and slipped her hand into Kirk's as they sat on a rough wooden bench. He noticed the first stars were twinkling in the midnight-blue twilight sky. "Oh, Uncle Jim, I love my father. I . . . I guess I worship him. He's protected me all these years, been both mother and father, given me his dream." She took a
breath, then spoke in a small, halting voice. "But I don't think I can do it. I don't have his strength."
"How do you know?"
"I feel it in him when he talks to me, even weak as he is now. I know he's dying, but when he calls me in and we talk about what it'll be like to be home again, he makes me believe. His strength makes me see what he sees. But . . . but when I leave him and come out here to watch the stars, I can't feel it anymore. What will it be like when he's gone, when I won't be able to go in there and have him lift me up again?"
"I don't now, Kailyn."
This time, she did look into Kirk's eyes, and there was a steadfastness in hers that made him want to say, You do have it . . . if only you could see into yourself . . . the strength is there. But she would have to discover that for herself.
"He taught me history, my place in our religion, told me the feelings I should have. I don't know why, but it wasn't enough."
"Are you . . . afraid of being Queen?"
"Yes." It was a fast answer, almost a relief. Then her voice dropped to a whisper. "More than that . . . how does someone learn to be a savior?"

"Those doubts aren't the only thing," McCoy said as he sat with Captain Kirk and Spock in the library. There's another root to the problem, Jim. Kailyn has an incurable disease."
"What? What is it?"
"Choriocytosis."
"But that almost killed Spock in a matter of days when he had it. If we hadn't tracked down the Orion pirates and gotten that drug back -- "
"My case was acute" Spock said. "I believe Kailyn's is chronic."
"That's right. His case was caused by a virus, Jim. Kailyn's is an inborn hormone deficiency. It's pretty rare, but it's treatable with daily injections. In addition, the disease affects different races in different ways."
Kirk recalled what he knew about choriocytosis from Spock's almost fatal bout with it several years earlier, how the virus encased his copper-based blood cells, preventing them from carrying the oxygen needed for life functions. McCoy explained the variations between acute and chronic forms. Kailyn had inherited a recessive genetic condition that inhibited production of the hormone holulin -- a substance present in the bodies of about a dozen humanoid species, though not Earth humans. Injections made up for the lack of holulin, keeping blood cells free of the suffocating shell-like membrane formed by choriocytosis.
"As long as she takes the shots," McCoy said, "she should live a fairly normal life, though some complications may set in during old age. It's a little like diabetes was to humans before it was cured."
"If it went untreated, would it affect her the same as it did Spock?"
"Yes. First unconsciousness, then coma, then death." 
"There's a 'but' in your voice, Bones."
"It gets worse under stress, and she's going to be in for a lot of that, Jim. Holulin production can stop altogether and careful treatment is absolutely necessary."
"Is Kailyn fully aware of her condition and all that it entails, Doctor?" asked Spock.
"Oh, she's aware -- but she thinks of herself as crippled because of it. She told me she's afraid to give herself the injection. One of the servants does it. Chronic choriocytosis can be a big psychological
barrier, and that's what it is to her. If she can't handle her own illness, Jim, how can she guide the destiny of a whole planet?"
Kirk had no answer. Kailyn had one -- deep within herself. But would she ever find it?
Chapter Four
. . . And it came to pass that the second god Dal saw the long table Keulane made; and Dal said "Was this made from one piece, whole, cut in a single stroke from the heart of the largest tree in the land?"
Unbowed (for he feared not the god Dal), Keulane speak "Yes, and with my own hand. Let this table replace the field of battle. Let the people reveal their hearts with true words and not sword thrusts. Let this wood, from the tree's heart, be the heart of Shad, one world united forever."
And Dal answered: "It shall be, Keulane. I shall give you dominion over Things and Creatures-Not-Man."
And the god Dal gave his blessing, rendering the sword of Keulane, that cut the tree in a single stroke, as Strength with dominion over Things and Creatures-Not-Man. Keulane added this to his dominions over Heaven, given by the fourth god Koh; and over Land and Sea, given by the third god Adar. It remained for him to gain the blessing of the first god Iyan, God among Gods, and dominion over Man.
And so Keulane waited, for he felt it was his reward, but Iyan came not to him. At long last, Keulane cried out: "Have I not earned this?"
A bolt of blinding light and roaring thunder smote the sword
from Keulane's hands, and he trembled at the voice of Iyan, God of Gods: "You are foolish, Keulane. No man can have dominion over Men. You can only guide them. We will not speak to you again in this life. We will never speak directly unto you again, but we will give you this."
And the hand of Iyan placed the Crown of Shad upon Keulane's head. It was of silver, and of crystals, a pair whose inner depths were murky and fogged to the eye and mind of man. Do you hear and see my voice?"
Keulane answered that he did, but he did not, for the eye and ears of his heart were closed by fear. Iyan knew, and he shook Keulane to his very soul. "Hear me!"
And lo, the crystals of the Crown became clear through, with the blue of Heaven as their shade. And Keulane felt his heart open, and he saw clearly, and heard. He knew the echoes of the past, and felt the tides of Time. And he knew the roads the People of Shad would take, if only he could lead them there.
"You have the Power of Times," Iyan told him. "Thus shall you and your sons and daughters lead. Of the children you beget, only special ones in their time will have the Power. They will wear the Crown, the crystals will give them sight, and the People will hail them as Kings and Queens of the Covenant. . . .
 -- Book of Shad,
Verse of Keulane
"I read it," McCoy said, replacing the book on the library shelf. "But I'm not sure I believe it. It sounds like something out of the legends of King Arthur."
"On the contrary, it is more reminiscent of stories from your Earth bible," Spock said. "Or Vulcan lore about Surak and the
founding of our modern philosophy and way of life. Almost all religions and culture heritages share that common factor -- a tendency to mythologize those elements that gave rise to them in the first place, blending probable facts with a modicum of the supernatural or inexplicable."
"You're right, now that I recall those Biblical stories," Kirk said.
"Does that mean you believe those tales about the Crown, and the crystals changing color?" McCoy asked. Before Kirk could answer, Spock jumped back in. "It is no less credible than Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, or Jesus feeding the multitudes, or Surak turning back the Army of Ten Thousand."
McCoy shook his head. "But all those stories have been explained in some scientific, rational way."
"So has the Crown of Shad. Before King Stevvin was forced to flee, some scientific research was done. The Power of Times is known to be an ESP -- like phenomenon involving brain waves of a particular frequency and intensity. A person with the Power produces just the right brain waves to clear the electromagnetically sensitive crystals. This has been duplicated via computer simulation."
McCoy remained unconvinced, and Kirk half-smiled as the doctor parried. "But that still doesn't explain the other part, the mystical hearing of the gods' voices, that sixth sense of a fortune-teller."
"If you had carefully read the Book of Shad, Doctor, you would know that the Power does not open the mind to a literal foretelling of future events. It merely permits a sensing of the flow of people and things, somewhat more accurately than a mere educated guess. But I hardly expect you, as a nontelepathic creature, to fully grasp the concept," Spock concluded.
Kirk decided the discussion had gone on long enough. "It's not important whether we believe in the Shaddan religion, but the people
people of Shad take it very seriously. The monarch of the Covenant is more than just a political leader. Whoever sits on that throne is also their religious leader, and they won't accept someone who doesn't wear the Crown as proof of the Power of Times."
It was that simple -- the mysterious Crown had been on the head of every Shaddan ruler since Keulane, and no one could rule without it. But a pair of exceedingly large problems loomed in King Stevvin's plan, and Kirk wasn't sure which of the two might be worse.
First, the King did not have the Crown. Because of its sacred significance, it was imperative that it never fall into the hands of the Mohd Alliance or the Klingon Empire. Thus, when he left Shad in the confusion of civil war, Stevvin had spirited the Crown away with him and hid it on a planet almost as far off the beaten track as Orand, in a location known to no one but himself. The spot was to be revealed to his successor only; had he or Kailyn died before returning to Shad, he would have taken the secret to his grave, ending the Dynasty forever.
In order for Kailyn to be accepted as lawful Queen, the Crown had to be found and taken safely back to Shad along with the King's daughter. This presented a complex problem of logistics -- admittedly dangerous and shot through with chances for disaster, but one over which Kirk could still exert a fair amount of influence, if not outright control.
The second puzzle however, had no tangible pieces for him to lay his hands upon. In fact, the only answer were within Kailyn. Did this young woman -- more child than adult -- possess the stuff of leadership, the will to complete what her father had set in motion? And most important of all, did she have the Power of Times?
That they didn't know, and wouldn't, until and unless the Crown
could be retrieved and placed upon her head, a head filled with self-doubt. Doubt that could overwhelm the Power even if she did have it.
She was the last of her generation, the final scion of the royal family. And if she failed, that was it -- no Power, no monarchy, no restoration of unity, no victory on Shad, no mission. On the frail shoulders of a frightened girl rested the future of her planet and all of Quadrant J-221.
Chapter Five
Captain's Log: Star Date 7816.1
We have completed step one of King Stevvin's plan -- the King, his daughter, and their four servants have left Orand on board the Enterprise, as expected by both Star Fleet Command and any Klingon agents who may have been watching. His royal highness has lived long enough to serve as an all-important decoy. The Klingons know the Crown must be retrieved, and they expect us to lead them to its hiding place -- but we'll do no such thing. While the Enterprise instead leads them on a circuitous wild goose chase, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy will take a specially outfitted shuttlecraft and accompany the King's daughter to Sigma 1212, the icy world where Stevvin hid his sacred Crown eighteen years ago. If all goes well, the shuttle crew will retrieve the Crown, rendezvous with the Enterprise, and allow us to complete our mission of reunification. I hope King Stevvin can somehow live long enough to see his plan come to a successful end.
There was no royal suite aboard the Enterprise, and if McCoy had his way, the King would have been in sick bay proper. But Kirk managed to effect a compromise -- a diagnostic bed was set up in
VIP quarters, giving the King privacy and comfort, and McCoy the constant monitoring of medical data he demanded. The surgeon knew the odds against Stevvin's making it all the way to Shad, but he was going to try his damnedest to beat them.
The King was reading when Kirk entered the cabin, and he smiled as the captain sat by the bedside. Kirk glanced at the computer screen. 
"Don Quixote?"
"One of the best presents you ever gave me, James. I read that book so many times over these last years. I'd like to have met Cervantes. Any man who could have created such a dreamer as Quixote must have been very special."
"It's always been one of my favorites, too," Kirk agreed. Then he turned pensive. "I wonder if I would've had the courage he had, to hold on to those dreams when everything and everybody tried to snuff them out."
Stevvin laid a gnarled hand on Kirk's arm. "You have that courage."
"You're so sure of things . . ."
The old man chuckled wryly and his eyes sparkled. "I look back on all the times I should have been sure, and wasn't. And now I don't have time for doubts. Maybe that was the source of Don Quixote's strength -- maybe the young can't tilt at windmills because they have too much life to lose . . . the old man has no place to go but the next life. Why not die a little sooner than a little later?"
Kirk's brow furrowed. "The closer death comes, the less you fear it?"
"So it seems. When I was your age, I never would've believed it. But when you give up little bits of yourself -- eyesight goes, voice becomes hoarse, breathing's a chore you'd consider avoiding, legs
can't take more than four steps without a rest, arms can't carry a child anymore, even the mind begins to wander back to how it used to be -- before you know it, there isn't much left to give up. And then the fear goes, too -- if you're lucky." He paused for a shallow breath, and Kirk could hear the lung-deep wheeze. "I've been lucky, James."
The King's eyes slipped shut, and Kirk stood to leave. But Stevvin's hand held him with a firm grip; Kirk smiled at that sign of life not yet surrendered.
"Stay," whispered Stevvin, and Kirk sat again. "Things are going well so far?"
"So far."
The old King caught the hint of concern in Kirk's voice. "You're still uncertain about Kailyn."
Kirk wanted to say something reassuring, but that wasn't how he truly felt, and he couldn't lie to the King.
"Even if the Crown proves she has the Power of Times, that's no guarantee she can rule the planet. Not all children can do what their parents wish of them."
"True, it's no certainty. In the end, it's still the strength and qualities of the person on the throne. But don't underestimate the Power and what it means. I know it sounds to an outsider like black magic, but it does exist and it does help one who possesses it transcend the human frailties we're all born with. To use it, James, one must have absolute faith. Mine faltered -- perhaps I caused my own downfall." He shrugged his thin shoulders under the metallic sheen of the blanket. "But my belief was rekindled when I knew you were coming to take us back. I sensed that the life currents that carried us apart were bringing us back together. It took me this long to comprehend that faith springs not just from gods -- or from your one
god -- but from fellowmen as well. We must rely upon others -- and be worthy of reliance ourselves. Kailyn will have to learn this if she's to lead. I think she will."
In the silence, Kirk wondered -- was it wisdom, or foolish faith? The intercom whistled and Kirk touched the button; McCoy's frown filled the small screen.
"Jim, you're tiring out my patient. Your Highness, just because he's the captain, don't feel you can't toss him out if you'd rather rest."
"On the contrary, Doctor, his visit has been refreshing. Like the chats we used to have back home."
"Well, okay for now. But my prescription says you need some sleep, your Highness. Vamoose, Jim."
"Dr. McCoy," said Stevvin, "is there any room in that prescription for a spot of brandy?"
McCoy lifted an eyebrow, and scratched his chin. "Jim, how do you say no to a royal patient?"
"You don't. You just bring the brandy to the royal cabin and fill a royal glass."
"Just this once," McCoy said. "And right after, we'll both leave said royal patient to get some shut-eye. Agreed, Captain?"
"Yes, sir," Kirk said, saluting the viewscreen. The page of Don Quixote grew bold again over McCoy's fading image.
"Do you think we could get him to agree to a tour of the ship?" asked Stevvin, with real anticipation in his tone.
"I think that might be pressing our luck. But we'll give it a try."

Much to Kirk's surprise, his medical officer gave in on the tour idea, so long as he came along. Kailyn accompanied them as well, and they pushed Stevvin along in a wheelchair. There were no wheels, of course; the orthopedic support couch glided atop an anti
grav field, making the heaviest patient easy to maneuver. The King beamed with fatherly pride as Kirk played sightseeing guide at each stop.
And Kailyn truly felt like a tourist. She was awed by the vastness of the Enterprise, and by Captain Kirk's sure grasp of every detail of every operation.
"It only seems like he knows everything," McCoy whispered, loudly enough for Kirk to overhear.
"Right" Kirk nodded. "Actually, Dr. McCoy knows everything."
The group laughed and moved on -- nearly running head-on into Sulu and Chekov jogging around a corridor junction.
"Whoa, gentlemen! Theres a place for this, and it's not all over the ship."
Sulu breathed lightly as he answered with a sheepish smile. "Sorry, sir. But Chekov just wasn't getting into the spirit of running on the treadmill track. I think he needs to feel the breeze through his hair, watch the scenery pass by . . ."
McCoy regarded the wheezing security chief, doubled over and collapsed against the wall. "Personally, I think he needs a stretcher." 
"Oh, he's just getting warmed up," said Sulu. He nudged Chekov on the shoulder, almost knocking him over. "Another mile or so, and then back to the gym for a little fencing. Come on, Chekov. Rest too long and you'll get cramps. See you all later." Sulu leaped ahead and disappeared around the corner.
Chekov leaned away from the sympathetic wall, swaying for a moment. "With friends like this, who needs Klingons?"
He staggered away and Kirk resumed the tour.
So many resources at his disposal, Kailyn thought. So many people and skills at his fingertips. She'd never been on anything like this starship, except a planet, a world. That's what the Enteprise was,
in reality -- a self-contained world, and Kirk was its king.
He surveys it with such confidence, such pleasure, she marveled. He was sovereign ruler here, as Kailyn would have to be. As her ailing father had been years ago. She wondered if he had taken to command as comfortably as Kirk seemed to. Would the mantle of responsibility and power ever fit so well on her?

King Stevvin fell asleep shortly after returning to his quarters; McCoy paused a moment to check the monitors, and he didn't like what they told him. The strain of the tour probably hadn't made any difference, but the King of Shad was slipping slowly closer to death. The doctor kept it to himself as Kirk headed up to the bridge, and Kailyn went to her own cabin, adjacent to her father's, to rest.
McCoy stalked into his office and watched the door slide shut, cutting him off from the corridor with a perfunctory hiss. "Dammit," he grumbled. "No doors to slam on this ship." And so he pounded his fist on the nearest countertop instead; but it wasn't the same and he longed for an old-fashioned slammable door and the room-shaking crash it would make.
His annoyance stemmed from two sources -- the first, his inability to do anything about the King's inevitable demise. The second . . . the second made his blood run cold. He'd looked at Stevvin in the wheelchair -- and he'd seen himself, an old man, helpless as a babe . . . being fed, or trundled from place to place. He looked in the mirror again, at the wrinkles collected by years of too many late hours in too many labs, regrets lingering from his ill-fated marriage, worries about his daughter Joanna, now grown and practically a stranger to him, the taste of a few extra drinks he could've passed up.
Water under the bridge, he thought with a mental shrug. Even Vulcans get wrinkles. Besides, facial creases don't mean I'm old. It's what you think you are -- and right now, I think I'm old. Hell, what would I do if a woman came in here right now and -- 
The question was interrupted by the office door sliding open. Kailyn entered and looked about like a nervous sparrow.
"Dr. McCoy," she blurted, "I want to learn how to give myself the holulin injections."
McCoy frowned. "Not now, Kailyn," he said, more gruffly than he'd intended. "I've got some things I -- "
Before he could complete the thought, she was gone, as quietly and unexpectedly as she'd come, and he found himself staring at the closing door.
Dammit. Why the hell did I do that? He shook his head ruefully. So a woman walks in and I send her right back out again. Wait a minute -- she's just a girl, and the King's daughter to boot. And that doesn't count.
He rolled his eyes. Of course it counts. She came for help, and you're too busy feeling sorry for yourself.
"Sometimes you're an incredible jackass, McCoy," he said out loud, and quickly went out to find Kailyn.

It took some effort, but with a combination of Southern charm and fatherly coaxing, McCoy managed to convince Kailyn to come back to the office. He was surprised at how little she knew of her own serious illness, and he determined that self-injection would have to wait until he could give her as comprehensive a medical education as possible before they left the Enterprise to search for the Crown.
But if her specific knowledge of choriocytosis was limited, her
ability to absorb and understand physiological facts and their interrelationhips was nothing short of remarkable. McCoy figured she must have had the equivalent of a university master's degree, taught entirely by the King during the long wait on Orand, and his admiration of both father and daughter grew. As the complexity of their lessons increased, so did Kailyn's enthusiasm. 
McCoy was preparing the next study tape when Kailyn arrived early for their session. She took a seat while he transferred several diagrams from the computer file on choriocytosis, and she listened closely to the music cassette playing in the background. The piece had a subtle Latin rhythm, intricate instrumental harmonies alternating with a lusty flourish of brass.
"Melendez," Kailyn said after a few minutes.
McCoy looked up from his computer terminal. "Hmm?"
"Melendez. Carlos Juan Melendez . . . the composer." 
McCoy laughed. "How do you know an early-twenty-first-century Earth musician from Texas?"
"I love music. I was one of those children who took lessons and couldn't get enough to keep me happy. I wanted to learn every instrument we had -- and a few we didn't."
"I'm beginning to think there's nothing you can't do." 
Kailyn closed her eyes and sighed. "I still can't give myself the injections."
"Don't worry. It's just a mental block," he said, putting an arm around her. "Everybody's got their little quirks. To this day, I still can't swallow a pill without something to wash it down -- like brandy." 
She smiled a not very convincing smile and leaned her head on his shoulder. He inhaled the garden-fresh fragrance of her hair, and felt a little less elderly for the first time since the birthday party.
"Where's Dr. McCoy?" asked Kirk.
Christine Chapel's preoccupation with a lab work-up on the King was momentarily disrupted. "With his shadow," she said absently.
"His what?"
"I mean, I think he went with Kailyn to visit her father, Captain."
Kirk nodded. "By the way, I did hear you the first time. Exactly what did that mean?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Ahh. It just sort of . . . slipped out."
"Something like that, sir."
Kirk bounced on his heels for a moment, gazing expectantly at Chapel. Clearly, she was torn between saying what she really had on her mind or crawling into the nearest test tube in the hopes that Captain Kirk would go away and forget her slip. But he stayed, and finally she couldn't stand the silence.
"I'm not trying to gossip, Captain, but she always seems to be around him. He goes to the labs, she's with him. To the ships mess, she's at his table. The only times she's not around him are when she's with her father."
"It doesn't seem to be any cause for alarm, does it?" 
"I guess not, sir."
"Besides, McCoy's a good father figure, isn't he?"
"I wouldn't know, Captain," Chapel said with a slight blush coming to her cheeks. "And I'm not so sure she thinks of him in a completely fatherly way."
Kirk suppressed a smile. "Well, maybe it'll make him feel a little more youthful, having a young lady pay attention to him."
"As long as he doesn't get carried away."
"Are you afraid he's not aware of what's happening? He is a pretty fair psychologist."
"Captain, you know as well as I do that physicians don't always heal themselves."
"Touché, Doctor. I'll mention it to McCoy -- when I can find him without the young lady."
"Discreetly please, sir," she implored.
"I'll do my best."

"Christine put you up to this, didn't she, Jim?"
"That's ridiculous, Bones," Kirk said quickly.
"Not if I know Chapel," McCoy countered, sitting on his bunk and pulling his boots off with one grunt per foot. He rubbed his toes to restore circulation. "They should get a new podiatric specialist to design some decent boots for Star Fleet."
"I'm not here to discuss your feet."
"No, you're here to discuss my private life," McCoy snapped.
"Calm down. Your private life isn't the problem."
"There isn't any problem!"
"But there could be if you get involved with Kailyn in any way."
McCoy stood up abruptly, began pacing, and abandoned all efforts at hiding his annoyance. "So we eat a couple of meals together, listen to some music, go over the implications of her illness . . . is that so terrible? Look, Jim, I want that girl to be able to administer her own shots by the time we leave this ship. To do it, I've got to get her to trust me. If that means being nice to her and getting to know her, well, dammit, that's what I'll do."
"And is that what you're doing?"
"Yes!" said McCoy, waving his arms. "Good lord, if I questioned everything you did that I thought was a little screwy, neither of us
would ever get a stitch of work done."
Kirk eyed his ship's surgeon, then pursed his lips. "Now, that's the diplomatic Leonard McCoy explanation I was waiting to hear."
McCoy shook his head. "Get out of here and let me get my beauty sleep. Lord knows, at my age I need it."

Kirk's own rest period was the type to add wrinkles and subtract years -- most of it spent tossing and turning, willing his eyes to stay closed, then opening them the moment his mind wandered from the task of sleeping to the vagaries of their mission. Any further thoughts of slumber were destroyed by the whistle of the intercom.
"Bridge to Captain Kirk," said Sulu.
Kirk leaned over and touched the switch. "Kirk here, Mr. Sulu. What's up -- other than me?"
"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we thought you'd want to know we're being followed by a Klingon cruiser."
Kirk rolled to his feet and grabbed his shirt off the bed in a single move. "On my way."

The bridge was calm and quiet as Kirk stepped out of the turbolift. "Report," he said, looking first to Sulu, who commanded this watch. 
"No hostile action on their part, sir. They're just hovering out there, almost out of sensor range. We tried some leisurely evasive maneuvers. They're not exactly following us to the letter, but every time we'd lose them, they'd turn up again in a minute or two."
"Any communications, Uhura?"
"Nothing, Captain. I hailed them on all frequencies . . . no response."
"I guess they had nothing to say," Kirk said as he eased into the command seat.
"Shall I try them again, sir?"
"No. We know they're there. That's all we need to know right now. Chekov, keep an eye on them. I wouldn't want to lose them."
Kirk sat back. So, they've taken the bait . . . doing exactly what we hoped they'd do. But it's just too easy. We'll have to stay sharp -- Klingons are rarely so cooperative.
Chapter Six
McCoy and Kailyn stood side by side, gazing out the recreation deck's huge observation port. From their perch near the stern of the main saucer section, they could see the Engineering hull below and the Enteprise's slender engine nacelles fanning out gracefully, bathed in the gentle glow of the ship's own floodlights.
Kailyn seemed determined to find out everything about McCoy's past, where he'd been, what he'd done, whom he'd known, how he'd come to be a physician with Star Fleet. And he enjoyed answering the questions.
Eventually, she wrapped one arm around his waist, and he noticed that she was leaning on him for support. She was pale.
"What's wrong?"
"My stomach's a little queasy," she said with a lopsided, little-girl smile. "This is the first time I realized we're out in the middle of space on a tiny little ship."
"I'd hardly call the Enterprise tiny."
Kailyn leaned forward, pressing up against the port window. The ship was moving, of course, but she had the strangest sensation that they were suspended among the stars, just another heavenly body. The stars . . . so many of them, wherever she might look, set like unblinking jewels strewn across the infinite darkness. So many of them -- yet, they seemed uncrowded, unhurried as they moved ever
farther from the center of the Universe on a journey that had commenced with the beginning of all things, the beginning of time.
She drifted out of her reverie, back to McCoy, who watched with a mixture of fascination and concern.
"What were you thinking about, Kailyn?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. A lot of things. There's so much out there. When we went to Orand, I was so young, I didn't even realize what was happening."
"You mean being out in space?"
She nodded.
McCoy chuckled. "Everybody's like this on their first space voyage. You think you know what it'll be like -- until you're actually on that ship and get out in the middle of nowhere. I've had more space rookies stumble into my office -- all of a sudden, reality hits them, and they get this look on their faces . . ."
He pressed his nose to hers and his eyes bugged out, like a surprised insect. Kailyn couldn't help laughing, and he stepped back, his hands on her shoulders.
"Now, that's more like it. You're too young not to laugh more."
But her smile suddenly faded and she lowered her eyes. McCoy touched her cheek. "What is it?"
She didn't look up. "Am I too young?"
"For what?"
"For everything. To be Queen of Shad . . . to give my own shots . . ." There was a long pause. "To love someone."
Now it was McCoy's turn for a lingering moment of silence. To love someone -- did she mean him? Poppycock. Now I'm thinking like Christine. Before he could formulate a response, the intercom whistled urgently.
"Dr. McCoy," said Uhura's voice. "Report to sick bay immediately.
Dr. McCoy, to sick bay, please." Her tone said emergency without using the word, and McCoy reflexively grabbed Kailyn's hand and pulled her toward the turbolift.

The captain and Spock stood outside the doctor's office ready to intercept him. When Kirk saw Kailyn with McCoy, his jaw tightened for just a second; there was no way to protect her.
"Bones, it's the King." Then he turned and led the way down the corridor to Stevvin's quarters.
Kailyn held fast to McCoy's hand, her mind racing from thought to thought, careening between fear, resignation and a determination to keep her wits about her. Tears formed in her eyes, but stayed there.
Dr. Chapel and a medical aide were already at the King's bedside, administering an injection and oxygen. They stepped smoothly aside when McCoy entered, and Chapel delivered a succinct report. Kailyn watched and listened dully, absorbing blurred impressions, clearly hearing only two words: "Heart failure."
Kirk guided Kailyn back toward a corner of the room, and they stood with Spock as the medical team worked with no wasted motions or words. The life-function indicators above the bed jumped and sagged erratically. Chapel placed a portable heart-lung machine over the King's chest, while the med tech adjusted the oxygen feed. McCoy punched several control buttons when Chapel nodded to him, and the cardio-stimulator began a steady pulse, its green light blinking evenly.
"Pulse and pressure stabilized, Doctor," Chapel said finally.
"Breathing on his own," the med tech added.
McCoy stepped back and wiped his forehead. "Leave the cardio-stimulator in place for now, Doctor. Keep an eye on the readouts."
Chapel nodded and she and the young aide exited. For the first time, McCoy looked at Kailyn. She broke away from Kirk and buried her face on McCoy's shoulder. He nodded to Kirk and Spock and they left McCoy and Kailyn alone. For a long time, he held her, and the only sounds were her sniffling and the faint beating of the cardio-stimulator.

Kailyn's eyes were red-rimmed, but she was all business for the strategy session with McCoy, Spock and Captain Kirk in the main briefing room. The details of the mission were raked over one more time. Kirk wanted to be certain not only that she knew the location of the Crown on Sigma 1212, but that she was psychologically ready for the task. After an hour, he sent her back to her cabin to rest.
"Opinions, gentlemen?" he asked, when she had gone.
"I think she's ready," McCoy said. "She seems to have gained a lot of self-confidence over these last three days, Jim. I was especially pleased by the way she bounced back from that crisis with her father this afternoon."
"I must differ, Captain," Spock said.
"Spock" snapped McCoy, "this is no time for nitpicking." 
Spock ignored McCoy and addressed Kirk directly.
"The young lady was disturbed to a great degree during the medical emergency. She seems unready to accept that her father will not live much longer, and I am forced to point out that this does not bode well for her ability to function without his support."
McCoy jumped to his feet. "Jim, she was upset," he argued. "That's normal -- for a human, Mr. Spock. You both saw her here. She was clearheaded and alert, and I think that's pretty admirable under the circumstances." He sat back again. "I think this afternoon, seeing that equipment used on her father, was the first time Kailyn
really faced the fact that he's dying. Oh, she understood it intellectually before, but emotionally it just hit her all at once. She cried, but she bounced back."
McCoy glanced from Kirk to Spock several times, inviting riposte or agreement. Spock merely raised an eyebrow. "I have stated my concern -- and I believe Dr. McCoy has adequately explained the situation." 
"I agree," Kirk concluded. "Besides, we don't have much choice, and we have no time to waste. Star Fleet will be expecting a report, and I'd like to be able to tell them 'mission accomplished.' "
Spock rose from his seat. "With your permission, sir, I shall return to the bridge."
Kirk nodded, and when Spock had left, he turned to the still-seated McCoy. "I want to believe you, Bones, that she'll get through this. Are you sure?"
"I'd put money on it."

The next few hours were devoted to mental and physical preparation. Kirk repeatedly went over the plan in his mind. He wanted to know every weak spot, to anticipate every surprise, to expect every possible intrusion of the unexpected.
Spock inspected the shuttle Galileo, specially equipped for long-distance travel with light-speed boosters, extra fuel, food rations, medical supplies, and survival items. A computer check revealed all systems ready, and a manual review confirmed it.
McCoy gathered the medical gear he'd need to care for Kailyn if her choriocytosis flared seriously. And he did plenty of thinking -- about Kailyn, about himself, and what was happening between them. She's a child, younger than my daughter -- and she's got a crush on you, McCoy. So what? I couldn't be interested in her like
that. I'm a teacher, someone for her to look up to. It could just as easily have been Spock, if she went for logical, unemotional types. Her father won't be with her much longer -- she's just transferring her feelings from him to me. She'll understand that -- she's got to.
Still, she was intelligent, gentle, pretty. Why couldn't I be interested in her? Just because I really am old enough to be her father? How do you feel, McCoy? He gave a mental shrug. That's the hell of it -- I don't know.

"I can't stay long, Father," Kailyn said. "I don't want to tire you out."
Stevvin smiled weakly. The machines had been removed, but he had to remain flat on his back. He reached out with a trembling hand and she held it, resting it on the bed.
"You'll be leaving soon. Remember -- Shirn O'tay was the patriarch. Hell show you where the Crown -- "
"I know, Father, I know. Don't worry."
"I won't. Actually, I will -- but that's a father's privilege."
Stevvin pulled his daughter's hand to his lips and kissed it. "The gods will care for you. And you have some good men to help you."
The King's breath came in short, labored rasps, and Kailyn fought back her tears. "I love you, Father."
He smiled and pressed her hand to his lips again.

"Sensor report," said Kirk.
Chekov looked up from the viewer at the science station. The Klingon cruiser is just out of range, sir. They couldn't detect the shuttle launch now."
"Shuttle engine ignition, Captain," said Sulu.
Kirk punched up the Galileo's channel on his intercom panel. "Kirk to Galileo."
"Spock here, Captain. All systems ready for shuttle launch."
"Spock . . ." Kirk hesitated. "Good luck. Kailyn, take good care of my officers. Especially McCoy."
Her voice was strong. "I will."
"Request shuttle bay doors open," Spock said.
Sulu flipped a console switch. "Shuttle bay doors open." 
Kirk glanced at the hangar deck on the screen over the science station. "Launch shuttle."
Sulu's fingers skipped across the panel, deftly touching the final toggle. "Shuttle away, sir."

That night, King Stevvin, the seventeenth monarch in the Dynasty of Shad, died in his sleep with Captain Kirk and four royal servants at his side.
The shuttlecraft Galileo was ten hours out on its journey by that time. The King's plan for bringing peace to his world once and for all was progressing without him, as he had hoped it would. Even the Klingon cruiser resumed its place, following the Enterprise. All was as it should have been.
Except for one thing. Unknown to Kirk, or to the crew of the Galileo, when the shuttle passed through the outer reaches of a nondescript white-dwarf star system, far out of sensor range of the Enterprise, a shadow joined the excursion.
The shadow was a Klingon spy scout, manned by four intelligence agents. Their assignment was simple -- follow the shuttlecraft. If its crew retrieved the holy Crown of Shad, kill them and claim the Crown for the Klingon Empire. And if they failed to find the Crown, kill them anyway.
Chapter Seven
"Klingons, Kirk," Harrington barked with uncharacteristic fury. "The bloody Klingons knew before I did. If their secret communications network weren't so leaky, they'd know, and I still wouldn't know. Would you care to offer an explanation as to why you disobeyed orders?"
Kirk sat hunched over his desk, with Scotty standing directly behind him. On the viewscreen, the admiral was still in his robe -- he'd obviously been roused from a good night's sleep with the news that the Klingons were on to the Enterprise decoy plan -- a decoy plan he'd known nothing about.
"I'm sorry, Admiral," Kirk began. Not quite certain of what else to say, he moved on cautiously. "The situation was not as we were led to expect when we arrived at Orand, sir. You're aware that the Crown of Shad was not with the King when we -- "
"Yes, Kirk. The bloody Klingon report we got hold of was quite clear in that detail."
"Once we ascertained that we couldn't go back to Shad without it, we also realized that the King was simply not healthy enough to make the extra trip. None of this was included in the briefing report we were given at Star Base, sir."
Kirk shot a quick glance back at Scott, who understood his captain's
captain's strategy -- shifting a bit of the blame for the altered mission onto Star Fleet Intelligence.
"All right, Captain, I accept that the mission required modification and I'll even accept that the time involved in consulting with H.Q. might have blown the whole affair. You're an accomplished starship captain, and you sit in that command seat because Star Fleet trusts your judgment -- though right now, I might be convinced to question that."
Kirk swallowed, but continued to look head-on at the viewscreen.
"We've got two major problems to contend with, Kirk. First and foremost, it appears that one of the Shaddans aboard your ship is a Klingon agent, and second -- "
"Begging your pardon, sir, but our shuttle crew out there on Sigma is going to be at the wrong end of a Klingon shooting gallery the second they find that Crown -- "
"I am aware of that, Captain."
"That's our primary concern, sir. It's of the utmost importance that we get back to Sigma as quickly as possible in case the shuttle party needs assistance."
"Negative, Captain," Harrington said sharply. "If you'd been here when we got word from Intelligence, you'd know that rooting out the turncoat in the King's party is top priority."
"But the safety of the King's daughter and my officers -- "
" -- is of deep concern. However, Star Fleet will not be made fools of. The Klingons did just that Captain. Here they had a spy under our noses all this time, you pull a plan out of nowhere that the Fleet doesn't even know about -- and the enemy knows where you're going and when before you even get under way. I have to answer to superiors, too, and they will not stand for that. They threw it at me and I'm throwing it right to you. This is an order -- find that spy."
"Sir, for all practical purposes, we have all four suspects in custody. We can investigate after we've ensured the safety of the shuttle mission."
"The Joint Chiefs of Staff want that spy secured first." 
"Did the Joint Chief have any good ideas how to do that?" said Kirk, biting off each word -- sidestepping the urge to illuminate them with colorful adjectives and verbs.
"You got into this, Kirk, and it's up to you to think of a way out. That's not a direct quote, I might add. The language here was a bit more descriptive."
Kirk was immediately sorry he'd restrained himself; the phrases running through his mind were quite descriptive, but he realized that insubordination was not the thing to help his cause at the moment.
"Admiral, I must register a strong protest. We -- " 
"That's your right, Captain. And these are your orders -- formulate a plan to catch that spy, and hold your present position until you've got one. Then submit the specifics for our approval before you put it into effect. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," Kirk said tightly.
"One other thing -- how is the King through all this?" 
Kirk and Scott traded quick glances. "The King? The King is fine, sir."
"Good. I'd hate to have any more complications after all this. Very well . . . we shall be expecting a plan from you in exactly two hours. Star Fleet out."
Harrington's image faded to black, and Kirk rested his chin on his arms, slumped over the desktop.
Scotty shook his head soberly. "Captain, y' lied to a Star Fleet admiral."
"Let's hope you and I are the only ones who ever know about it. It's eighteen years later, and I'm still fighting the damn bureaucracy. We just can't risk any more leaks." He shook his head. "Whatever happened, it was before we left Orand, and that was out of our control. Maybe the King mentioned the plan to a servant who mentioned it to someone else. Or maybe someone overheard, or maybe Kailyn said something when she shouldn't have. I don't know. What I do know is, none of that matters now. What does matter is that Spock, McCoy and Kailyn are going to be in trouble, and that Klingon ship playing tag with us for three days was a trick that I fell for. Now, instead of getting to Sigma as fast as we can to see that nothing happens to the shuttle crew, we have to sit here thinking of a way to wipe egg off Star Fleet's face. Dammit."

There was no easy banter when Kirk gathered Scott, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, and Security Lieutenant Jaye Byrnes in the briefing room. The situation was summed up in succinct terms, and the assembled officers circled gingerly around it for better than thirty minutes. Finally, Kirk swiveled out of his seat and began pacing around the table.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we're not getting anywhere," he said flatly.
Byrnes cleared her throat. She was present because she'd joined the Enterprise after five years in Star Fleet Counterintelligence, and Kirk hoped her expertise might elicit ideas from the others.
"As long as this spy's on board," she said, "we're in control, sir. That's our ace."
"That's what I tried to tell Star Fleet. That's why this shouldn't be that urgent."
"For H.Q. it is," Chekov said glumly. "And that makes it urgent for us."
Kirk allowed himself a gallows smile. "Chain of command, Mr. Chekov. They put the heat on me, I put it on you."
"But who do we put it on?" Sulu grumbled.
"You don't. You give me answers. Byrnes?"
She tossed her blond hair over her shoulder. "We can use that control, Captain."
"How?"
"By giving the spy enough rope to hang himself."
Kirk sat on the edge of the table, arms crossed. "Go on."
"We know about him. We know he's here -- "
"Aye," Scott said, "but not who he -- or she -- is." 
"If we can make him think he can get away with something he wants to do and we should normally want to prevent, we might be able to trap him."
Scott nodded. "Aye. Give a fish a little line, let him think he's free . . . he tires himself out, and y' reel him in fast."
"Exactly," said Byrnes. "Now, what would this spy want very much to do, either personally or as part of his assignment?"
"Get away from us," Sulu suggested.
Kirk's eyes narrowed. "Get away from us for what purpose?"
"For his own safety," said Uhura.
"Or to report new information," Scott said suddenly. "Like the King's death. It's the one thing that's happened since we left Orand that the Klingons would want t' know."
"Of course," Sulu said, nodding emphatically. "Then they wouldn't have to worry about getting their hands on the Crown. With the King dead, if they could kill his daughter, they'd wipe out whatever chance we had for keeping the Loyalist Coalition together -- "
" -- and the Mohd Alliance could win without any blatant outside help that might attract the attention of the Organian treaty enforcers," Byrnes concluded.
Kirk nodded. "That seems like a pretty compelling reason for this informant to want to make contact with his superior. If we can give him a chance to do that, under the guise of some legitimate task, we could catch him in the act."
"But the only way to do that," said Byrnes, "is to let the spy off the Enterpise, sir. And any way we do that, we risk two things -- making him suspicious, or letting him escape."
The brainstorming picked up speed and went on for another hour. Kirk was pleased that his inclusion of Byrnes proved to be the perfect catalyst. But for all the ideas laid out, it remained for Kirk to synthesize the possibilities into a course of action that sounded plausible. He did, radioed it to Star Fleet, and waited for an answer.
An hour later, it came: approval. But the toughest decision lay ahead. If the hidden spy took the bait, all well and good. But if no suspect stepped forward into the noose, Kirk knew he had no time for alternatives -- the Enterprise would be off to Sigma in the warp-speed wink of an eye, and to hell with Star Fleet's wounded pride. That could be repaired easily enough -- wounded bodies, however, were another matter, and he wanted very much to retrieve the Galileo and its crew unscathed.
But first, to catch a spy. . . .
Chapter Eight
McCoy twisted in his seat, stretched every muscle in both legs, massaged the kinks out of his neck, and still couldn't get comfortable. Though he'd traveled in space for years, there were still times when he felt slightly cramped walking through a narrow corridor on the Enterprise, or sitting in a cabin where the walls contoured to the curves of a bulkhead.
But if the great starship caused a twinge of confinement now and then, three days in the Galileo made him feel positively claustrophobic, and he longed for the relative roominess of the Enterprise. Suddenly, he leaped from his seat and paced as wildly as a man could with only two strides between him and the walls. Quite frankly, he felt ridiculous and flopped back into the seat. Spock watched without a word, while Kailyn napped in one of the three hammocks set up in the makeshift sleeping section at the stern.
"Spock, are we there yet?"
The Vulcan came as close as he ever did to looking annoyed. "Doctor, you asked me that an hour ago. We are now one hour closer to our destination."
McCoy extended his recliner seat to its full tilt and clasped his hands behind his head. "Tell me again how our destination is a South Sea isle, with palm trees, and suntanned bathing beauties
wearing nothing but long, flowing hair, flower necklaces, and warm smiles."
"Sigma 1212 is the fourth planet in its system, sparsely inhabited, and has an average surface temperature of minus twelve degrees Celsius. Sixty-two percent of its landmass is too cold for human habitation. And there are no palm trees," Spock replied, with a suitably icy undertone in his voice.
"You know what I've always liked about you, Spock?"
"What, Doctor?"
"The way you always go out of your way to make me happy."
"Doctor," Spock said, his lips in a tight line, "do one of your crossword puzzles."
"I did a whole tape of them. And I don't even like crossword puzzles," McCoy mourned. "What if I said I wanted to go outside for a little stroll?"
"This is hardly the time."
"That wasn't my question. What would you do?"
"At this point, Dr. McCoy, I would let you go."
"There you go trying to make me happy again."
McCoy's next complaint was soundly shaken back from the tip of his tongue when the shuttle bucked into a sudden pocket of turbulence. He grasped the arms of his seat and sat bolt upright, while Spock spun back to the control panel. The ship shuddered again.
"What's wrong, Spock?"
The next jolt threw them against their seatbacks.
"It's getting worse," said McCoy, blanching as his stomach returned to its rightful place, contents barely contained.
The first officer studied several urgently flashing readouts, though his expression remained calm, as always.
"I'm afraid our situation may get considerably worse before it gets
better. The Sigma system is noted for the severity and frequency of solar flares and resulting magnetic storms."
"Don't give me a travelog -- just do something."
Spock turned his full attention to the Galileo's unresponsive instruments while the small ship tossed from side to side. McCoy stumbled forward, clamping a stranglehold on the command seat's headrest. He hovered behind Spock while his knees absorbed the pitching and rolling.
Kailyn half-fell and half-walked into the main cabin, finally reaching the relative security of her portside seat. "What's wrong?" 
"Spock didn't mean to wake you up." McCoy tightened his grip on the headrest. The shuttle's nose suddenly dipped and his chin jammed into the top of the seat. Dazed, he retreated to his own chair and rubbed his jaw.
"We are entering the storm zone surrounding Sigma 1212," Spock said to Kailyn.
"Surrounding the planet?" repeated McCoy. "That means we're close to it."
"We are approaching it, Doctor, but I've been forced to reduce our speed, and we have another hour ahead of us."
Before McCoy could say anything else, the Galileo rose up on it tail and plunged forward as the convulsive fury of the storm jerked it like a puppet. The metal hull groaned and creaked, and Spock cut back the engines again. There was a lull, for just a heartbeat, and then it began all over again. The ship seemed to be trying to twist in three directions at once.
"Spock," said McCoy anxiously, "are we going to hold together?"
The Vulcan's long fingers poised over the controls, and he did not turn to face McCoy. "I do not know, Doctor. Only time will tell."
The Klingon spy vessel shivered and twitched in protest as Commander Kon tried to hold it on course. Kon was short and stocky for a Klingon, but his tunic fit tightly across his barrel chest, and muscles rippled under the mail cloth. His beard was streaked with gray, a tell-tale sign that he'd been in the Empire's service longer than most, combining skill and luck to survive battles and sidestep assassination attempts by younger officers eager to rise through the ranks. Kon had led the crew of the fiercest battle cruiser in the Imperial fleet for nearly a decade, and had managed to crush a half-dozen mutiny outbreaks to keep his ship loyal to the Emperor. For his efforts, he was rewarded with elevation to the elite Special Intelligence Group, a handful of trusted soldiers who were assigned only the most important spy missions -- the dirtiest and most dangerous.
Kon had proven he could kill when he had to, could strangle a child with his bare hands if that's what it took. He was feared, and had no fear. The perfect Klingon.
"Commander, sensors are impaired" said the science officer from her station. The scout ship was tiny, with too much equipment crammed into far too little space. Kera, the science officer, was close enough to touch her commander, though she didn't dare. She was young, brilliant, ambitious -- and she knew that any sort of romantic involvement with a powerful male like Kon would likely end up with one of them dead. Not that the prospect didn't intrigue her; for among Klingons, even love was a battle, consummated only when one was victor and one vanquished. But she had time on her side -- the odds told her that one day Kon would falter and die because of it. To become too closely allied with him now could cost her dearly later, so the transitory pleasures and excitement of a sexual coupling simply weren't worth the risk.
"We've hit the fringe of a Magnitude Seven disturbance, sir," she
said, her voice a businesslike monotone.
Kon's grizzled eyebrows lifted in unison. "Magnitude Seven? And the Federation ship?"
"They've entered it, Commander. We're losing sensor contact."
Cheeks puffed out, Kon thought over the possibilities. "Would they enter such a storm merely to trick us?"
"That would be foolhardy," said Kera. "And their unchanged course leads to the conclusion they're unaware of our presence. In addition, they've exchanged no radio transmissions with any Federation outpost or ship since they left the Enterprise."
"So you believe that planet in the middle of these storms is where they're headed?"
"Yes, sir, I do. The Crown of Shad must be hidden on Sigma 1212. I propose that we maintain vigilance outside the storm zone. If they survive to reach the planet and the Crown, we'll have no trouble taking it from them and dispatching the crew when they leave the surface to meet the starship."
"And if they never make it to this treasured Crown?" 
"Then," said Kera smoothly, "I see no reason to risk our lives by following them into a Magnitude Seven disturbance."
Kon gave her a leering nod of approval, and as she turned back to her screens and dials, he smiled to himself. He wondered what she would be like as a sexual partner, and wished momentarily that he had her back on his warship, with his private quarters. Klingon crew members, whether male or female, had to accept as fact that a commander of the opposite sex had the right to collect carnal favors at whim. And as he looked ahead without enthusiasm to a protracted wait here at the edge of Sigma 1212's violent veil of space storms, he regretted not being able to while away the idle hours getting to know Kera more intimately.
"Sensor contact lost, Commander."

As if the outlying turbulence hadn't been bad enough, entry into Sigma's atmosphere offered no respite. Despite his best efforts, Spock was fighting a losing battle against cyclonic gales of over three hundred miles per hour as the shuttle's outer skin began to heat up.
McCoy had resumed his spot leaning over Spock's shoulder, while Kailyn tried to batten down whatever might be loose inside the cabin. But the time had come to strap themselves in and hope for the best.
"Are we on target, Spock?"
"Difficult to say, Doctor. Instruments have yet to return to normal function. I can only judge by our heading before navigation corrections became guesswork."
"You're not instilling confidence in me."
"You have my sincere regrets. Please secure your safety harnesses. This landing is not likely to be smooth."
Kailyn bit her lip nervously, and McCoy noticed.
"Spock has a way with understatements," he said.
McCoy didn't know how true that really was just then, for only Spock was aware that the whirlwinds buffeting the Galileo were making it nearly impossible to keep the heat shields properly angled. Where they landed on Sigma might never be a problem -- it was quite possible they and the battered shuttlecraft wouldn't land, but would burn up in the swirling atmosphere of this planet that seemed determined to permit no visitors.
Chapter Nine
Trust. If James Kirk held a value sacred, that was it. Without it, existence could never be more than a haphazard series of encounters filled with caution at best -- fear at worst. A being deemed unworthy of trust by others, or unable to find fellow-creatures to rely upon completely, could never know true love, unshakable friendship, or the warming shelter of security. In his own experience, lives had been saved by trust, loves lost by the lack of it.
In his eyes, the sin of betrayal was the worst of all. To willingly, knowingly accept someone's trust and then turn against it was contemptible. It was that feeling deep in his heart that allowed Kirk to tolerate for the moment Star Fleet's order to unmask the turncoat in King Stevvin's small, ragtag band of servants.
Four servants, no longer young, their lives given in the employ of the King for thirty years or more. These four had volunteered to leave their home world with their exiled ruler, and in the hard years that followed they had come to feel less like servants and more like members of the family. They'd shared hope and frustration, love, and finally trust -- until one of them had betrayed it.
But who? And why? The second question nagged at Kirk. Was it a loyal retainer driven to treason by some weakness of character -- an offer of money, or safety -- or simply a hollow despair of ever returning home? Or were they dealing with a professional spy, planted in
the King's entourage as a matter of course many years before the forced exile?
As he sat at the briefing-room table facing the four Shaddans, Kirk wasn't sure which answer would make him angrier, and he tried to set such emotion aside until it could be unleashed at a definite target.
Eili, the King's personal manservant. A little round man with the eyes of a faithful dog -- once vigilant, seeing to his master's needs even before he would be asked, now dulled by grief. His doughy face was buried in his hands as his wife Dania comforted him. They were a matched set -- Dania, the royal cook for thirty years, was as plump as her husband, and as devoted to him as he had been to the King.
Boatrey, the sturdy stable master, his leathery face etched by years of outdoor work. He had been Kailyn's favorite, and Kirk remembered how he would give the little girl rides on the small animals in his stable yard.
Lastly, Nars, the once-elegant chief of the household staff. His clothing was shabby now, with small threadbare spots that had been carefully stitched to get through the lean years on Orand -- but he still bore himself with the straight-backed dignity he had displayed without fail in the long-gone days of grandeur.
An unlikely group from which to ferret an enemy agent. Kirk found himself ready to rule out the possibility that any one of them could have been a spy from the start, and he drifted back toward the human-frailty theory. That was why Lieutenant Byrnes was there -- her trained eye might catch a hint that he would miss. Kirk cleared his throat.
"Before he died, King Stevvin asked me to promise that he would have a proper Shaddan funeral. I made that promise, and I want to
keep it. But we never got the chance to talk about it before the end. I know you've all suffered a great loss with his passing. I share your grief -- but right now, I need your help in fulfilling my promise. I need to know the funeral customs of Shaddan religion."
Kirk glanced furtively at each face, hoping to spot a telltale glimmer in the nervous batting of an eye or the downturned corner of a mouth. But if any such sign slipped out, he looked for it in vain.
"We must get a m-m-memorial urn," Eili said, jowls shaking as he tried to control his quiet sobs.
"Is it a special urn?" Kirk asked.
"Y-yes. It must be newly cut stone, quarried n-not more than a day before death. It . . ." Eili began to weep again, and Nars reached out to touch the little man's shoulder. But Eili seemed not to notice.
"Stone is symbolic of strength, Captain," Nars said. "It must be cut and sanctified according to strict laws."
"I fear we shall not succeed," Boatrey rumbled. "The King's ashes must be set out in the urn, to be sifted and taken by the gods within two suns after the heart has stopped. Aren't we more than two days from home?"
"Three days," Kirk said. "Does the urn have to be cut from Shaddan rock?"
The servants looked at each other before Dania answered. "Not as long as the laws are followed. But who would know Shaddan laws away from home?"
"A Shaddan," said Nars.
"Do you know a planet where we could get a holy urn?" asked Kirk.
"I know of some, but I don't know if they're close enough to your ship, Captain Kirk."
"Let's find out," Kirk said. He reached for the computer terminal
and switched it on. The machine's lights blinked in sequence, then supplied a visual response to his query -- planets within two days of the starship's present location, with known populations of Shaddan citizens. The servants read the list, and Nars pointed to one name.
"Zenna Four. I lived there myself many years ago."
"But is there a stonemason there?" asked Dania.
"I knew of one. A neighbor."
"But that was long ago," Boatrey protested. "He could have moved on, or died."
"He had a son, who was learning from his father."
"We must try," Eili said. "Otherwise, we condemn our King to wander forever, never being taken to the bosom of the gods."
"But what if this stonemason can't be found?" said Boatrey.
Kirk raised a hand to silence the cross-discussion. "The promise was mine -- and the decision will be, too."
The servants were escorted back to their quarters by security guards, while Kirk and Byrnes consulted the computer again. Zenna Four was almost two days distant, closer to Shad and farther from rendezvous with the Galileo at Sigma 1212. That meant the Enterprise would get back a full day late.
"If the Klingons are still trailing the shuttle," Byrnes said, "and the Crown is found, they could attack before we arrive, sir."
"Let's hold that aside for now, Lieutenant. In your opinion, is Nars the chief suspect?"
"Because he was the only one to step forward and point us to a particular planet? Well, if he is our spy, then he'd certainly be eager to report that the King is dead. They'd probably want to assassinate Kailyn immediately, even if the Crown stayed lost forever. Finishing the Dynasty that way could be quite enough to tip things back over to he Mohd Alliance."
At the same time, according to the computer, Nars was telling at least a partial truth. He had lived on Zenna briefly, as part of a diplomatic mission in a provincial capital called Treaton before he became chief of the King's staff. Zenna had been one of the first planets to contract for tridenite delivery, and a fair-sized community of Shaddans had sprung up to administer the business. The ore trade had dried up by the second decade of the civil war, but many of those Shaddan expatriates remained rather than return home to their own embattled world. So Nars's stonemason might very well be there. Perhaps he was only being the dutiful servant to the last, concerned solely with performing this final service for his dead master, sending him on his journey to life after death
If that was the case, then the detour to Zenna would fulfill Kirk's promise to Stevvin; but it might also place the Galileo in grave danger and risk losing the Crown to the Klingons. Though he wasn't religious himself, Kirk knew the Shaddans were. And if he didn't allow the King to be cremated according to custom, how was he to know he wouldn't be depriving his old friend of life after death? He'd already deprived him of almost twenty years of life before death. No -- that's not fair . . . not your fault.
Besides, Kirk refused to believe that the Shaddan gods could be so unforgiving that they wouldn't accept a soul whose delay had helped preserve the Dynasty they'd helped to create. He felt sure that the old King would have agreed with his judgment, and that particular worry subsided. Just one more question before he could choose a course of action. . . .

*  *  *

"Captain, someday y're goin' t' ask, and my poor bairns'll just give
up the ghost. Y'can only ask them to do so much."
Kirk sat on the edge of his bunk and looked at the dubious face of his chief engineer on the viewscreen. "I have faith in you, Scotty. They always listen to you."
Scott sighed. "Aye. We'll gi' you what we can."
With the pledge of extra speed from the starship's well-tended engine, they'd be able to arrive at the Sigma rendezvous less than twelve hours late, and Kirk knew he had to take the risk. He called Nars and informed him that the Enterprise was headed for Zenna Four. Nars assured Kirk he'd beam down himself to see to all details. With that, Kirk thanked him and switched off the intercom. He wondered how the Galileo was faring. 
There's the rope, Nars. If you don't string yourself up with it, I may have to take your place. Because if I'm wrong about all this, my Star Fleet record may not be worth a counterfeit credit.
Chapter Ten
Gingerly, McCoy moved one joint at a time, starting with the pinky on his right hand. When the right hand registered that it was fully operative, he slowly reached up and felt his head. It, too, was operative -- and slightly bloody. He opened both eyes completely for the first time since they'd closed themselves up, and a backlog of impressions flooded out of his subconscious. The acceleration, the heat, the nauseous sensation that went far deeper than the pit of his stomach. The expectation of the sound of tearing metal, and quick but painful death, harshly enveloping senses already stretched to the breaking point.
But that last part must never have happened, because he was quite certain he was alive. He gradually realized that he was alone, however, and the floor was tilted at a crazy angle, the craft's fore tip aimed approximately skyward, the stern resting over on its left corner. Debris was scattered across the interior, pieces of equipment broken loose from their moorings and storage niches, the hammocks torn off the wall hangers. He reached for the safety release on his harness and found that it was already unlatched. Then he saw the bloodstained cloth on his lap. It had evidently been placed on his forehead and slipped off. Whoever put it there must have had a good reason, so he put it back, remembering the cut he'd discovered
himself a moment ago. That was when he noticed that the wound had been bandaged.
McCoy closed his eyes again, trying to quiet the throbbing that announced itself forcefully along his right temple, slightly below the cut. Where were Spock and Kailyn?
The shuttle door creaked -- its track had been bent in the crash, and it resisted sliding back up into the hull. A blast of frigid air rushed in as the door cracked open and Kailyn clambered inside. McCoy relaxed and grinned at her as she wrestled the door closed again.
"You wouldn't smile if you saw what you looked like," she said. Gently, she touched the right side of his head with the cloth. He clenched his teeth at the bolt of pain shooting through his skull and down his neck.
"My head may be split open, but I can assure you my nervous system is working just fine."
"I'm sorry" She pulled her hand back. "Did it hurt?" 
"You might say that."
Kailyn bowed her head. "It's my fault you got hurt, and now I'm torturing you, and then I'll -- "
"Hold it, hold it," he said, with as much energy as he could muster. "Now, listen here, young lady; you are the only thing that stands between me and this massive headache. Get my medikit and -- "
Kailyn held the black pouch up. "Got it already."
"Good girl. There's a small vial labeled 'Topical Anesthetic.' Take it out and open the cap." While she followed his instruction, he winced with another stab of pain. "Now, spray the side of my head with it." 
Touching the nozzle with her fingertip, Kailyn lightly dusted the mist over the injured area, and McCoy displayed visible relief as the
numbing substance quickly took effect.
"Florence Nightingale would be proud, Kailyn. By the way, where's Mr. Spock?"
"Scouting the area."
"Did he take a phaser? asked McCoy with sudden concern. 
"Of course"
"Oh, good. He doesn't always. Vulcans aren't too keen on killing unless it's absolutely necessary -- and what most people might consider necessary, Spock doesn't always agree with." He reached up and touched his head near the gash, then looked at his fingertips. "Well, it stopped oozing. You did an excellent job of first aid."
She blushed. "How do you know I did it?"
"Oh, just a guess. Speaking of guesses, where are we?" 
"Mr. Spock wasn't very sure of that."
"Oh, great. If he actually admits to that, then we must be in real trouble. It felt cold when you opened the door."
"It is. Mr. Spock says it's five degrees Celsius."
McCoy noticed that Kailyn was wearing one of the Galileo's thermal "second skin" jumpsuits, shiny and tight-fitting. "What's the terrain like? I couldn't help but notice we didn't exactly land on a tabletop," he said, gesturing up toward the front of the cabin. He could see gray sky through the front viewing port.
"We're in a valley. Nothing special about it. Oh, there's a river nearby, so at least we have water."
"How are you feeling?"
She shrugged. "Oh, all right, I guess."
"No reaction?"
She shook her head.
McCoy smiled. "That's good. You remember what I told you about being under stress."
She thought about all they'd been through, and her face lit up. "I guess that is pretty good."
"Damn good," said McCoy. "We'll give you a shot in a few hours."
The door slid open again and Spock climbed in. "Ah, Dr. McCoy, I see you've regained consciousness."
"Yes, and I see you've managed to get us into quite a fix with your blasted piloting. I told Jim he should've sent somebody along who knew how to fly this thing."
"I also see you've regained your agreeable personality." 
"Never lost it. So what do we do now? Where in blazes are we?"
"As nearly as I am able to determine, we are on the correct continent -- "
"That's great aim, Spock."
" -- within perhaps one hundred kilometers of the Kinarr Mountain range where the Crown is hidden."
"That's not that far off," Kailyn volunteered.
"I wouldn't want to have to walk it," said McCoy.
"For once, you and I agree, Doctor. We are to rendezvous with the Enterprise outside this system in less than four days. And there would appear to be no way for us to traverse the distance here within that time."
"What's the difference?" said McCoy glumly. "We can't get off the planet anyway."
"Can't the shuttle be repaired?" asked Kailyn.
Spock shook his head. "Not without spare parts. Not even the communications system."
So," said McCoy acidly, "the facts are, we're stranded on this planet, we can't get to the Crown, and we can't get to the Enterprise." 
"Our immediate concern," Spock said, "is survival. Assuming the
ship returns to meet us according to schedule, they will not find us, and they will effect a search here on the planet. Our automatic distress signal is operative. If we can stay warm and fed, we can expect assistance to arrive. Captain Kirk is notably punctual."
McCoy brightened. "So all we have to do is tuck ourselves in, close the door, and hope no one knocks till the ship gets here to pick us up."
Kailyn and Spock exchanged glances and McCoy's eyes darted from one to the other. "Why do I get the feeling you haven't told me something I ought to know?"
Spock clasped his hands behind his back. "A substantial portion of our food supply was contaminated. Fluid from various components leaked upon impact. But there is vegetation nearby, despite the rather cold local environment. We should be able to gather a sufficient amount. Kailyn and I will -- "
"Hold on, Spock. I'm not staying here all by myself while you two pick berries and nuts. As long as we're stuck here, I'd at least like to stretch my legs. Besides, you're no gourmet -- you need me out there."
"Very well, Dr. McCoy. Put on a thermal suit and join us."

Where Orand had been a planet that seemed oblivious of the creatures living on its sand-scoured surface, not caring who or what might stay there and try to endure the heat, Sigma 1212 was quite another matter. Like a wild beast that refused to be saddle-broken, it was vigorously, openly hostile; from the violent radiation belts cloaking it in space to its tempestuous atmosphere, this rock-world bucked and howled and skittered to keep civilization from gaining a foothold amid it sullen valleys and forbidding peaks.
In fact, Sigma's desolation was one of the prime reasons Stevvin
had chosen it to hide his Crown. He knew it would serve to discourage casual attempts to search out the concealed icon. Unfortunately, the planet's inhospitable nature could not be peeled aside for Spock, McCoy and the King's daughter.
Hunched over to cheat the wind's ice-pick edge, the trio moved away from the shuttle wreck. The ground was hard beneath their feet, and not a ray of sun penetrated the curtain of clouds stretching to every horizon. Sigma seemed painted in shades of gray. Even the hardy plants and bushes looked dull and colorless as McCoy and Kailyn broke off berries and leaves that might be edible. Spock dug out roots, checked everything with his tricorder, and carried the food collection in a shoulder bag. If their meals for the next few days wouldn't be especially tasty, at least they would be nonpoisonous.
McCoy scanned the general area, hoping to see some small animals they might be able to capture and cook. His stomach growled uncomfortably and refused to be pacified by thoughts of fibrous vegetation soup. But he spotted nothing furry and footed on the ground; they walked along the edge of a forest zone that extended for at least a half-mile, and he couldn't see anything scurrying among the branches, either. Mixed with the continuous moan of the wind, he heard the rush of water over rocks.
"Spock, let's head down to that stream. Maybe we can catch some fish."
The Vulcan nodded and led the way down a slope covered with grass laid flat by the current of the breeze. McCoy and Kailyn carefully followed. The stream was no more than thirty feet across, and it flowed steadily though not especially fast. Perhaps twenty feet up from the water's edge, the bank angled more steeply; the grass stopped, giving way to hardened mud, rocks, and gravel, and Spock
knelt to investigate furrows etched into the ground.
"Fascinating. These appear to be caused by flowing water."
McCoy shuddered. "You mean that little stream gets up this high? What could make it rise like that?"
"Any number of factors. Heavy rains, runoff from the mountains, tidal effects. Meteorological reports on this planet do indicate a high incidence of severe cyclonic low-pressure systems. Such high winds and intense precipitation could account for a rapid increase in water levels of such minor tributaries."
Involuntarily, McCoy glanced up at the clouds, looking for signs of a storm; there were none apparent, but somehow that made him feel no less uneasy. "I don't like being marooned here Spock."
"Nor do I. But while we are, there is little we can do, except to stay alert."
Kailyn stood up straight, turning her face into the wind. "I don't know if I'm just imagining it, but it feels wetter."
"I think you're right," McCoy said. "We better get back to the shuttle."
Spock stood and hefted the shoulder bag. "Very well We have enough for now. Perhaps it would be safer to observe the weather from a place of shelter for a while."
With that, he took one step up the hillside -- and froze, his slitted eyes sweeping the trees along the upper bank. Without lifting his gaze, he whispered back to his companions: "Walk down here along the stream bed. I believe we are being watched from those woods."
Grabbing Kailyn by the wrist, McCoy swallowed hard and silently followed the first officer back toward the clearing where the shuttle waited.
The stream seemed to be flowing more strongly now, and the spray coating the waterside rocks made them slippery. Spock set a
rapid but careful pace, and kept one eye on the trees looming above them.
When they reached a bend in the stream, where the woods grew down the bank and right up to the water, Spock made a sharp turn, cutting ahead of who or whatever was shadowing them. He offered Kailyn a hand to help her make the steep grade more quickly. They heard a pair of crisp thwangs -- and two arrows neatly split a tree trunk no more than a foot from McCoy's head. Kailyn gasped; McCoy stared first at the splintered tree, then at Spock. But before anyone could speak, the mysterious trackers stepped out of the gloom of the deeper forest. Eight humanoids surrounded the shuttle party without a word or sound. All were seven feet tall or over, clad in brown and black fur cloaks with animal-skin leggings and boots, their massive heads almost completely covered by matted hair and beards. One hunter, with silver hair, stood taller than the others; he uttered a growl, and his band frisked their prey and relieved them of phasers, tricorders, packs, and communicator. McCoy and Kailyn remained motionless out of fear, Spock out of extreme caution; their hands were bound with leather thongs and they were roughly pushed along a trail through the trees -- heading away from the shuttle.
"I don't know what time it is," McCoy whispered to Spock, out of Kailyn's hearing. "But she's going to need a shot soon. Without it, she may not be alive in four days."
Spock stumbled as one of the hunters shoved him. "The same may be said for all of us, Dr. McCoy."
Chapter Eleven
Spock flexed his wrists, testing the strength and tightness of the woven leather rope binding them behind his back. The pain as the rope bit into his skin was merely distracting, not critical, but it made it clear that the bindings were there to stay.
He, McCoy, and Kailyn were tethered by short lengths of rope to a stout post in what seemed to be a village square, in the center of about two dozen animal-hide tents. The post was designed with deep notches through which the ropes were tied. Had no one been guarding them, Spock might have been able to free himself, but they were being watched by one hunter, the one with the wild silver hair and the girth of a giant redwood. No one in the village was small -- even the females were generally a head taller than Spock -- but this hunter was among the largest. Judging by the bows with which he was greeted by passersby, he appeared to be some sort of clan leader. 
The Galileo party had been leashed to the post over an hour ago, almost immediately after the hunters had brought them into the village. The ropes weren't long enough to permit them to sit, so they remained on their feet. Kailyn was tiring, and she leaned alternately on Spock and McCoy for support.
Activity in the square began to pick up. Crude wooden benches were dragged out of tents by perhaps a score of villagers, both male
and female, and vending stalls were set up. Some displayed furs and articles of clothing, others stone and wood tools, still others baskets of roots and berries, even vegetables and fruit that appeared to be garden-grown. Villagers not involved as sellers began to mill about the edge of the square. After several minutes, a wizened old male, skin hanging loose like an oversized coat on his rawboned frame, ambled to the center of the grassy marketplace. He had a drum cradled in the crook of one long arm, and he turned his wrinkled face up toward the clouds, mumbled a few words to himself, then beat the drum three times with his fist. At that signal, shoppers spread out and vendors began calling out repetitively, hawking their wares.
As the unlucky group from the Galileo watched, they realized that they were the only live goods on offer, and they did not seem to be in great demand. Villagers with other products clutched in their arms and draped over their backs seemed to be giving the silver-haired hunter a wide berth. When a male and female finally wandered too close, he leaped from his tree-stump seat and accosted them with the zeal of a born salesman, chattering in a guttural language that was completely alien to Spock, who listened closely.
The customers were obviously reluctant, and they tried to edge away, as the female tugged at the male's hairy shoulder. But the hunter would not be denied his full pitch, and he clamped a vise grip on the male's wrist. With his other hand, the big hunter scooped up a fair-sized tree branch, almost a log, though in his grasp it looked more like a twig. He dragged the couple closer to the merchandise, and he prodded McCoy with the end of the branch, poking him in the side. The doctor tried to twist away, and his motions seemed to delight the hunter, brightening his face as he spoke ever more excitedly. But the customers remained unimpressed.
The hunter swung the branch over Kailyn's head and stabbed
Spock in the ribs. The Vulcan winced momentarily but braced himself and stood stock-still. The hunter did a double-take and glared at Spock. He prodded him again, and his eyes flashed in anger when the captive refuse to budge. With a growl, he raised the branch and cracked it like a whip across Spock's shoulder. Spock closed his eyes, moved his shoulder just a jot -- and the tree limb splintered with a sound like a rifle shot. The broken piece flew off end over end, and the hunter stared in disbelief at the stump left in his white-knuckled fist. The male and female stood back in wide-eyed awe, then realized this was their chance to escape and scuttled quickly to the next stall.
The silver-haired hunter cast a rumbling sneer at his human livestock, shrugged, and tossed the last bit of tree branch off into the brush. Then he resumed his seat on the tree stump.
"How did you do that?" said McCoy in a whisper.
"Temporary suspension of pain input, and a simple exercise of muscle control," Spock answered quietly.
"Could I learn that?"
"I doubt you could sustain your interest over ten years of Vulcan Kai'tan classes, Doctor."
"Probably right. Anyway, its not all that often that someone tries to break a tree over my shoulder."
McCoy peeked back at the hunter, whose anger at losing a sale had subsided. "I don't know if I should be happy or sad that no one seems to want to buy us."
A dirty band of children had been making its round of the marketplace. The hunter took notice as they approached his captives, but only his eyes moved. They ventured closer, these squat miniatures of the village adults, clothed in hide britches. But they stayed carefully out of reach of the small hairless creatures tied up for barter
barter. Even the youngest children had hair on their faces, though less than the adults, and less again on the young females. They stared at the naked-faced ones with eyes narrowed in suspicion -- what if the strange ones kicked or spat, or even bit?
One female, as tall as Spock, waited until the hunter's attention had wandered back to seeking out potential buyers, then reached out a fuzzy hand and pinched Kailyn, who yelped. The big hunter sprang to his feet with a roar that sent the young ones scattering like buckshot. Arms crossed over his barrel chest, he gave the merchandise a look, then turned back to his tree stump.
"Isn't that nice," McCoy said in a low voice. "He doesn't want us bruised."
Suddenly, Kailyn slumped and Spock tried to catch her on his hip. The ropes tying them to the post were too short to allow her to fall to the ground, and she dangled, semiconscious.
"She's having a reaction, Spock. She needs a shot of holulin." McCoy peered into her half-shut eyes. "We've got to have that drug." 
Spock turned a rapid look toward the hunter. "Even if he could understand us, he does not seem disposed toward treating us any more kindly than he is at present."
"We're his stock. If one of us dies, that's less he'll get for having captured and kept us. He's got to understand that."
Spock nodded. "They do seem to have a clear comprehension of the rules of the marketplace. In fact, it is quite fascinating to observe such a clearly defined though rudimentary capitalistic system in a -- "
"Forget the economics lecture, Spock." McCoy swallowed and faced the huge hunter, without the slightest notion of what to say. He spoke the first words that popped into his head. "Hey, sir . . ."
Spock gave him an arched eyebrow. "Sir?"
"Well" -- McCoy shrugged -- "it couldn't hurt to be polite."
"I hardly think he'd notice the difference."
But the hunter did notice the attempt at communication. He stirred, raised himself to his full height, and came over to his prisoners, looking more curious than angry.
McCoy felt his heart racing, and figured an extra shot of adrenaline was just what he needed to get him to continue talking to this mountain of a humanoid looming over him.
"She's sick. The female . . ." He pointed at Kailyn's limp body slung against the post. "She's ill." He let his own head slump onto one shoulder in a mock faint, but was sure he wasn't getting through.
The hunter furrowed his brow, leaned over, and picked up Kailyn's head by the chin. He let it go and it fell back onto her chest; he seemed to understand that something was amiss, and he called to a younger, brown-haired male passing by. He was almost a head shorter than the silver-haired hunter, but with his dark mane and beard, and shoulders as broad as a mountain, he resembled a great bear on its hind legs. And he carried a spear.
"A metal-tipped spear, Doctor," Spock noted.
"So what?"
"That means these tribesmen have had some kind of contact with a more advanced culture."
Discussion was cut short by a growl from the old hunter, and the bear pointed his spear menacingly at the captives while the hunter released the leather thongs from their notched post. He held them securely and shook them like reins to get the prisoners moving. The spear carrier brought up the rear, keeping his eye and weapon trained on them as they moved toward an unoccupied tent. Spock
glanced at the sky -- night was coming, and the wind that had settled down to a breeze was whipping up again, making the tents flap in a percussion chorus.
The hunter led them into the tent; there was an overpowering stench inside and McCoy almost tried to back out -- the glinting tip of the spear convinced him otherwise. The old hunter reached down into a dark corner, picked up a small animal carcass and tossed it out, his only comment a grumbling syllable that could have been an oath. The spear carrier kept up the guard as the hunter exited and came back a few moments later with a heavy stone-headed sledgehammer and three horseshoe-shaped posts, larger in diameter than a man's fist. Somehow, the wood had been soaked and curved, the ends sharpened into ground-penetrating stakes. The hunter hammered each one into the soil, then tied his captives securely to them. Once again, Spock, McCoy, and Kailyn were shackled, though at least this time they were bound in a sitting position. The hunter and spearman stepped out, then ducked back in long enough to toss several fur blankets onto the prisoners. The hunter's head drooped onto his shoulder, imitating McCoy's fainting demonstration, and he and his spear-carrying friend left amid growls of something like laughter.
Very little light came in through the slit in the tent flaps, and they shifted their bodies around, trying to arrange the blankets in a fashion that provided both warmth and a little padding atop the hard ground. McCoy shook his head.
"I feel like such a jackass, thinking they'd understand."
"You tried, Doctor."
With his legs, McCoy managed to get Kailyn propped in a more comfortable position, using the curved post as a backrest. Spock offered some help, and together they succeeded. McCoy cocked his ear and listened to Kailyn's breathing; it was becoming labored, with
a bronchial rasp. Her eyes were almost closed, and she looked at McCoy helplessly.

*  *  *

"Spock . . . are you awake?"
"Yes, Doctor."
It was almost completely dark in the tent now. Spock estimated that they'd been there almost five hours, and what sun there had been had long since set. They could barely make out shapes in the chilly dimness, and they could hear that Kailyn was asleep.
"That's good," McCoy said quietly. "At least she's conserving what strength she has left, and the cytotic reaction progresses more slowly if metabolism is slower."
"Then your endeavor to communicate with our captors did indeed accomplish something. We might not have been moved in here had you not attracted the hunter's attention."
McCoy appreciated Spock's attempt at reassuring him, but decided to change the subject. "What was it you started to say about that spear this afternoon?"
"Just that it was steel-tipped, and indicated some contact with a culture more technologically advanced."
"It might just mean they killed some hunters from another tribe and looted the bodies."
"Perhaps. But commerce seems to play an important role here, so it could indicate that they trade with others who live in this region. Since we have seen no means of locomotion other than footpower, it may also mean a more advanced settlement is not far away."
"If it's within walking distance for our friends here, it'd be within walking distance for us."
"Precisely."
"At the moment, however," McCoy said glumly, "something is keeping us from walking."
"Be patient, Doctor. I am presently working on that problem."

The silver-haired hunter was in a foul mood as he shoved the overcooked leg of a small animal into his seasoning pouch, containing gravy made from a spicy root. With one ravenous bite, he stripped the leg of its meat, and the gravy dribbled down his beard. He looked at the gray-brown bone, angry that it contained so little to eat, and tossed it over his shoulder.
In the rest of the torchlit dining tent, villagers ate and talked, mostly in groups; but the hunter ate alone. He had been certain someone would barter for the three creatures his clan party had found in the river forest. The two males could probably work, especially the mysterious-looking one with the pointed ears -- the one that had miraculously showed no pain when clubbed with the tree limb. How could such small, frail things have such strength?

McCoy peered into the darkness, trying to make out just what Spock was doing, as the Vulcan raised himself up and sat on the crosspiece of the post he was tied to. From that position, he was able to hook his fingers around it, and he tightened his grip, though the rough wood drove splinters into his skin. For a few minutes, Spock simply rocked back and forth against the post, shifting his weight from back to front, then side to side.
"What are you doing?" asked McCoy. "You don't actually think you're going to pull that out of the ground. You saw the way he pounded that hammer."
"I am not questioning the skill with which our captor wielded his
hammer, Doctor. But strength and skill must yield in turn to physical laws."
Spock paused, sat back on the ground, and placed his feet on the crook of the post, puzzling McCoy even further.
"Are you trying to break the wood?"
"What's going on?" said a sleepy new voice in the darkness. It was Kailyn. McCoy's attention shifted from Spock to her.
"How do you feel?"
"Hmmm? Tired . . . weak . . . I guess. What's going on?" 
McCoy shrugged, then realized she probably couldn't see him clearly enough. "I'm not sure."
Spock continued thrusting against the wooden post with his legs, alternately pushing and kicking quietly, his boot heels making a slapping noise against the wood.
"It'll never break, Spock."
"That is not my intention."
"Then what is?"
"Whatever went in must come out, given sufficient time and application of force. In addition, this ground is cold. Cold has a consistent effect on many materials, making them contract, and these stakes have been in the ground for several hours now. The chilling effect of the surrounding soil may be sufficient to have reduced the diameter of the wood -- "
"And loosened up the posts," McCoy finished. "Theoretically."
"Theories must be tested."

The hunter desperately wanted a sharp, metal-tipped spear, like the one his friend had gotten in trade with the mountain herders. Were not three naked-faces worth one shiny-tipped spear? He savagely bit a bone in two, and immediately regretted his fury -- the
bone had cut his cheek. He spat out the fragments along with a mouthful of his own blood.
The tiny female, though small as a child, might be able to tend gardens or pick berries. He growled to himself and cursed the wind gods for his bad luck. It wasn't often that live creatures were captured and brought back for sale. None in the past year. Perhaps it had been so long that his neighbors had forgotten how good it was to have a slave, if only for trading with other tribes and villages. Meanwhile, he had himself three slaves for which he had no use. He would have to feed them, if he ever hoped to sell them, but he barely had enough food for himself, his mate, and their two young ones. The slaves were so small and thin, they probably contained little good meat, but little was better than none. If no one bought them tomorrow, he would have to kill them for food.

Spock shifted to his knees and gripped the post; hands still behind his back, he began working it carefully from side to side. Slowly, ever so slowly, he felt movement -- not imagined, but quite real. The lateral jiggling gave way to an infinitesimal yielding upward. He rested, tensed the muscles and tendons in his wrists, arms, and shoulders, and locked his raw fingers around the wood again. He breathed deeply. McCoy and Kailyn were silent, as if their concentration might augment Spock's strength. He coaxed the posts in tiny circular motions, rubbing them against the holes in which the stakes were so snugly contained. Tentatively, he switched the motion, testing, then applied every muscle fiber and ripped upward. He felt the strain, grimaced, and grunted involuntarily. The wood groaned, creaked, and suddenly broke free. Spock lurched forward, falling on his side. He rolled over and stood, holding the post in his hands.
But those hands were still tied behind him.
"Now what?" asked McCoy.
"A moment, Doctor."
Spock bent over, slid his hands below his buttocks, and steadied himself. One foot at a time, he stepped over behind his hands. When he straightened again, his hands rested just where he wanted them -- in front -- and he soon had the complex knot untied.
"That's much more workable. Now, to the business at hand," Spock said, flexing his fingers to restore circulation.
"Was that a pun, Spock?"
"I don't believe so," said the Vulcan as he bent over Kailyn's restraining post.

The hunter looked up to see his bearlike friend, two shiny-tipped spears in his hands! So -- he'd traded for another, and now he wanted to look at the naked-faced ones again. Maybe they could work out an agreement in the darkness. The old hunter forgot his anger, for nothing made him happier than the chance to trade. Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed a sackful of roasted legbones to feed the slaves, and he and the spearman left the tent with a torch.
When they came outside, they pushed their cloaks up around their faces, for the wind gods were blowing frigid air down from the mountains this night. The torch flickered, but stayed lit in its shield. There was a warning moisture in the air and they hurried to the storage tent. The hunter threw open the flaps and stuck the torch in ahead of him. He let out a roar of rage -- the naked-faces were gone. But his friend calmed him -- no need to search tonight. There was a storm coming. They would look in the morning light and most certainly find the escaped slaves. Oh, they would be dead, but at least they could be cooked the next night for the tent meal. The silver
haired hunter might not get his spear, but supplying food for the village would get him credit in the marketplace.

Sigma 1212 had a moon -- two, in fact -- and the same stars that shone on other worlds twinkled in the sky here. But the perpetual cloud cover effectively blocked all celestial light, and Spock, McCoy, and Kailyn were forced to make their way through the frigid woodland in pitch-blackness. The wind blew steadily now, bending smaller trees and twisting limbs on larger ones. The whistle of the wind and moaning branches completely covered any noise made by three cold people fleeing along the overgrown trail. 
If they were being followed, their trackers were not close. Spock was fairly certain of that, but of greater concern was finding shelter. Daybreak was too many hours away; there was no precipitation yet, but the chilled air hung heavy, laden with moisture waiting to fall. And Kailyn had to be half-carried by the two men. She was wrapped in a fur blanket stolen from their prison tent.
The search for a haven was imperative, and led them away from the one route they knew -- the path along the river that would lead back to the shuttlecraft wreck.
"The three of us will not make it," Spock said.
They rested in the lee of a massive tree trunk crooked over the path after years of trying to grow straight against the ceaseless push of the wind.
"But the Galileo isn't that far," McCoy said, hunching over Kailyn to shield her with the warmth of his body. "It only took a couple of hours when they caught us and took us to the village."
"But we had already strayed some distance from the ship, and the hunting party had the distinct advantage of knowing the shortest route between destinations. We do not."
"What do you suggest? We can't spend the night out here in the open. It's either that or pushing on back to the ship."
"Negative. I recall some hills nearby when we were attempting to land."
"I thought you were busy with the controls, not looking at scenery."
"At the time, the hills were an obstruction, not scenery," Spock said stiffly, "and I noticed them while avoiding hitting them." 
"Oh . . . sorry."
"At any rate, they were some distance away from the river, but they may offer shelter in the form of caves. That would seem our best choice at this time."
McCoy and Spock lifted Kailyn again. She was conscious, but unable to walk without help. "It's a good thing you're light, young lady," McCoy said.
She smiled weakly -- then felt a droplet on her cheek. "Raining," she whispered.
McCoy and Spock began walking as briskly as they could. 
The forest began to thin out, and the trees no longer acted as a protective screen. But neither did they block the path with low-hanging branches, and the trio managed a quicker pace. The hills were as Spock remembered them -- rocky, covered with a sparse coat of flaxen grass that clung in the face of the omnipresent wind, the force of nature before which all life on Sigma seemed to bow.

The cave's opening was a crevice in the rock face of a low cliff. Without a light or weapon, McCoy had infinite misgivings about entering, even though Spock would go in first. Getting attacked by a creature in its lair would not help matters in the least, and McCoy toyed with discarding the whole idea. Outside, at least, the elements
were the only things that could do them in. Inside? An active imagination could conjure up an endless array of fates he would prefer not to meet even in daylight, much less in the confines of a dark burrow.
"What if it's only two feet high in there?" asked McCoy through chattering teeth. He wasn't sure if the chattering was caused by cold or fear. The occasional raindrop had become a swirling mist during their search.
"Since sounds echo inside, Doctor, it is quite likely larger than you suggest."
"Then something probably lives in there. If it has large teeth, I don't want to be an unwelcome guest."
"We shall announce our presence first." Spock kicked up a large stone near his foot and tossed it through the cave opening. It clattered along a wall and rolled to a stop.
McCoy held Kailyn tighter; she was barely awake and her head rested limply on his shoulder. Spock kept one ear cocked into the cave, while McCoy found himself holding his breath. No other sounds came out. They waited. Spock threw another rock. Another clatter. And more silence from inside.
Spock looked at McCoy. "It would appear to be uninhabited."
McCoy swallowed. "Either that, or some very annoyed animal is just waiting to sink its teeth into whatever threw those rocks."
"Wait here. I shall be out momentarily."
"I hope so," McCoy muttered.
Spock hefted a sturdy branch as a club, crouched, and disappeared into the cave mouth. McCoy listened, reassuring himself that as long as he heard muffled footfalls and the tapping of the stick, everything was just fine. But he braced himself for the sudden
shriek or roar of an enraged beast. There goes that imagination again. . . .
It seemed like hours, but Spock emerged about three minutes later. "I do not expect you to enjoy the night in there, Doctor, but it does seem to be safe."
Once again, Spock bent low and led the way in. Very reluctantly, McCoy followed, making certain Kailyn didn't crack her head on any rock outcroppings. He tried to open his eyes to look around the cavern -- and then realized they'd been open all along. He couldn't see a thing.
"My god," he whispered, "this must be what it's like to be blind."
"There is a nearly complete absence of light here," Spock said, more by way of information than agreement.
"Then how do you know there's nothing lurking in the corners?"
"I traced the entire perimeter with the stick. In addition, my senses are somewhat more acute than your own -- I saw and heard nothing. And this cave is but a small chamber, with no other openings."
"Are you sure?"
"Reasonably."
McCoy clicked his tongue nervously. "You could've said you were absolutely sure."
"That would have been untrue."
"You could've humored me."
"Enough discussion, Doctor. I shall go back to the ship now and bring back Kailyn's drug and other essential supplies."
McCoy reached out and clamped his hand on Spock's arm. "You're kidding, right?"
"No."
"I never said anything about staying in this cave alone." McCoy made no effort to hide his fear.
"You are not alone -- you are with Kailyn. She needs you as much as she needs the drug. You will be relatively safe here. Meanwhile, I will be able to get our supplies much more rapidly alone." There was genuine concern in Spock's voice, and McCoy sensed it. It calmed him -- a little. 
"I guess I'm supposed to be logical here, huh?"
"That would be a welcome change of pace."
McCoy smiled in spite of his very real anxiety, and he was momentarily thankful for the darkness -- perhaps Spock hadn't seen the grin, and he wiped it away quickly.
"Well? What are you waiting for -- daylight? Get going, Spock." McCoy felt the stick being pressed into his hand; he suddenly realized he was still holding Spock's arm, and he let go.
"Get some rest, Doctor."
"Fat chance."
"Then keep an eye on the cave entry."
"And if I see anything come in that doesn't have pointed ears, I'll clobber it with this," McCoy said, grasping the stick.
"The animals here may have pointed ears."
"Not like yours." McCoy wiped his palms -- despite the cold, he was sweating. "Be careful. And don't be late." There was a shadow across the faint bar of light coming in the opening -- McCoy thanked the stars there was that much relief from the blackness. "If you think we're going to wait all night for you to get back, you've got another thing coming. Spock . . ." But he knew Spock was gone.
McCoy busied himself with making Kailyn as comfortable as possible. As he started to fold the blanket into a sleeping cocoon for her, he realized that their bodies were the only available source of heat;
also, the closer they were, the more readily he could detect any changes in her condition. He found a waist-high boulder in the middle of the cave -- by smacking into it with his knee -- and decided to use it as a backrest. He propped Kailyn against the boulder, with one fold of the fur blanket as a ground cover, then slid down next to her. The rest of the blanket neatly covered both of them, and he put his arms around her, leaning her head on his chest.
"If only this was someplace else," he murmured with a sigh. 'Well, I can't be that old if I can still get a pretty girl to go camping with me."
He smiled to himself as he recalled the days of courting young girls when he'd been young himself, and the stories his Granddad and Great-Granddad used to tell of their own romantic exploits. Oh, there'd been all manner of social upheavals and sexual revolutions and trends that came and went. But the feelings between a boy and a girl hadn't changed that much over time, even over centuries. In the Georgia hills, the old customs held their ground.
McCoy had met his wife at a square dance the summer after his first year in medical school. They'd walked down the road that led away from the old Simpson barn, on the dust and gravel still warm from a day filled with sultry July sunshine. By the time they'd reached the cool sweet air of the woods and sat on the bed of pine needles and kissed, he'd suspected he might be in love. Across the hills, they'd watched the freighters and shuttles lift off, headed out to orbital stations around the globe -- that had been their excuse for the walk, that and getting away from the noise and bustle of the dance -- but the launches weren't all that frequent, and they'd had lots of time to chat and spark.
There was a great old word -- sparkin'. He sighed again, and
remembered where he was now. What's it all worth in the end, anyway?
He looked down at Kailyn, who snored gently. He could just make out the profile of her face, silhouetted against the inky gray of the cave opening. He kissed her forehead, his lips barely brushing her skin.
Then he heard a howl outside, and a scuffling noise over the rocks. His hand tensed on the stick, but he did not move
Chapter Twelve
There was no escaping the rain and sleet that pelted down through the trees as Spock made his way back to the stream. The wind had escalated to gale force, with gusts bending supple tree trunks double; branches were transformed into lethal whips, lashing at anything in their path.
Spock's face and hands were already cut, and the thermal jumpsuit layered on top of his uniform had been slashed as well, letting the rain seep through. He was soaked to the skin. But following the stream trail was his only sure way of finding the shuttle, so he pressed on, protecting his face as best he could.
They had first come upon the stream less than sixteen hours ago, though it seemed like days. It had been a brook then, burbling through the overhanging forest. Saplings had crept their roots toward the water's edge to drink. But the saplings and the banks sloping up into the woods were gone now, submerged under torrents of white water. The gully, where Spock had knelt to examine rills in the cold soil, was completely filled by the surging current. Even the forest floor where he walked was drenched. Puddles were linked by rivulets, and the nearly frozen ground could drink up little of the flood. The footing was treacherous, and it was all Spock could do to keep from falling. He moved to the edge of the woods, walking just above the river's rushing waters. Spray kicked up to
mix with the wind-driven rain, and freezing drops swirled all around, burning his eyes.
He didn't see the rock -- it was hidden by an ankle-deep pool. But his right boot found it. His heel hit the rock and skidded. By sheer reflex, he grabbed a slender tree trunk on his left as his body fell in the opposite direction. Momentum threw his full weight down toward the river, but his left hand held tight. The tree bent, snapped, but didn't break. The pain in his shoulder almost made him cry out; somehow, he clung to the tree and the roiling waters hissed past him, seemingly in anger at having a sure victim snatched away.
Slowly, holding the tree for support, he got to his feet. His left arm dangled at his side for the moment, and the numbness there was punctuated by a sharp, recurrent twinge. He couldn't decide whether serious damage had been done, but for now he would rely solely on his right. With careful steps, he moved on through the forest.

The howl had only been the wind, and McCoy let himself doze on and off. Even on this wild planet, he had to guess that nature had endowed its creatures with a sense of survival that would keep them all safe in deep, dry places on such a night. It was unlikely they'd have hostile visitors, for only a thing with a penchant for suicide would wander out in this storm. Suicide -- or desperation. He could only pray that in Spock's case the second would not become synonymous with the first.
McCoy's eyelids were fighting to close, but he refused to accept sleep at this moment, though he wasn't sure why.
Sure I know why . . . I don't want to wake up dead.
"That's stupid," he whispered to himself. "You wouldn't wake up
at all. Good grief, I'm talking to myself. . . ."
Dead. Never really got used to death. 
Lightning crackled outside, flickering through the cave opening with a ghostly glow. Seconds passed, and the delayed thunderclap rumbled over the hillside.
He'd wondered all through medical school whether facing death would ever grow easier. Oh, in some ways it had. After his first clinical encounter with a cadaver, McCoy hadn't quite made it to the sink before he'd vomited the eggs and muffins he'd had for breakfast. In the years since, especially out in space aboard the Enterprise, he'd dirtied his hands with more than a score of gruesome deaths, examining crewmen for whom the mysteries of space had included mysterious ways to die. He didn't throw up anymore. Not even the slightest urge. He didn't know if that lack of reaction was good or bad, but it made life a hell of a lot easier -- and neater.
Autopsies, deciding cause of death, filling out those damnable death certificates. It had all become routine. It was almost as if the end of a life wasn't final or real until recorded in a data bank somewhere, placed in a computer for easy recall. Modern man's contribution to the funeral rites.
The years had made other people's deaths a shade more acceptable, if only to protect his sanity. But his own demise  -- that was quite another matter.
A harsh question drove itself relentlessly into his thoughts: would he and Kailyn ever see Spock alive again?
Finally, McCoy's eyelids closed, and he drifted into a netherworld of fitful sleep. . . .

. . . Fog hovered everywhere, a spectral veil, shifting with the winds but never dissolving. It hung thickly over the cave opening as Spock
approached. The science officer moved slowly, his feet seeming not to touch the ground. Anguish contorted his face as he struggled to reach the cave, arms flailing, slicing the fog as if swimming through it. He floated down, into the cave, and saw two bodies ripped and shredded beyond recognition. From the bottom of a reservoir of suppressed emotions, the hidden fears and dark corners of his Vulcan life, Spock screamed with an agony that went deeper than the soul . . . then he turned and saw the fang gleaming in the darkness. The creature sprang . . . 

. . . and McCoy stumbled out of the forest, clothing tattered, skin raw and torn, a growth of stubble on his chin. He was alone. In the clearing before him, the shattered wreck of the Galileo sat, burning. And though he couldn't see them clearly, he knew that the bodies of Spock and Kailyn were in the flames as well. They were dead, and this was their pyre. . . . 

. . . Sweating, McCoy wrenched his eyes open with a suddenness that hurt. He shook his head to wipe out the flaming image that had just seemed so real he could feel its heat. He was breathing as if he'd sprinted a mile, and he estimated his racing pulse at over a hundred. But he was still in the cave, and the only warmth was Kailyn curled next to him.
So, fears of death could still produce nightmares. He held Kailyn close and stared into the darkness.

The shuttlecraft had been cruelly treated by the wind. Not only had the atmospheric maelstrom caused it to crash, but the nighttime gales refused to let it rest in peace. The ship had been tossed like a toy from the rocky perch where it had landed, and it had rolled over
an embankment; now, it was almost belly-up, with the door angled down toward the soaked ground. 
Spock stood, hands on hips, surveying the hulk. He crawled under he nose, then slithered snakelike through the cold surface mud. Mud. That meant the ground had thawed slightly. Was the air temperature rising? Encased in his wet clothing, Spock couldn't judge.
The shuttle door had been torn open by a boulder, and Spock lifted himself up into the cabin. His eyes made a slight adjustment, and he scanned for things they would need for survival. Only one system still functioned on board -- the sealed emergency beacon. He found the medical pouch lodged against the command seat. Spare communicators had been smashed, but the weapons cabinet in the bulkhead was intact and he took four phasers out. Food concentrates. Two hand-sized electro-lanterns. A spare tricorder. Maps of Sigma. A tent packed in a pocket-size pouch. Laser flares.
Spock sealed the supplies in an unbreachable pack and hoisted it over his good shoulder. The injured left one felt slightly improved; at least it was mobile again, though he was sure a thorough exam would find something wrong. That, however, was a luxury that would have to wait.
He glanced quickly around, decided he'd taken everything that might be of use, then lowered himself through the hatchway and slid out from under the Galileo on his back. The precipitation, more sleet and freezing rain than liquid now, cut into his face like needles, forcing his eyes shut for a second. He set his mouth in a grim line and ran for the woods, splashing across the flooded clearing.

Spock tried to drive all extraneous thoughts from his mind, saving his concentration for placing one foot ahead of the other as
safely and quickly as possible. Anxieties flashed by as single-frame images before they could be quashed by Vulcan self-discipline: McCoy fending off beasts seeking the shelter of the cave . . . Kailyn slowly dying without her holulin injection . . . the Enterprise doing battle with Klingon ships determined to undermine this mission.
Vulcans do not worry, he assured himself. We accept what we must. We do what we must, logically. 
He reached the densest part of the forest, and it became apparent that the trail was nearly impassable. Fallen tree limbs, some the size of logs and too heavy to move, crisscrossed the path like barbed-wire barriers. A jagged pair of blue-white lightning streaks split the northern sky and found their mark some distance away. Spock decided to cut through toward the river -- he had to quicken his pace.
The storm had lasted almost all night long, and showed no signs of blowing itself out. The fury of the sky and clouds powered the river to new heights, and the frenzied water pounded its banks without letup. Stones that had marked high water on Spock's last pass had long since gone under. Oceanlike waves swept high and crashed into the trees just ahead of him, and he braced himself and waited. The surge passed and he took a step. The ground gave way beneath him and a ton of earth and rock tumbled into the river with him. The wave dipped low, poised like a beast about to attack, then cascaded over him. He swallowed a mouthful of muddy water, tried to hold his breath, then felt a tug downstream. The equipment pouch was still snagged on his shoulder, and the air sealed inside made it buoyant.
He tried to slip it under his chest, giving him the best chance to keep his head above water and push himself away from rocks jutting into the river's path. But the ride was too rough for maneuvering
maneuvering, and he simply held tight to the pack straps as the current dragged him downstream, away from the direction of the cave, where McCoy and Kailyn waited -- and toward the brink of a towering waterfall.
Chapter Thirteen
The silver-haired hunter had not enjoyed his morning meal. The inside of his cheek was raw where he had cut it the night before, and he was angered by having to get up before dawn to seek the bodies of the escaped slaves. And if by some miracle of the wind gods they were not dead, he would surely kill them with his bare hands for all the trouble they had caused him. How much more he would enjoy running them through with a shiny-tipped spear; but he couldn't get one unless he had something to trade, and right now, the slaves were his only goods . . . or had been. Therefore, if he did find them living this dawn, he would not be able to kill them after all. He growled.
His bearlike friend squatted on the forest trail. The rain had stopped, and the wind was beginning to dry out the ground. Preserved in the hardening mud were three sets of clearly etched footprints. The big hunter glowered as he looked down at the tracks; he had an urge to smile, but that would only have ruined his terrible mood.
The tracks continued. The naked-faced ones had gone toward the hills, and so did the two hunters.

McCoy rubbed his eyes and convinced them to focus. The cave was still dark, but a shaft of light edged through the entryway. It
was morning, though certainly not bright out. Kailyn slept almost silently, still nestled in the crook of his arm. His hand tingled; the arm was asleep.
He tried to shift the elbow without disturbing Kailyn. It didn't work. The moment her neck moved, her eyes opened, blinking groggily. 
Spock still had not returned.
"Where are we?" asked Kailyn in a hoarse whisper.
"In a cave."
"I guessed that," she said as she stretched.
"Do you remember last night?"
"Not really. I had a dream about going through a forest in the rain. I was wet . . . and cold. I guess it was more like a nightmare than a dream."
"It wasn't either one. It was real. Spock went back to the ship to get your holulin and some other supplies, and he's not back. I'm worried."
He stood up and started for the cave opening. He heard a pebble roll down the rocky face of the hillside, and he froze. Was it the wind? A wild animal? Then he heard voices, speaking the rumbling, guttural words of the villagers who had captured them. Noiselessly, he reached down and grabbed the stick.
"What is -- ?"
"Shhh . . ." McCoy tiptoed to the side of the doorway and pressed his back to the cave wall. He held the stick head-high, poised like a gun trigger. He motioned for Kailyn to join him. She left the blanket and scuttled over to huddle behind him.
"At least I can belt one of them if they try to come in here," he whispered.
McCoy held his breath and waited. The soft steps of the hunter's
boots were barely discernible, betrayed only by an occasional scuff of leather on sand and rock. But they moved closer, no longer accompanied by voices. A shadow cast itself across the cave floor, covering the morning light that shone in dimly. The shadow paused and the scuffing ceased. McCoy could hear his own heartbeat, feel it from his knees to his throat. Kailyn stood frozen next to him, anchored to the floor.
A whining phaser beam suddenly sliced the stillness, the shadows fell away from the cave entrance, and McCoy and Kailyn gasped together as they heard a sound like two filled sacks thumping onto the hard ground. But they didn't move until Spock's head poked into the cave. His face was dirty and bloody, but at the moment, McCoy decided it was good enough for him.

"It sounds to me like we owe our lives to two well placed trees, Mr. Spock."
"How so, Doctor?"
"Without them, you probably would've drowned twice." 
"My reflexes and ability to remain in control under stress played some small part."
"Sure they did," said McCoy as he dabbed at a cut on Spock's forehead. "In a pig's eye."
Spock raised an indignant eyebrow. "I could hardly have predicted that the bank would collapse the moment I stepped -- "
"If that tree trunk hadn't been skewered between two rocks, you'd have gone over the falls, Spock."
"But I had to have the presence of mind to grab it, Doctor."
"Poppycock. It sounds to me like it practically hit you on the head." Without skipping a beat, he turned to Kailyn. "And how are you feeling, young lady?"
She was resting on the cave floor, curled in the blanket, one of the electro-lanterns near her. "Much better."
"Nothing like a little holulin injection and food to put the bloom back in those cheeks."
Spock sat cross-legged and went through a series of isometric exercises. He was bruised, but entirely functional. The heat of the nearby lantern had dried out his clothing and he felt more comfortable. "Considering the obstacles that have confronted us so far, I would say our condition is satisfactory at present."
"We're all alive and in one piece," McCoy admitted, "but we're also low on supplies, we've got two unconscious cavemen" -- he gestured at the hunters tied up and lying in the corner -- "who'd love to kill us, we don't know where we are, and we don't know where we're going. I'd hate to see what you call unsatisfactory."
Spock pulled a pair of plastic-coated maps out of the supply pouch. McCoy knelt next to him.
"I believe we are closer to our intended destination than we had originally thought," Spock said. He pointed out several features on the charts, which had been drawn up combining space survey records with details recounted by King Stevvin. "We may be within one day's walk of the mountains." 
Spock watched McCoy mull over that possibility, then raised one eyebrow. "You have an opinion, Doctor?"
"Well, we can't stay here. That's for sure," he said, glancing back at the hunters.
"Is Kailyn strong enough to travel?"
"I am," she piped up.
McCoy glowered. "I'll make the medical judgments."
"It will be a strenuous journey," Spock said.
"I know, I know."
"We may not find shelter."
"Stop playing devil's advocate -- though the ears fit the part. Look, we have the thermo-tent, and it's big enough for the three of us. And if it turns out that we have to stop and camp out in the mountains, we'll be no worse off than we were down here last night. The sooner we get going, the better I'll feel."
Spock raised a questioning brow again.
"Why so surprised?" asked McCoy.
"I expected you to resist the idea of our traveling farther."
"If we had a choice, I would -- believe me. If we stay around the shuttle, we'll have to dodge our hairy friends. Oh, sure, the Enterprise might find us -- but I don't want to be found in pieces. Jim has the coordinates for that mountain stronghold where the Crown's supposed to be. If we can get there and find this Shirn O'tay person, Jim'll be able to track us down. You do think he'll look for us there, don't you?"
"It would be the logical thing to do, and the captain is quite logical, for a non-Vulcan. I should point out, however, that the mountains cover a considerable span of territory. It will not be an easy task to ascertain the Crown's exact placement."
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Spock. What about Vulcans?"
"Only logical expectations spring from ours, Doctor." 
"Is our getting rescued a logical expectation, Mr. Spock?" asked Kailyn.
The first officer fixed her with his usual impassive gaze. "Perhaps."
McCoy smiled to himself. Coming from Spock, that was practically an admission of hope. For now, it would be quite enough.
Chapter Fourteen
Nars hated being in a spaceship. He felt boxed in, controlled, like a lab animal. The starship's mazelike corridors increased the illusion, so he'd been staying in his quarters as much as possible. Boatrey had been sharing the two-room cabin with him, but the stable hand was now off eating with Eili and Dania. Nars was hungry, but he knew his stomach wouldn't keep a meal down, knotted as it had been since Captain Kirk told him they were going to Zenna Four.
As much as he disliked the confinement of the ship, the vast emptiness of space was far worse. Nars had always been a man who liked solid ground underneath his feet, with horizons farther off than the mere reach of his hand. He liked to know there were places he could go if he had to -- places to seek things out, places to escape things. It was a freedom that worked both ways. A vessel, however large, out in interplanetary space -- that was a combination that offered him no solace at all.
He jumped involuntarily when the call came through from the bridge -- the Enterprise was entering orbit around Zenna Four, and his presence was requested in the Transporter Room.

If there existed a common anxiety among good commanders, it was the fear of being out of command. Though experts weren't able to reliably pigeonhole people the way they could the properties of
biology and physics, command of people was still a science of sorts. At least, the approach had to be scientific and orderly -- control as many variables as possible, and command became that much simpler.
Nars was such a variable, and the moment he sparkled out of the transporter chamber, he was free of Kirk's grasp. That thought brought a furrow to Kirk's brow as he sat with Lieutenant Byrnes in the lounge, staring at a cup of tea. Transporter Chief Kyle informed them of the beam-down.
"Well, Byrnes," said Kirk, "it's up to you and Chekov." 
"Yes, sir." She left, and Kirk stirred the tea absently. Then he looked down at the cup. He stopped stirring, and the tea continued to circle the cup without his assistance. Control sure is hard to come by, he thought.

Nars swirled the sickly greenish drink around the tumbler in his hand. He looked up at the clock over the bar, then took a sip. It was the only watering place in town, but it was still too early in the afternoon for the local farmers and laborers and artisans to be drifting in. It was also too early for his meeting, but he was nervous, too nervous to drink any more. He left a coin on the counter and headed outside.
Treaton had only one main street, and it looked much as it had the last time Nars had walked it twenty-five years before. There had been little growth in any part of Zenna, none since the tridenite shortage began in the last decade. The government could have turned to other power sources in its effort to industrialize, but the Zennans were patient, loyal folk. They had struck a fair bargain with Shad's ore traders, and they would wait to see how the war ended. If the King's Loyalists won, tridenite would again be available
available. If the Mohd Alliance won, and tridenite remained embargoed, only then would Zenna seek out an alternative. Zennans avoided urgency; the future would always be there and they were in no hurry to overtake it.
The bird catches its prey, eats it,and it is gone, went a native proverb. And what then is left?
The same brightly painted, high-gabled houses that Nars remembered lined the street, and the residents wore gaily striped togas identical to the ones their parents had worn. Change was not an important process, and life as a whole was easy on Zenna Four. Here in Treaton, the seat of provincial government, strangers were hailed as neighbors by every citizen who passed by. Immigration statutes were as lax as any in the known galaxy, making outworlders like Nars quite commonplace.
It was rather easy to pick out a foreigner -- very few Zennans surpassed five feet in height, and skin colors ranged from pale pink to bright orange-red. Men uniformly shaved their heads, and women wore their hair in a single braid.
Just being in a Zennan town made Nars relax a bit -- the great tide of friendly greetings as he strolled toward the street's south end pushed worries to the back of his mind. But they rushed forth again as he approached the last house on the right. It was set back from the road, surrounded by tall, broad-limbed trees that screened its windows. Privacy was not highly valued on Zenna Four, but this house seemed built for it. Nars pushed open the plank gate and crossed the yard with its unkempt yellow grass. He rapped uncertainly on the door, and a moment later an old Zennan man swung it open. He wore a simple gray toga, indicating his position as house servant.
"May I help?" he asked in a high-pitched singsong.
"Is . . . is your master at home?"
"Yes, yes. Please enter."
Nars followed the little butler into a dark study. The butler then backed out, shutting the woven wicker doors. As Nars stood uncomfortably, a high-backed desk chair swiveled to face him and a skeletal man stood, with his hand extended out of the shadows.
"Welcome, Nars," he said. "It's been a long time between visits."
Nars took the welcoming hand, but didn't clasp it warmly. "A long time, Krail."
The man stepped into the halo cast by a wall lamp. He was a head taller than Nars, with dark skin stretched tautly over his aquiline face. His gray beard and hair were neatly trimmed, in marked contrast to his bushy, upswept eyebrows. Krail was a Klingon of unusually aristocratic bearing, and Nars felt very much the servant in his presence. He did not like the feeling.
Krail issued a pinched abbreviation of a smile and motioned to a hard-backed chair. As Nars glanced around, he noticed nothing suggesting softness or luxury in the entire room. The floor was bare wood, the windows cloaked by severely drawn drapes, and the furniture angular and uncushioned without exception.
"A drink, Nars?"
The Shaddan nodded curtly. Krail slid open a darkwood cabinet and took out a sharply sculptured crystal decanter. Smoothly, he poured two goblets of blood-red wine and handed one to his visitor.
"It is, of course, imported," said Krail with cold pride, "from my home world. We Klingons are more than merely great warriors." 
Krail's thin smile made Nars most uneasy. He wanted to get this over with as rapidly as possible and he carefully placed his cup on a table and stood. "We have business, Krail. Let it be done," he said, a shade more urgently than he'd intended.
Krail looked mildy disappointed as he pursed his lips and measured Nars with guarded gray eyes. "Is there a hurry?"
"My time with you is not unlimited. Let's leave it at that."
"Ah, yes," Krail said with studied sympathy. "You have the Enterprise to worry about. But I think by now you may be safe here, and we'll arrange passage to a Klingon planet, as we promised you. You will -- how shall I put it -- disappear before Kirk's eyes."
"That won't be necessary," Nars said quickly.
"Oh? Are you severing your dealings with us after -- how long has it been? -- eighteen years or more?"
The Klingon's tone was vaguely menacing and Nars felt cold sweat break out on his upper lip. All those years had made little difference -- he'd never learned to trust Klingons, no matter how much they paid for the information he smuggled to them. Krail's cold smile appeared again.
"Fine, fine. Many ships pass through Zenna. Whatever destination you choose is fine with us. You certainly won't want to remain among the rancid little rodents populating this planet."
Tolerance had never been a common trait among Klingons; Nars had noted that many years before, and it always put him on guard.
"Now, to your unexpected information," said Krail. "I must say I was very surprised to be told you were here and wanted to meet with me."
Nars swallowed and felt his neck bob. "The King of Shad is dead."
Krail had looked away, but he turned his head to stare sharply at the Shaddan informer, a rare departure from his usual calculated motions. "Indeed? So, this is unexpected information. The Federation has bungled more completely than we could have hoped. Even sabotage could never have been so effective." He began to pace, his
long legs striding, mantislike. "Yes, yes . . . this places our entire strategy in a new light. Our objectives can be simplified. All the long years of -- "
His words were cut off in mid-thought by a ruckus from the foyer. The butler squealed a loud "No entry!" protest; deeper voices and heavy footsteps flew toward Krail's study, and the wicker doors burst open a few seconds later. Two men and two women entered. They wore the simple hooded cloaks and fatigues of spacers from a hundred worlds -- but the weapons they held were readily identifiable. Federation phasers, pointed calmly at Krail and Nars.
The Klingon quickly regained his composure, and the thin smile showed itself again. "You would be considered guests in my home except that I do not take kindly to weaponry in the house."
"You be quiet and don't move," Lieutenant Byrnes said sternly. "Commander Krail, isn't it?"
Krail looked pleased at the recognition but said nothing. Chekov glanced at Byrnes. "You know who he is?"
"Sure do. He's been around for quite some time. Assassinated about twenty superiors to get where he is today -- on the Klingon Intelligence Council, one of the top four spies in the Empire. Which makes me wonder what he's doing out in the field, doing a quadrant commander's dirty work . . ."
"I don't know what you're referring to, uh . . . ?"
"Lieutenant Byrnes, commander . . . of the Enterprise."
"Ahh. I make this my home now. I enjoy this world, with its charming, friendly natives."
Nars shot him a surprised look -- from rancid rodents to charming natives in just a few moments. Truly a startling verbal metamorphosis. But Krail ignored the stare -- he was too busy dueling with the intruders.
"Nars can tell you I lived here, oh, almost twenty-five years ago, when he first came to Zenna. That's when we met."
Nars went pale. "I don't know what he's talking about, I -- "
Chekov cut the Shaddan off with a warning glare. "You wouldn't happen to be a stonemason in your spare time, would you, Commander?" 
"Why, no," Krail replied innocently.
"I didn't think so. Well, we not only get this cossack," said Chekov, nodding at Nars, "but we bring back a jackpot bonus, too."
Security Ensign Michael Howard, stocky and brighteyed, frisked Nars and drew an Enterprise communicator out of the frightened man's pocket. He cradled the device in one hand, touched a button on his tricorder, and smiled with satisfaction as the tricorder emitted loud rhythmic beeps. "I think I'll give him a reward . . . maybe replace a few worn chips and spruce him up for next time."
"It," said Chekov irritably. "It, not him. You sound like Mr. Scott, the way you talk about those devices of yours."
"Watch it, Chekov. Devices have feelings, too," Howard said defensively.
"Should we search the rest of the house?" asked the female guard, Maria Spyros.
Byrnes shook her head. "Krail may not work alone here. We got what we came for -- a whole lot more, in fact. Let's not stick around and get into trouble."
"My people will know I'm missing," Krail pointed out 
"True," said Chekov, "but they won't know what you and Nars know. Ready to beam up, everybody."
The landing party stepped into formation, with its prisoners in the center. Howard flipped open the rigged communicator. "Landing party to Enterprise. Standing by to beam up. Energize."
A moment later, they sparkled out of existence, leaving the astonished butler cowering alone.
The Enterprise warped out of orbit immediately, bound for Sigma 1212.

Nars broke easily. He was not, after all, a professional spy, and Kirk figured he'd carried his burden long enough. The once-proud servant was almost thankful for the chance to talk. He had indeed met Krail a quarter-century before, during his brief stay on Zenna as a staff member of the ore-trade mission. No deals were made then, and Nars had forgotten the episode -- until he fled to Orand with the King.
"Punishment in hell couldn't be worse than life on Orand," Nars whined. There were tears in his eyes and he stopped to wipe them. 
Kirk was a compassionate man; he'd once liked Nars, but he found it hard to feel sorry for him now. The captain had to force himself to hold his anger in check, and he let Byrnes conduct the interrogation.
"Go on," she said.
"We were all in despair those first months there. We talked of suicide, all of us taking our lives together. For us, our world had been stolen away from us and we feared we would never return home." Nars paused -- for effect, it seemed to Kirk. The Shaddan glanced at the faces of his listeners, hoping to see some melting in the detached hardness of their eyes. "Don't you understand?" he cried.
"I understand what you felt, but not what you did," Kirk said harshly.
"We thought we would die there," he blurted, rising out of his seat. A burly security guard pushed him back, gently but firmly.
"You all felt that way," Kirk said. "You were all afraid, but only you committed treason."
Nars covered his face. "I was the only one seduced by Krail and his promises and threats."
The Klingon had been a mid-level operative then, charged with subverting the Loyalist forces any way he could. Two months after the royal party had taken up residence in their Orandi country house, he had renewed his contact with Nars.
"He came to the compound with two peddlers."
"What was his offer?" asked Byrnes.
Nars mumbled his answer, ashamed. "Money."
Kirk felt his jaw and fists tighten. "How patriotic." 
"You weren't there," Nars said starkly. "We had nothing but four walls. That money let me buy pieces of a life. Not just for myself, but the others, too. I could buy books for the King, and for the Princess. For the Lady Meya, herbs and medicine when she fell sick. Small things for my staff, to make them less unhappy there."
"And what did you sell?" said Byrnes.
Nars snorted a hollow laugh, with a touch of hysteria woven into its texture. "What did I sell? Nothing . . . nothing. In all those years, I told them nothing of use to anyone. What did I have to tell them? Answer me, Captain Kirk. You were the one who sent us to hell. We rotted there for eighteen years. For all those years, we lived as the dead do, with nothing to mark one day different from the last or the next. What could I sell them?"
He leaped from his seat and clamped his hands on Kirk's shoulders, catching the guards off balance. Kirk shoved him down again, and the guards held him belatedly. No one spoke. Nars breathed hoarsely.
"For eighteen years, I told the Klingons about such important
state secrets as the Princess's birthdays, the King's despair and sickness, the death of Lady Meya," he whispered bitterly. "I had no military secrets. When I tried to stop, they threatened to harm the King and his daughter. They said they could kill them anytime they wanted, and no one would know or care. I did it to protect the family. There seemed no harm -- "
"Until you betrayed a sacred trust and told the Klingons about this mission," Kirk said in a voice of stone.
"What else did you do with your money? asked Byrnes, steering away from Captain Kirk's barely controlled rage.
Nars collapsed onto the table. "Nothing. I did nothing," he sobbed piteously.

"He purchased the favors of women," Krail said carefully. "To put it in delicate terms for you, Lieutenant Byrnes."
"I didn't know Klingons could be delicate," she said. "Don't stint on my account."
Krail had taken Nars's place in the interrogation cell. Kirk leaned against the wall, and the pair of guards stood just inside the force-field doorway.
"If you insist," said the Klingon. "Nars is not the most proper fellow he purports to be. It seemed that during his time on Orand, he'd developed quite a few private depredations, including something called pipeweed. I believe one smoked it. He could really get quite desperate if his supply ran out. I suppose you might say he was addicted."
"And how did he get this addiction?" asked Kirk. "Could you have introduced him to it?"
"Captain, I resent your attempt to link me to -- " 
Kirk cut him off with a fist on the tabletop. "I've had my fill of
you, Krail. Nars's fate is out of your hands. As for you, whether you cooperate or not, confess or keep silent, we have more than enough evidence to send you to a prison colony for the rest of your life."
"Not a very enlightened system, Captain."
"Lock him up," Kirk said abruptly. He gave the Klingon a glance of contempt and stalked out of the cell.

Star Fleet would have their spy -- with an extra big fish tossed in for good measure. I hope they're thrilled, Kirk thought as he made his way to the turbolift on the brig deck. Nars had turned out to be unworthy even of disgust, and one less Klingon spy, albeit an important one like Krail, would not make one whit of difference in the balance of power.
He stepped into the waiting lift. The doors hissed shut behind him and he turned the control handle. "Deck five."
What mattered now was whether they could get to Sigma 1212 in time. All the carefully planned strategy had degenerated into a race against the clock and the Klingons. At this point, Kirk knew he was powerless to do any more than hope that the rush to rescue the crew of the Galileo would not become a search for bodies.
The King's body reposed in the sick bay morgue, and there it would stay. There was no stone urn, no proper Shaddan cremation, no entry into the next life. Not yet. If Stevvin was to join his ancestors, he would be late. Kirk hoped the gods would understand, and forgive.
Chapter Fifteen
The Kinarr Mountains stood like sentinels daring travelers to pass. The lofty range, almost as old as the planet itself, held the Crown of Shad somewhere among its peaks. Had the Galileo been able to land at the coordinates laid out by the King, the search would have been short and direct. But as they climbed ever higher on trails spiraling narrowly through perpetual fog, McCoy was becoming convinced the quest was hopeless.
They stopped to rest in a cove etched into the mountainside by millennia of wind and water. For the moment, it protected them from the gusts that alternately tried to pin them to the inside wall of rock rising up from the trail, or blow them over the outside ledge. McCoy gave Kailyn an injection of holulin, then sat on the ground and leaned against a boulder.
"Spock, why are we doing this?"
"You know why, Doctor."
"Tell me again, 'cause right now, I have my doubts. Here we are climbing a mountain somewhere in the middle of a two-hundred-mile range -- "
"We know we are proceeding along the most logical course."
"We have no way of knowing if we're twenty feet or twenty miles away from that Crown."
With a shake of his head, McCoy gazed out across the Kinarr
Mountains; the tops of all but a few were lost in the dense clouds that hung over the whole region. Visibility was limited, but what he could see made McCoy distinctly unhappy.
"They all look the same," he moaned. "There aren't a whole lot of landmarks, Spock. We've been climbing since morning, four hours, and we don't know if we're getting closer or farther away. That makes it kind of hard to go on."
"What happened to all your optimism?" Kailyn wondered. 
"I left it a few miles down the trail."
"You accurately stated that we had little choice in our present course of action," Spock said patiently. "Debating it serves no purpose whatsoever."
"In my head, I know you're right. But my feet keep telling me you're wrong."
Kailyn stood. "The Enterprise will be back here in about two days. I don't want it to leave without us, and the only way we can be sure of being on it is to get to Shirn O'tay's settlement."
She reached her hand out to McCoy and helped him up. Refreshed by her shot and the rest, Kailyn bounded out ahead. McCoy started after her.
"The young lady convinced you rather readily, Doctor." 
McCoy gave him a sour glare. "Shut up, Spock."

The difficulty of the climb varied -- from bad to worse, as far as McCoy's legs were concerned. The higher they went, the steeper the path wound. Vegetation became sparse, and ice-edged gusts bit through their clothing. Patches of snow appeared with increasing frequency, and soon more of the rocky ground was blanketed than bare. The fog had thickened from a filmy haze to an opaque mist, obscuring even the nearest peaks; after a while, McCoy found an
odd comfort in the fact that he couldn't see past the rim of the trail -- he was allowed to forget about the steep slope that fell away just a few feet from where they walked. Only an occasional stone kicked over the edge would serve as a fearsome warning, clicking down the rocks below, finally falling out of earshot. It was a long, long way down.
"Eight to ten thousand feet," Spock estimated during their next pause along the trail. McCoy sat flat out, stretching his legs.
"I have so many kinks, I'm going to need a wheelchair, Spock. Air's getting pretty thin." McCoy rubbed his eyes and sighed. "I'm too old for this."
Kailyn dropped to her knees beside him. "No, you're not. This should help." She began to knead his calf muscles and the backs of his thighs. "I used to do this for my father when we went on hikes." 
For a moment, a faraway look glazed her eyes, and her massage weakened.
"Don't stop," said McCoy. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she replied wistfully. "I was just thinking about Father, wondering how he is."
"Don't you worry," said McCoy, holding her hand. I may be the chief surgeon, but my staff can do just fine without me."
"Oh?" said Spock casually. "Then why does the captain continue to put up with you?"
"Because I'm such a joy to have around," McCoy snapped. "Come on, let's get going." He grunted as he clambered back to his feet.
Kailyn held tight to his arm. "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep," she murmured.
"Isn't that from a poem?"
She nodded. "A great poet from your planet -- Robert Frost."
"Oh, yeah. A New Englander. I always preferred Dixie poets myself."

The sun of Sigma 1212 blazed forth with a sudden and stunning glory. After the time in space, where giant suns are reduced by distance to twinkling pinpoints, and the past day of doleful clouds and violent storms, it shone now like heavenly fire, flooding the mountaintops and their snowcaps with a blinding brilliance. While they'd been walking, the dense fog had begun to thin gradually with altitude, but the brightening came in increments so small as to go unnoticed by three climbers more concerned with the path under their feet than the sky over their heads.
And so the sun had burst upon them like a celestial flare. Free of the fog, peaks soared wherever they looked, and they stood in breathless awe, perched at the top of this world, surrounded by pristine beauty and whiteness so stark it made their eyes ache. McCoy squinted, refusing to close out the light that made him feel renewed.
"I'd forgotten what sunshine looked like," he whispered. 
Kailyn peered down the mountain at the clouds below them. Before, they'd appeared unremittingly gray, but from this new vantage point, they seemed a pure and fluffy white, like a carpet below them. "I feel like I could just leap out there and walk on them," she said, wandering dangerously close to the edge of the trail. She felt giddy, like a child in a wonderland.
Not even Spock could resist the splendor basking before them. Through slitted eyes, he looked from horizon to horizon, momentarily overwhelmed by the sweeping panorama stretched below like some vast artist's canvas. "Incredible," he said in a hushed voice. "Such unspoiled beauty."
"I've never seen anything like it," said McCoy.
Spock scanned down the steep mounains, then back up to the sun, a deep orange-red. The sun. Ever so slowly, it was moving, across the white-blue sky and down toward the horizon. Time passed, unceasingly. Night crept closer.
"We must move on," he said, finally.
McCoy thought he sensed a tinge of regret in the toneless voice of rationality, and he looked directly into the first officer's eyes; he found what he sought.
Spock gazed back, without shame. "Appreciation of great beauty is not illogical, Doctor."
"No, it's not," said McCoy gently.

For a while, the trail seemed to descend, in concert with the sun. Shadows lengthened and crossed their path as Spock continued to lead the way. Once more, they stopped to rest their ever-more-weary legs. Spock, too, had begun showing signs of fatigue, in shortness of breath and obvious stiffness in his left shoulder, the one injured during his ordeal the previous night. McCoy slumped to the ground, near exhaustion, and Spock knelt next to him.
"Perhaps we should make camp here, Doctor."
"No," McCoy wheezed. He glanced out at the sun, which was poised to dip below the field of clouds. "We've still got some daylight left. A little farther."
"Whatever we do today is distance we don't have to cover tomorrow," Kailyn said.
Spock sat alone to consult the maps, while Kailyn stood and turned toward the broad vista, her back to McCoy. He watched her with admiration. A girl -- no, a young woman. While McCoy's old legs told him to stay on his backside awhile longer, he knew now that Kailyn was tougher than any of them had thought. Through
the roughest stretches of climbing, even when they had to be tied together at the waist by safety cords, she never faltered, never missed a step. He was proud of her, and felt the impulse to tell her so. But not now -- later, perhaps when they settled in for the cold night ahead. With greater effort than he wanted to admit, McCoy got first to his knees; then, one leg at a time, he stood up unsteadily. Neither Spock nor Kailyn saw. He tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs protested and he coughed, a rumbling sound from deep in his chest that alarmed him. Kailyn heard it and turned quickly, her lithe body still encased in the skintight thermal suit. Her face flashed her concern in a deep frown -- the cough sounded like her father's the last time she'd seen him.
McCoy grinned at her, then nodded toward Spock, who was still with the maps. "You think he's gotten us lost and won't admit it?"
Spock looked up. "We are following the correct route." 
McCoy leaned close to Kailyn and said in a stage whisper: "I told you he wouldn't admit it."
The trail continued on a downhill slope, and twisted around a bend. Spock suddenly stopped and held up a hand for silence. McCoy strained to listen. There was no mistaking -- there were voices up ahead. On this narrow mountain trail, there was no place to hide -- and they were about to run into a band of humanoids. The figures were far below, heading up; they looked like snowmen, dressed in white parkas.
"Oh, lord," said McCoy in a low voice, "please don't let these be like the last ones."
Cautiously, Spock moved ahead. "Set your phaser on stun, Doctor."
"I don't like shooting people, Spock," he said -- but he set the switch as instructed, and kept Kailyn in line behind him.
"Neither do I, but it is best to be prepared," said Spock.
There was something sprawled across the path ahead of them; the curve and grade of the trail placed them out of sight of the group of natives downhill, and they approached it warily. It was a dead animal. Its dusty-white woolly coat was stained with blood, presumably its own, and its four legs were splayed out under it. Either it was freshly killed or the cold air had preserved it, for there was no smell from the carcass. As they moved closer, they could see that it had two great antlers, intricately curved, growing from the front of its head. It was a massive beast -- at least eight feet long.
"Whatever killed it packed quite a punch," said McCoy. He leaned over to examine a triple slash gouged into one antler. "Looks like a three-toed claw of some kind."
He narrowed his eyes and brushed something off the tip of one antler -- a bloody patch of white, furry hide. "Also looks like he took a hunk out of his attacker," he said, slipping the hide into his pocket. 
"What a magnificent creature," Kailyn breathed. "It didn't die without a fight."
"Indeed," Spock agreed. "Though it was fatally wounded, it is largely intact. Whatever killed it must have been a carnivore. Odd that pieces were not removed for food."
McCoy peeked over the edge of the mountain. "Take a look down there."
Spock and Kailyn both glanced down. Far below, barely visible, a white animal was grotesquely draped like a gargoyle on a ledge. It looked like a cross between a mountain lion and a bear. McCoy began a comment, but was cut off by a new voice, clearly threatening though it spoke in an alien tongue. Spock, McCoy, and Kailyn turned as one and saw that the way was blocked by the humanoids
they'd seen up ahead. Their faces were visible now inside their fur-trimmed hoods -- deeply tanned, moon-shaped, with even bangs of jet-black hair. And angry.
There were an even dozen of them, all with steel-tipped weapons -- spears, bows and arrows, and long-bladed knives. The leader, burlier than the others, chattered loudly and aimed sharp gestures at the animal carcass.
"We did not kill it," Spock said evenly. He had no idea if the leader understood; for emphasis, he pointed to the gash in the antler, avoiding motions that might alarm.
"We found it here -- dead."
The burly Sigman had a silent reply -- he pointed his loaded longbow directly at Spock's chest. At a quick nod of his head, his companions surrounded the shuttle party. They moved with swift agility, showing no fear of the trail's edge or the long fall that awaited the careless.
"I suggest we offer no resistance," said Spock in a low voice.
"Here we go again," said McCoy as their hands were tied behind them.

The setting sun cast long rays through the clouds, painting the skies in vivid splashes of gold, red, and deep blue. The armed group took the Galileo crew about halfway down the mountain where a narrow pass cut the one peak into two. The pass was less than thirty feet wide at its opening, but it broadened gradually as they descended, finally flaring like a funnel after perhaps a half-mile. The mountain band finally paused -- spread below was a shadowed valley, nestled between the towering Kinarrs. On one side, a deep V of sky separated two mountains; they seemed to be bowing before the sun, permitting it to shine through to the inner plateau. But except
for that opening, the valley was completely protected by the encircling range.
The farther down into it they went, the warmer the air got -- the winds that ruled the high alpine peaks could not enter here, and the weather was calm.
Only the top sliver of the sun was still visible, and it bathed those parts of the valley it could reach with its crimson radiance. The trail changed into steps carved with great care right into the stony surface of the planet. The steps dove straight down the slope, pausing at wide intervals for small platform landings. At each one was a broad, flat boulder with engraved images on its altarlike top -- pictures of animals prancing against mountain backdrops. The leader knelt before each altar on the way down, with the others standing silently, heads bowed, as he offered a prayer. The ceremony was repeated five times.
At last, the steps reached an end, and multiple paths branched off from their base. The sky had tuned blue-black, and stars began to sparkle. The ground suddenly rumbled, and an eerie chorus of howls and grunts drifted up from a lower road. Soon, a herd of at least a hundred animals clip-clopped into sight. They walked with a rhythmic gait, driven slowly by twenty of the mountain folk. As they passed, Spock noticed that several of the herders were females, and the animals were the same as the dead beast they'd found on the trail. A musky cloud of dust followed the herd, and McCoy sneezed. When the animals had gone, the captives were led into a cavern.
McCoy stifled a slightly nauseous feeling at being in a cave again, but it wasn't difficult to do -- this one resembled the previous night's hiding place as much as a sod hut resembled a Dixie mansion. The opening was low and they had to duck down, but the interior broadened out to a high-vaulted grotto, with ceramic oil-burning
lanterns along the walls, and support columns made of carefully fitted stone bricks rising up into the shadows. A massive altar dominated the central room, with stone steps leading to its pulpit fifteen feet up. Painted animal carvings decorated it on all sides.
Perhaps fifty of the mountain people stood around the shrine as one tall old man mounted the steps. He wore white woven leggings and a brightly striped poncho. His hawk nose jutted away from a face framed by flowing white hair and a beard down to the middle of his chest. Taking the steps in ceremonial cadence, he reached the top, where a small animal lay, twitching instinctively as it tried to wriggle free of the leather harness that held it. It was a baby from the herd, a male with the first downy growth of antlers sprouting above its eyes. Tiny hooves clicked against the rock altar, and the tall man drew a gleaming blade of the scabbard at his waist. He raised hands and eyes toward the ceiling far above, and spoke in ringing tones. Spock understood.
"Let the wind gods see us, and sanctify this sacrifice of the Night of Darkness. When the moons shine again, may our prosperity and peace be renewed."
He plunged the knife down and the small beast yelped. Then it was still -- the clean stroke had done its work mercifully, but McCoy still felt vaguely queasy. He glanced at Kailyn, who watched the service with wide-eyed absorption.
Two young men, dressed in leggings and vests instead of the heavy outdoor parkas, bounded up the altar steps as the tall man came down. They untied the dead animal and carried it away, down a corridor off the main cave.
The burly trail leader waited patiently for the tall man to get through a knot of people gathered around him. Finally, he came across and stood before the trail leader, who whispered in his ear.
The tall man nodded his white head; the others stepped back and he approached the prisoners, regarding them with searching eyes. His face was crisscrossed by tiny lines and wrinkles, like an intricate map etched on old leather. The hawk nose prominently displayed its blood vessels, and the eyelids hung low under extra folds of skin. But there was a calm strength in this face, and the voice swelled with authority.
"Who are you that raid our snowsheep herds?"
Spock lifted an eyebrow. "We did not raid your herds. We found the dead animal on the trail, just as your men did. The snowsheep had been attacked by something with triple-toed claws, and -- "
"How do you know this?"
"We saw marks on the antlers, and found this."
McCoy angled the pocket on the back of his thermal pants toward Spock, and the Vulcan took out the patch of bloodstained white fur. The tall man held it up, then turned to the trail leader.
"Did you see the marks?"
The burly man nodded, and examined the scrap of animal hide.
"We saw the attacker dead on a ledge below the snowsheep," Spock said. "It was the color of that piece of skin."
The tall man drew in a deep breath. "A zanigret," he said to the trail leader. "These travelers have been held without need. Release them."
Immediately, the hand ropes were untied.
"You are free to leave," said the old man.
"Now?" asked McCoy.
The old man looked down at McCoy with a curious stare. "Of course, but only the foolish travel in darkness, when the zanigret prowl. You are welcome to remain with us until morning, then go back to your homelands."
"We are unable to return to our homelands," said Spock. "Where we come from is far from these mountains. Before we can go back, we need to retrieve something that was left here by a friend of ours a long time ago." 
"What is this thing? Perhaps we can help you."
"Perhaps you can. We are trying to find the settlement of Shirn O'tay. Do you know him?"
The man's eyes crinkled under his snowy brows, and he smiled. "You seek the King's Crown?"
"How do you know that?" asked McCoy in astonishment. And as he asked, the answer dawned on him. "Of course -- you are Shirn O'tay."
The old man bowed deeply. "Not a day has passed without thinking of the King. Is he well?"
"He is ill," said Spock, "too ill to come back for the Crown himself. This is his daughter, Kailyn."
"Ahh, yes," Shirn said in delight. "The child, the little child. But you've grown so." Shirn shook his head. "To think after all this time and wind has blown over the mountains . . ." He stopped in mid-breath. "Oh, but of course you do come from far beyond the mountains. You come from other worlds, other stars. You must rest and eat with us." He clapped his hands and shouted: "Prepare for the Feast of the Moons! Come, come! You will eat on my blanket!"
The old chieftain led his people from the shrine chamber into a smaller side cavern where the feast would take place. Spock, McCoy, and Kailyn followed the crowd.
"We're in the home stretch, Spock," McCoy crowed. "I didn't think I'd live to see it."
But the joyous tide swept Kailyn along in body only -- her spirit was troubled. She had been so caught up in the physical trials of
reaching the Crown, she had allowed herself to forget the rigorous test that she would have to face alone. Neither McCoy nor Spock could help her once it was placed on her head. The biggest task of her young life loomed nearer than she had ever thought it would, and it made the trek through the terrors of Sigma 1212 look like child's play. She found herself wishing they were still out on the mountain trail somewhere -- anywhere but this close to the Crown of Shad.
Chapter Sixteen
Commander Kon's patience had long since run out. The space storm had kept him from making a close approach to Sigma 1212 for nearly two days, and tensions aboard the Klingon spy scout hovered dangerously close to the boiling point. His hulking weapons officer glanced at Kon uncomfortably from time to time -- no doubt the man's jaw still smarted from the punch Kon had thrown in their scuffle that morning
As a commander, Kon preferred to have his orders obeyed without enforcement tactics, certainly without brawling. But Lieutenant Keast had insisted on giving unsolicited advice. When Kon had warned that he was on the edge of insubordination, Keast had become abusive. The punch had silenced him rather effectively, though upon later reflection, Kon had to admit to himself that he was lucky he'd caught the much bigger and younger lieutenant off guard.
As the hours wore on, he looked at Kera more and more often. Not only did he prefer her beauty to the sullen faces of his two male officers, but she was the one who would inform him of the storm's abatement. Finally, she did.
"Can we move in, Kera?"
"Yes, Commander. Completing preparatory sensor sweep now."
She turned back to her computer console, hands resting lightly
atop several control switches, ready to shift modes and readouts. The stream of data meant little to Kon, and he waited, once again with a full reserve of patience.
"Something strange, sir," Kera said with a frown. She touched a sequence of buttons. "Receiving communication from the Federation vessel."
Kon sat upright on his couch. "Is the Enterprise within range?"
"Negative, sir. No ships but our own."
"Then who are they communicating with?"
"Ahh. No one, it seems. The message just repeated. It's an auto-distress signal."
"So . . . the Federation ship didn't land successfully after all. Our decision to wait was an excellent strategic move, wouldn't you say, Kera?" Kon spoke loudly, his barb aimed at Keast, who slouched in his seat, sulking.
Kera smiled coolly. "Excellent, Commander." Perhaps after this mission, she would reconsider a sexual coupling with him. The look in his eye was unmistakable -- the choice up to her. But that was for later consideration. "We are locked on to the Federation ship's position, sir. Landing may proceed."

The Klingon ship set down about a mile away from the abandoned Galileo, in a clearing not far from the steam, which ran fast and high within its banks. It was sunset, though the cloud cover made the sky look even duskier, almost completely dark. With a search-lantern beam probing ahead, Kon led the way to the shuttlecraft. Cutting winds swept over the lowland terrain, and all four Klingons held their weapons drawn as they cautiously approached the wreck.
"Any life readings?" Kon asked.
Kera scanned the Galileo. "None."
Kon turned to his two male officers. "Stand guard outside while we search the interior."
A gust of wind blew by and the ship's ripped metal hide creaked and moaned. Kon whirled reflexively, his weapon at the ready, then relaxed and looked sheepishly at his science officer. "All this waiting has me a little jumpy."
"Just don't shoot me by accident."
Kon shook his head. "Not you. Keast perhaps."
They both laughed and climbed under the shuttle's flank to get at the doorway. Once inside, Kon panned around with the light beam while Kera turned her sensor toward all nooks and corners.
"No bodies," Kon mused.
"Some blood, though," the science officer said, holding up a dark-brown-stained cloth. "Someone was injured."
They were interrupted by a soft, repetitive beating sound on the hull. "What's that?" said Kon.
"Sounds like rain."
They listened for a few moments, and the beating grew more insistent -- harder, louder, faster.
"Commander," Keast shouted from the hatch, "it's pouring out here. The skies suddenly opened up."
"If he gets soaked," Kera said in a low voice, "you'll never hear the end of his complaining. You don't want to have to hit him again, do you?"
Kon made a face of disgust. "Very well," he called. "Both of you come in here."
Keast and his fellow guard clambered up through the jagged opening. They were already drenched, and the chilly air made them
shiver. Kon glared at them while Kera continued her thorough reconnaissance of the shuttle cabin.
"Weapons are missing. Most of their food supplies are back here, but they're contaminated, sir."
"Evaluation?"
"I'd say they were able to leave here, but how far they could've gotten is impossible to estimate -- especially with the weather conditions on this planet."
"Yes," said Kon thoughtfully. "Federation weaklings would not fare well in such a rugged climate -- unlike us Klingons." He glared at his shivering officers. "Most Klingons, at least."
"I'm sorry, Commander," Keast protested, "but it's very cold -- and getting colder."
"Wherever they are, they're well-armed," Kon continued. "That means they could have attacked any natives in the area to get food and shelter."
"Except that Federation cowards don't operate that efficiently," Kera reminded him.
"When it comes to survival, even a mongrel Star Fleet officer like that half-Vulcan Spock would kill if he had the chance. Keep that in mind, all of you. If we find them, be ready to kill on sight."
"In the meantime, sir," said Keast belligerently, "what do we do?"
"We wait out this storm. I'd hate for you to have to get wet again."
"But the Federation spies could be -- "
" -- sitting someplace, doing exactly what we are -- waiting," said Kon, cutting him off. "We'll be losing no ground. I'm sure they're not far from here, and well have no trouble tracking them once the weather improves. You're not as reluctant to travel in darkness as you are in the rain, eh, Keast?"
"No, sir, I am not," said the lieutenant stiffly.

The Klingons spent over an hour in the leaky shuttle wreck, but the rain only worsened. A swirling wind current spun through the forest, ripping up trees and tossing them like twigs. Picking up debris, the storm funnel howled across the flatlands and barreled over the hills. It bore down on the Galileo and flipped it like a child's toy being thrown by the hand of a giant.
The Klingons inside never knew what hit them. Keast was killed instantly when his skull slammed into the sharp edge of a split bulkhead. The other male officer was catapulted out the hatch opening and crushed against the boulders below as the wreck rolled over him. Kera and Kon held fast to couches still fastened to the floor, and were both alive when the wind passed and the Galileo, broken in two now, came to a stop against a cliff almost a hundred yards away.
They stumbled out into the heavy rain. Kon fell to the ground, semiconscious. Kera held her right arm close to her side, protecting a rib she suspected was fractured. She knelt in the cold oozing mud and used her sleeve to wipe blood away from her commander's eyes -- then she saw the deep ugly gash above his nose.
"Can you stand, Kon?"
"I think so. We have to get back to our ship. Help me up."
She did her best, and the two of them limped toward the relative haven of the woods.
"The stream," Kon whispered through bloody lips. "Have to follow it."
"We're almost there."
Kon tripped and fell, grabbing Kera for support. His arm closed tightly around her waist and she cried out in pain -- he had found
the broken rib. She held her breath, fought back tears, steadied both of them and moved on through the trees.
They could hear the roaring of the water just ahead, though it was barely audible over the screaming wind. But it would be their guide back to the safety of their own ship.
Thunderstorms rumbled to the west. A Medusa's head of tangled lightning bolts ripped across the sky, splitting off and plunging toward the planet below. One struck an ancient tree that towered above the forest trail. The tree exploded and shattered, spraying shards of wood like shrapnel in all directions. Kera shoved Kon down behind another low-hanging tree -- an instant too late. A ragged spike drove itself into Kon's chest, and he was dead before he hit the ground. Kera lay on top of him.
"No!" she screamed, then strangled another cry starting deep in her throat. The only answers from the tortured lords of nature that ruled this wild planet were the steady downpour, the thunder, and the crackling of the burning tree stump. The charred wood hissed as the rain hit it and turned to steam.
Kera was alone -- but she was a Klingon. She would have to go on and attempt to complete this mission -- alone. Or die trying.
Chapter Seventeen
Shirn O'tay proved to be a gracious host. His blanket was actually a sumptuous fur rug made of zanigret skins and padded underneath with the fleece of the snowsheep. The Feast of the Moons marked the simultaneous phasing out of both moons, an event that occurred only four times a year because of the unequal orbits of the Sigman satellites. The darkened skies represented the cleansing change of seasons, and the new moons to come up the next night were worshiped as harbingers of good fortune.
Long platters of meat from slaughtered sheep, and an assortment of vegetables and herbs were welcome sights to the trio from the shuttlecraft -- a far cry from the berries and concentrates they'd had over the last two days. They were finally able to peel off their dirty and tattered thermal suits, and afterward McCoy and Kailyn gorged themselves; Spock ate only the herbs and vegetables, and all three listened eagerly as Shirn answered their many questions about his mountain settlement.
"We've lived much the same for hundreds of years," the old man told them. "Our fathers found this valley, and took its discovery as a sign from the wind gods. As you've seen, our world is not altogether hospitable."
"Well, you've certainly made up for the planets bad manners," said McCoy between bites.
"The storm we encountered in the lowlands -- is that a common weather pattern here?" asked Spock.
"For the lowlands, yes. Even for the mountains -- but not within the bosom of the Kinarrs, where we are. Here on the plateau, we rarely get more than a gentle snowfall. The snowsheep lived in this valley before our fathers came, and they became domesticated very easily. There is a story we have the children tell at feast times, so the old tales will live on. Tolah! You'll start."
A pixie of a girl rose from a blanket at the far side of the cave. She padded over to Shirn and stood before him. She looked about eight years old, and wore a bracelet of bells that jingled gently as she moved. He handed her a scroll.
"Tolah, the story of the first snowsheep."
The little girl took a giant ballet step away from Shirn and spoke in a serious voice. "The first snowsheep greeted our fathers at the break in the Kinarrs, and he had big headhorns, much bigger than nowadays."
She knew the story by heart and continued without even a glance at the scroll. "And he would not let our fathers pass. And the snowsheep said, 'You can't come in here. This is holy land and only holy people can live on it.' And our fathers said, 'We are holy. The wind gods told you to save this land for us.' And then -- "
"Very good, Tolah," Shirn said, his eyes sparkling with pleasure. "Kindrel -- you next."
Kindrel, a blond boy of about thirteen, took the scroll and read in careful, dignified tones. " 'Prove you are holy,' said the sheep. And the First Father grabbed the snowsheep by his horns and they wrestled for four seasons. When the seasons ended, the snowsheep said, 'I am the strongest creature, sent to guard the holy lands. Only holy people can be as strong. You are truly Kinarri -- children of the
Kinarrs. You are welcome to live with us in peace, and my brothers and sisters shall be your servants.' And that is the story of the first snowsheep."
Kindrel slowly rolled the parchment and gave it to Shirn. The old man nodded proudly. With a ceremonial bow, the boy returned to sit with his family.
Later, the platters were cleared, and candied fruits were brought out along with a sweet, steaming-hot drink made from tree sap. Spock wondered why Shirn's people had never modernized their way of life. 
"Because we have no reason to, Mr. Spock. I went away to school when I was a boy. My father sent me to a Federation colony, hoping I might learn something to help our people."
"Did you?" asked Kailyn.
"I learned what we didn't want to be, and that a leader cannot force his people to change in ways they cannot. We have a small community here, perhaps five hundred of us. The hot springs in the caverns support our gardens, with special lights we bought from traders. The snowsheep provide meat, milk, cheese, manure for fertilizer, clothing, and other supplies. A sheep that dies or is slaughtered is used completely. Zanigret attacks are our only problem, and they occur mostly at night. That's why we keep the herds in the caves at night. The one you found had run off."
"Such economy, applied on a larger scale to a more modern way of life -- " Spock began.
" -- is very difficult to attain. We are not closed off from the advancements of our age -- we adopt new tools, and trade freely when traders come our way. But we seek not to upset our balance, our traditions of all these years."
"It's Shangri-la." McCoy murmured.
"What does this mean?" asked Shirn.
"It's an old Earth legend, about a place high up in the Himalaya Mountains, where things hadn't changed for thousands of years, and people hardly aged. Now, that's something I could use."
Shirn gave a rueful laugh. "As you can see, Doctor, we do get old."
"Shangri-la was supposed to be a paradise, and that seems to be what you've got here."
"If I may ask," Spock said, "how does your succession of leadership operate?"
"We are a mixture of democracy and dynasty. The oldest child of the late leader takes over -- unless a majority votes for someone else. But we rarely have a dispute. For instance, my daughter -- Tolah's mother -- will follow me when I die."
The conversation, fascinating as it was, with richly rewarding exchanges of information for both sides, eventually turned to the Crown of Shad. Kailyn listened, as she had done most of the night.
"Can we see it?" asked McCoy.
"It isn't right here with us," said Shirn.
"Where, then, is it kept?" Spock said.
Shirn pursed his lips. "In a safe place. King Stevin warned me that it should not be readily accessible, in case his enemies ever found out where he had taken it. In fact, he doesn't even know its exact location -- he left that up to me."
"Well, can we have it tonight?" McCoy asked.
'I'm afraid not. It will take us several ours to reach, and we cannot go until daylight." A troubled look crossed Shirn's seamed face. "Even then, I can't simply let you take it."
"Why not?" said McCoy.
"Because I promised the King that only the rightful ruler would be allowed to have it."
McCoy bristled. "Kailyn is the rightful ruler. You must believe that."
"In my heart, I believe all you've told me, without exception. But I took an oath. Kailyn must prove who she is."
"Our word isn't proof enough?" McCoy's eyes flashed in anger, and Kailyn touched his hand.
"Shirn is right. I'll have to prove it at home. It's only fitting that I should have to prove it here first."
"How?"
"By showing that I have the Power of Times, that I can master the sacred crystals of the Crown."

Kailyn found Spock after the feast had broken up, in the scroll room, a square cave off the main grotto. There, cabinets full of parchment rolls held the story of the Kinarri herders from their earliest days on the protected plateau. The scrolls were written painstakingly in the hands of as many different scribes as there had been generations of Shirn's people. Carefully drawn pictures and diagrams cropped up often to illustrate tales of hunts and harvests, legends of the wind gods and heroic exploits. With the aid of a set of translation pages, Spock was able to gather the drift of most of what he read, idea for idea if not word for word.
As he read, he recorded the handwritten work on his tricorder after convincing Shirn it would be a terrible loss of history if the parchments were ever destroyed.
The Vulcan looked up as Kailyn sat on the rug next to him.
"Are they interesting?" she asked.
"Quite. It is rare that a society living on such a relatively primitive level should keep such detailed records of written history."
"Usually, they'd just be oral records, right? Passed down from generation
generation to generation in the form of stories?"
Spock raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. "Correct." 
Kailyn smiled. "Social history was one of my favorite studies when I was growing up." The smile faded and she looked away. "Growing up. I feel like I'm still growing up."
"That is not unusual," Spock said softly. "I have never understood why so many races instill in their offspring the notion that growing up, as you phrase it, is merely a stage of life that one passes through in a finite period of time."
"Isnt it?"
Spock shook his head. "Perhaps the terminology leads to errors in perception. If it were simply referred to as 'growing,' perhaps it would be easier to conceptualize as a process that continues throughout life." 
"That's too logical for most beings, Mr. Spock," she said with an ironic smile. "Most races aren't Vulcans."
"So Dr. McCoy persists in telling me. Instead of devoting effort to becoming more logical, he prefers to avoid it and remain -- "
"Handicapped?" Kailyn volunteered.
"I would not use such a strong word."
"Why not? It is a handicap, to be caught up in emotions and fears."
"Vulcans have emotions," Spock said carefully. "However, we do not let them interfere with rational observation and judgment." 
"I wish I were a Vulcan. It would make it a lot easier to be a leader."
"Not necessarily, Kailyn."
"But I've watched you. You can size up situations, take advice, weigh choices -- and then act forcefully in a crisis." She sighed, and her eyes were even more sad than usual.
"You are drawing conclusions from incomplete data. You have only observed me in a discrete set of circumstances."
"But I know what I saw -- "
"You saw me acting as a leader because I was placed in such a position by assignment of Captain Kirk."
"Do you want to be a captain yourself?"
Spock almost smiled -- how often he'd heard that question. "No, I prefer to gather information and deliver it in orderly, usable fashion to those who can best apply it to decision-making. To advise, upon request."
"But you're in command on this mission . . ."
"As a Vulcan and Star Fleet officer, I carry out those duties assigned to me. Captain Kirk is an example from which you might learn a great deal."
"What makes a leader, Mr. Spock?"
He paused to consider, and thought mostly about Kirk -- the qualities that made him a man others would always turn to and follow. "An ability to delegate tasks, to know subordinates so well and trust them so completely that they can be relied upon to do the job as if the captain himself had done it. In return, they trust him and give their loyalty willingly."
"I didn't mean only Captain Kirk."
"I realize your reference was generic, but I know of no better example," Spock said quietly.
"That's what my father always said." She sighed again. "I wish the captain was here to talk to . . . or my father."
"You might try talking to Shirn O'tay."
Kailyn brightened. "I think I will."

The short, bearded man bounced up and down on his feet, and
his gravel voice nearly shouted at Shirn.
"But I swear the buck is mine!"
A younger man leaned down, nose to nose with the bearded fellow. "And I say it's mine. It came back to the cave with my herd -- that makes it mine."
Sitting on his white rug on the ground between them, Shirn listened patiently, seeking the right moment to intervene. When the bearded man paused for a breath, Shirn spoke up -- quickly. "At this rate, the buck will die of old age before you decide."
"No it won't -- I'll fight him for it," said the bearded man heatedly.
The younger herder rolled his eyes. "Oh, gods in the mountains. You always want to fight, Blaye. When will you -- "
"Wait, Dergan," said Shirn to the young man, "Blaye has a point. Fighting is one way to settle differences."
Blaye planted his feet far apart and his hands on his hips, as if to say, I told you so.
"But," Shirn continued, "it's a troublesome way. Even if you win, you're bruised and weary. I remember when I was a young man and I fought over a snowsheep. Oh, I won, but I was so tired, I couldn't drag it back to my herd and it ran away and right into a zanigret's claws."
Blaye shifted his jaw back and forth nervously, softening his bellicose stance a bit. Shirn's eyes shifted from one to the other.
"Are there other ways?" Shirn asked.
"That's what we came to you for," the bearded man said.
"Ahh, of course. Well, we could kill the buck and divide it in half."
"Wait," Dergan protested. "That buck will be fathering offspring
for years. I'm not going to give up a stud sheep for a pile of meat and bones!"
"Neither will I!"
"Well, then, what about a split of those offspring?" 
"Never!" roared Blaye, his voice echoing off the cave walls. "I'll have to wait three Feasts for the first calf. Meanwhile, he's got the buck all that time, and that beast will be into every cow in his herd!"
"Dergan, are any of your cows pregnant?"
"Three of them."
"Answer me this -- you didn't have that new buck when you went out to graze this morning, did you?"
"Neither did he! And it has no brand . . ."
"But you have it now," Blaye rumbled.
Shirn finally got to his feet. "That's quite true." He towered over both men and placed an arm around the shoulders of each. "What about this? Dergan keeps the buck -- "
"No!" shouted Blaye.
" -- and Blaye gets the first born from your herd, his choice of buck or cow."
"But that's not fair," Blaye said.
Shirn let go of the younger man, and ushered Blaye to a corner. "If anything, you get the better of the bargain, my friend. He gets a beast well along in years, while you get one that's fresh and healthy with a whole life ahead of it. Hmm?"
Blaye scratched his beard as he thought about it. Meanwhile, the old chieftain ambled back to Dergan, who frowned. "I don't like it," he said flatly.
"You'll be coming away with something you didn't have this
morning . . . and it's better than getting all dirty and banged up in a wrestling match . . . Hmm?"
"All right," Dergan finally said.
"I also agree," said Blaye, less than cheerfully.
"Cow or buck" Dergan snapped.
"I'll decide when I see what's first born."
"And I'm going to brand that buck right now . . ."
Both men bowed to Shirn, then exited, watching each other suspiciously. Shirn smiled to himself; he never ceased to wonder at the problems his people brought to him.
"How did you do that?" said a small, awed voice.
The old man turned to see Kailyn standing in the cavern doorway. "Ahh, you were spying on us here in the great Court of Mountain Law?" 
She laughed and came over to him. "They were ready to strangle each other and you sent them away satisfied. Maybe not happy, but satisfied."
"Simple common sense, my child."
Kailyn's face clouded over. "Why do you call me child'?" 
"I'm sorry. You're not, are you? You're an adult, and soon to lead your people."
Kailyn looked at the floor. "I'm afraid of that."
"Being an adult, or being a ruler?"
"Both, I guess. I'm afraid they won't accept me."
"They will, if you can wear that crown your father left here. The rest is up to you."
"Is that how it was for you?"
"Yes, I suppose so." He put his arm over her shoulders and guided her over to sit on the soft rug. "But I didn't know what I was doing when I became leader here. I was very young, like you, when my
mother died and left the homeland to me."
Kailyn stared, wide-eyed. "How did you learn?"
"By reading, asking questions, watching. I found out what had gone before, what was good, or bad. A good ruler does only what is necessary, with a light touch whenever possible."
"But how will I know what my people want?"
Shirn laughed. "Oh, you'll know. They'll tell you. The trick is to know the difference between what they say they want and what they really want."
"Teach me," she begged.
"No, Kailyn. If you learn it, you learn it yourself. No one can teach you."
"I don't understand how I can devote my life to declaring that I'm leader of Shad."
"You don't. Your people will declare it, once, by word -- then it's up to you to prove it, continuously, by virtue and deed."
Kailyn gave the old man a hug and left the cavern.

McCoy was busy flung up his sleeping mat when Kailyn found him in a smaller side chamber, off the main grotto. It didn't take a lot of arm-twisting to convince him to go outside for a walk.
The night air was crisp but here in the sheltered valley there was no sharp wind, and it felt almost warm. Kailyn slipped her hand inside McCoys and they strolled along the cobblestone road that led to the ascending stone stairs. She confessed her fears to McCoy and told of the chats with Spock and Shirn.
"Did they help you?"
"In some ways, yes -- and in some ways, no."
"Well, that sounds conclusive."
She lowered her head and gave a short, rueful laugh. "Oh, Doctor I'm so confused."
"Hey, we know each other well enough for you to call me Leonard."
That made her smile, and she snuggled closer as they passed a low stone wall overlooking the starlit pastures.
"Tell me what you think," she said.
"About what?"
"Leadership."
McCoy snorted. "What I know about leadership you can fit on the head of a very small pin. I'm one of the world's most religious followers. Somebody tells me what to do, that's good enough for me."
"To quote Leonard McCoy, 'Poppycock!' "
"Spock's a leader."
"He claims he only does what he has to do. Besides, you always question him before you follow his orders. That doesn't sound like a passive follower to me."
"Well, he huffed, "who said anything about being passive."
"I've watched, since we came to the Enterprise. The captain and Mr. Spook trust you so much that they always listen to you, even if they didn't ask for your advice. You can change their decisions by what you say -- you can lead the leaders."
McCoy gazed up at the black sky and the splash of stars painted across it. "You're pretty perceptive, young lady. I guess I do know a thing or two about the subject, but that's because I've been working for some mighty effective leaders all these years."
"What stands out when you think about them? What makes them special?"
"Understanding and compassion," he answered without a
moment's thought. "That's what sets Jim apart from some run-of-the-mill order-giver. He doesn't tell anyone to do anything he wouldn't do himself. He asks a lot, but he also gives a lot. Think you can do that?"
"I . . . I don't know."
"Well, I know -- and I say you can. There . . . are you any less confused?"
"Not really. Spock talked about delegation and trust, Shirn talked about common sense and listening, and you talk about compassion and understanding." She spread her hands imploringly. "What makes someone a good leader?"
McCoy held her shoulders gently. "All of them. And there's not one of those qualities you don't already have plenty of."
She hugged him tightly, impulsively, then just as abruptly turned and pulled him along. There was snow on this section of the ancient roadway, and a gentle dusting of flakes began falling, drifting to the ground in lazy, slow-motion dances. They both pulled their fleece parkas tighter around themselves.
"I was so afraid I'd feel lost without my father, but I don't."
"You sound surprised."
"I am," she said, in a voice filled with wonder. "Oh, I miss him more than I've ever missed anyone else, and I know I may never see him again in this life. But for the first time, I've accepted it. If he's died, I know the gods will take care of him, and he'll be happy with them. And I couldn't have done that without you and Mr. Spock."
"Sure, you could have. You don't give yourself enough credit, Kailyn."
She stopped talking and locked her dark eyes onto his. "You and Mr. Spock are the first men I've ever really known, outside of my father and the servants. I didn't even know your names a few days
ago, and now . . . I feel so close to you. You were strangers, and now being with you makes me feel secure and cared-for."
McCoy felt himself blushing. He quickly took her hand; this time, it was his turn to pull her along.
"That's good, and it makes me happy -- but you don't know us that well."
"Why not?"
"There's a psychological term -- crisis syndrome. That's what we're going through. They first noticed it back in the twentieth century. People trapped in lifeboats or tunnel collapses or some life-threatening situation -- while they were in it, they felt like they were best friends, brothers and sisters, intimate lovers. But once it was over, they withdrew into their own protective shells again. It was the danger that made them feel so close, and once it'd passed, so did those feelings."
"But I don't want these feelings to pass, Leonard. I . . . I've never felt them before."
"Aww, don't worry -- we'll never be strangers to each other again . . ."
Kailyn leaned on the snowy wall, sniffing, as a tear edged down her cheek. "But I love you."

"You've been reading quite late, Mr. Spock," said Shirn from the doorway of the scroll room. "We need to get an early start in the morn."
"I shall retire shortly. These records have been so fascinating that I lost track of the hour."
Shirn chuckled. "Dr. McCoy said you'd use that word -- fascinating. I'm glad you haven't found our history dull."
"Quite the contrary, sir. Have the doctor and Kailyn already gone to sleep?"
Shirn frowned. "I don't know."
The herdsman and Spock went to the sleeping chamber -- it was empty, and Shirn's frown deepened. "Where could they be at this hour?"
"Perhaps they went outside for a walk. Their parkas are gone and Dr. McCoy is not fond of cave-dwelling."
"If so, we must get them back inside at once," Shirn said gravely. "The night is not safe here."
He led the way, and they hurried through the caves.
Chapter Eighteen
The stone-paved roadway had ended, and Kailyn and McCoy continued along a path at the base of a high cliff. The smooth wall of rock rose up to blend with the dark sky -- it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Below them, the steep slope fell away to the valley floor hundreds of feet down. They walked side by side, but not touching.
"But love . . . ;well, it's not something you can feel in twenty minutes -- or even a few days," McCoy said, as soothingly as he could.
"What is it, then?" she asked, trying not to cry.
"It's . . . it's something different to everyone."
"To you?"
He cleared his throat -- this was not an easy conversation. "A lot of things. Caring about someone more than I care about myself . . . enjoying someone's company through thick and thin . . . trusting completely . . ."
"I feel all those things about you. But you tell me I don't really love you."
"Aww, Kailyn," he drawled, "I'm not the one for you." 
"Why not?"
"I'm just an old country doctor, not a Prince Consort." 
But she chose not to listen. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was not an innocent kiss, and to his own
surprise, McCoy returned it. They held each other in a lovers' embrace, and he kissed her hair.
"Kailyn, I'm old enough to be your father."
"But you're not my father," she whispered.
That was true, and despite his protests, he didn't feel like her father at the moment. In fact he felt things he didn't know were still inside him, things he'd always believed had died with his marriage. Not merely physical desires -- they'd never been hard to conjure up. But the desperate longing in his gut to share emotions with someone, to be close and never part -- that he'd forgotten, misplaced. Could he really be in love with this girl?
There was a soft thump from the path a few yards ahead of them. He glanced up and saw a little lump of snow that hadn't been there a moment ago. Was someone throwing snowballs, someone's idea of a joke? Before he could turn to look around, the silent night was shattered by a screeching roar from above and behind. Fangs and white fur flew at them. McCoy felt pain and hot breath as he fell backward.
Somehow, he'd managed to push Kailyn with all his strength, out of the way. Giant claws slashed at his throat. No place to go but over the cliff. Then he felt searing heat, heard a high-pitched whine, his head spun and he fought the blackout coming on. Suddenly, the incredible weight on his shoulder was gone, the claws and fangs falling away from him. Hands grabbed him -- Kailyn's hands -- he held them, felt them give way, felt himself fall back. He slipped, hit his head on the ground. Four more hands, strong ones, grasped him, and Spock and Shirn lifted him from the ledge to safety.

McCoy opened his eyes. His entire body hurt. A wave of diziness washed over him and he felt very nauseous. Spock's was the first
face he saw. He moved his tongue over his lips -- it felt heavy and soft and like it belonged to someone else.
"Which army marched through my mouth, Spock?"
"I'm pleased to see you've regained consciousness, Doctor."
"What happened? Where am I?"
"You were attacked by a zanigret. You are back in the caves."
McCoy closed his eyes and groaned. "Did I win?"
"Yes. With some assistance. Why were you walking outside? Shirn warned us earlier to remain within the caves during darkness."
"I forgot. Kailyn wanted to . . . Ohmygod, is she okay?"
"Fortunately, she escaped injury. I gave her a sedative and put her to sleep."
McCoy let out a long breath. "You'd make a good nurse, Spock. The last thing I remember is a snowball bein' thrown at us."
"The zanigret's rather ingenious method of hunting is to distract the attention of its prey by throwing a chunk of snow or rock with its prehensile tail, then to pounce from behind."
"Oh. I feel like my back is broken, but of course, if it was, I couldn't feel anything."
"Thank you for that lesson in anatomy and physiology." 
"Don't be sarcastic with an injured man. How bad is it?" 
"You have minor cuts and bruises."
"That's comforting. Not comfortable, mind you . . . but comforting." He managed to sit up -- it felt no better, but it felt no worse, either. He noticed Kailyn sleeping soundly across the chamber. Spock must have given her a hefty tranquilizer dose.
"Spock," McCoy said slowly, "Kailyn's in love with me." 
The Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "Indeed?"
"Don't act so surprised. I happen to be quite lovable." 
"I have never doubted that, Doctor," Spock replied wryly.
"What I want to know is, what should I do about it?" He rubbed the back of his head, and found a knot the size of his fist -- or so it felt. He winced, then glanced up at Spock, who seemed unwilling to look him in the eye.
"I . . . am not comfortable discussing such matters, Dr. McCoy."
"I'm not asking for pearls of romantic wisdom from that cold, calculating Vulcan heart. I'm just asking for a logical appraisal, based on that computerlike, unemotional way you have of observing emotional behavior."
The first officer drew his lips into a thin line, and McCoy began to regret having asked him. He'd spent years chiding Spock for his inability to feel rather than think, spouting on about how good, old-fashioned emotions were far superior to life governed by logic and equations. At times, he'd brandished the notion like a blackjack, beating Spock over the head with it, rather crudely; on other occasions, he could turn the belief into a sharp tool, wielding it with fine surgical skill, attempting to whittle and slice through the Vulcan shell to the heart beneath. 
All that effort and here I am turning to him for ice-water advice.
But this was different. Not merely a private affair of his own heart. He was letting his feelings get in the way of a vital Star Fleet mission. He could not simply regard Kailyn as a young lady of obvious attraction, though she was. Even Kailyn's own wishes had to be submerged for the good of her home planet. You're a little old to be a star-crossed lover, McCoy.
Finally, Spock coughed to relieve the silence, though it did nothing to relieve the tension McCoy felt knotting his stomach.
"I am not an authority on this subject, Dr. McCoy -- " 
"But you're the only thing I've got, so give me an answer."
"Very well. From what I understand about such emotional behavior as this, you have a dilemma"
"I already know that."
"If you do not share Kailyn's feelings, the only way to get her to abandon them is to tell her. The longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to do so." He paused for an extra moment of contemplation "Clearing the air, so to speak, might relieve her of the burden of confusion over your mutual feelings, enabling her to devote full concentration to the Crown."
"So I should tell her . . ."
"On the other hand, she could react irrationally if she knows that her love for you will remain unrequited. That being the case, your telling her might destroy her ability to control the Crown's crystals." 
McCoy scowled. "So I shouldn't tell her . . ." 
Spock scratched his chin. "A third possibility just occurred to me. She may be so confused now that her mental concentration has already been impaired to a critical point."
"Then it wouldn't matter what I do," McCoy said, in total despair. "You're a big help, Spock."
"I assume you are being sarcastic."
McCoy shook his head, mad at himself. "I'm sorry. You tried. I guess I'll just have to figure this one out for myself."

The next morning dawned bright and clear. McCoy had a restless night of tossing and turning, and he was up with the sun, taking a morning stroll and watching the fine mists burn away from the low-lying pastureland.
In groups of perhaps a score each, the snowsheep were being led out of several yawning caverns and driven down the cobblestones for a day of grazing. Each separate herd was accompanied by four or
five of the mountain folk; men, women, and children all pitched in to help, shouting at the animals, tapping the ground with long crooks and prodding the odd recalcitrant sheep to stay in line and follow its leaders.
For the most part, the snowsheep seemed to be placid creatures of habit, following the same route to the fields that their kind had trod for hundreds of years. The same thought applied to the herders. Sheep and shepherds alike seemed genuinely content -- and why shouldn't they be? thought McCoy. There lives are laid out for them by tradition, there prosperous, well-fed, peaceful; in the entire time he'd been on Sigma, this was the first place he'd seen where life was filled not with struggle but with simple pleasures. He thought of staying here himself. If the Enterprise never came back for them, would it be so awful? Shangri-la, he thought again as he watched the herds dwindle in size on their descent from the cave area.
Spock, too, had risen early. He'd gone back to the cavern where the scrolls were kept to record additional chapters. He would never tire of studying the past, piecing together fact and legend to trace a line to the present as it was.
Kailyn was the last to awaken. She washed up in the warm water that flowed from a steaming spring, and was about to look for McCoy when he came in to find her. She smiled radiantly, but his expression was somber. 
"What's wrong, Leonard?"
"Oh, nothing. I'm just a little sore from our big-game hunt last night. Last time I go for a walk with you, Kailyn."
"Don't say that," she said, and kissed him on the cheek. 
"Well . . . how are you feelin' this morning, young lady? All ready for the big hike?"
She shrugged. "I guess I'm frightened. This is what we made the
whole trip for, the reason you and Mr. Spock had to go through all this suffering."
"It wasn't what I would've picked for a restful vacation, but we made it, didn't we? It wasn't so terrible."
She closed her eyes. "What if I fail?"
"Don't even think about that."
He held her close, and she rested her cheek on his shoulder. He gritted his teeth; he couldn't tell her -- but he had to. He couldn't be a distraction to her, nor a false hope. On this day, she would have to face her future alone, without idealized images of love with him to salve the pain if the Covenant and the Crown eluded her.
It's now or never. McCoy did not love her, not the way she wanted him to. Though there was much he wasn't certain of, he was sure of that.
"Kailyn, we have to discuss something."
She looked up a him, eyes wide as a child's. "What?"
"We started to get into it last night when that zanigret so rudely interrupted us."
She smiled at the preattack memory. "As I recall, we weren't discussing anything. We were . . ."
She tried to kiss him, but he pulled back and disengaged the embrace. Kailyn's smile died away. "What's wrong?"
He turned his back and began pacing. "Kailyn, I . . ." He sighed and started again. "It can't be like that between us."
"But I've never met anyone like you."
"That's just it. You've hardly had a chance to be out in the world, any world. You've got greater things ahead than me." 
"I want you to share them with me."
"I can't -- and I can't lead you on thinkin' I can" 
"But I love you."
"You don't, Kailyn, and you'll know that soon. I care about you, very, very much. I'm so proud of you. You've learned so much in the time we've been in this thing, I feel like I'm watching my own daughter grow up -- and that's why I can't give you what you want and need. I'm not the one."
A pair of tears rolled down her cheeks, but she ignored them and refused to cry. "The time we spent together, the things we did, the things we told each other -- they didn't mean anything, did they?" Her voice was quiet, almost empty.
"Oh, no . . . they meant a lot, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. But it's not love, not the marrying kind. It is friendship . . . deep friendship and affection."
"You don't have to explain, Dr. McCoy."
"You can still call me Leonard."
"Maybe I'd better not. You're right about one thing -- I learned a lot. I learned maybe it's better not to trust anyone or let them get too close."
"Aww, no, Kailyn. Don't -- "
"I think you'd better leave me alone now."
He swallowed whatever words were trying to tumble out, along with the urge to give Kailyn a hug. He backed out of the sleeping chamber.
With eyes down, he nearly bumped into Spock in the main grotto.
"Is Kailyn prepared for the journey?"
"I don't know."
"Did you have your discussion with her, Doctor?"
"Yeah. I think maybe I shouldn't have."
"She took it badly?"
McCoy nodded, and felt very much like finding another zanigret
to stand under. "Honesty is not always the best policy, Spock . . . especially when you've got lousy timing."
Chapter Nineteen
Shirn sat on the wall bordering the stone road. Squinting into the morning sunlight, he watched Kailyn come out of the cave. Bundled in a parka that was much too big for her, with her shoulders slumped, she looked tiny and frail.
The old chieftain hoped he'd helped her in some way the night before, though he wondered if he'd really had any right to give advice. While he led a conglomeration of perhaps a dozen clans, she was to rule an entire planet. Shirn often thought of himself as a caretaker, placed in charge of a heritage proven over centuries, tested by time and tempered by the winds.
But the young Princess faced quite another situation -- to weave cohesion and order from the tattered threads of a planet ravaged by civil war was something a simple herdsman from the Kinarr valley could only imagine. He wished there were some blueprint he could offer her, a certain path to follow.
There was something about Kailyn that made everyone whom she encountered want to help. Was it the immenseness of the responsibility loaded upon her untested shoulders, or the poignant vulnerability in the way she asked questions and sought to gain strength from those she met? That quality could turn out to be priceless, if it lured others of goodwill to come to her aid. Or, it could be a foreshadowing of disaster if she truly was weak and helpless.
Shirn had chosen two strapping young shepherds from his own clan to guide the expedition up to the hiding place of Stevvin's Crown. The two -- Frin and Poder -- had been picked for a particular reason: they were big and strong enough to enforce Shirn's ruling that the Crown of Shad be taken only if Kailyn possessed the Power of Times. If she could not clear the crystals, as Shaddan religion demanded, the Crown would stay in its secret place. Frin and Poder would see to that.
With food, blankets, and emergency equipment in their backpacks, they led their Uncle Shirn and the three visitors down the cobblestone road. Ahead lay the trail that twisted over the great mountain, up to where the wind gods kept a watchful and gusty eye on the world below.
Kailyn walked alone in the center of the group, with Spock and Shirn behind her, and McCoy glumly bringing up the rear.
"Keep your head up, Dr. McCoy," said Shirn, "or you'll walk off the side of the mountain. The trail becomes very narrow up higher." 
Mostly, they moved on in silence, each lost in private thoughts. Spock found himself wondering what was going through Kailyn's mind. Was she concentrating on mental preparations for dealing with the Crown, or was she lost in the emotional reverberations of her unsuccessful bout with love? For her sake, he hoped the Crown was uppermost, but he knew better; he also knew there was nothing he could do about it. It would be a breach of Vulcan propriety to inquire into her present state of mind and offer help unbidden. Still, he felt this nagging impulse to impose aid, whether she wanted it or not. Such action on his part would be clearly unacceptable and he distastefully attributed the impulse to his recent overexposure to McCoy's unbridled emotionalism.
Meanwhile, McCoy's subconscious continued scolding him. Why
couldn't you have kept your big mouth shut for a while longer? Would it have hurt so much? You must be getting old -- and senile. Either that or the older you get, the stupider you get. Self-flagellation couldn't actually accomplish anything -- the damage could not be undone, not in time to help at all. But making himself feel as badly as possible also made him feel just a bit better.
Kailyn herself was a mass of confusion. Fear, bitterness, and rage struggled for preeminence. She was angry at herself for misjudging McCoy's interest in her, and for putting him in such an awkward position. She was furious at him for not loving her, and was torn between a desire for revenge and the awareness that it was a purely childish reaction. She wanted to show how adult she could be, how willing to forgive and forget -- but she also wanted to hurt the person who had hurt her . . . or who had caused her to hurt herself . .  or who had let her hurt herself. She wasn't sure which . . .
Fleetingly, she thought of whirling in her tracks, and pushing McCoy over the trail's edge -- then throwing herself over after him. How melodramatic.
In truth, she didn't know what she wanted -- except peace in her heart and she had no idea how to find it. Maybe it would come with the Crown.
The Crown. . . . She had seen it, as a very small child, on just a few ceremonial occasions. She tried to recall what it looked like, its shape and size, how it felt in her hands, but she couldn't. All she had were pieces of images, glimpses of a thing of wonder through the eyes of the child she'd been.
What would the Power of Times be like, if she had it? Was it something she'd be able to feel, physically; would it be pleasant, or frightening? Sunlight could soothe or burn; wind could come as a breeze or a gale. Would the Power be double-edged, like those
forces of nature? Or would it come forth only before the mind's eye? Would it change her?
Please, let it change me, she wished fervently. Let it make me all the things I'm not: . . . strong . . . wise . . . worldly . . . worthy of being loved.
But at the same time, she was afraid of being changed by something outside herself. Would the Power invade her like a thing from the night, some creature of evil -- was that how the Power worked? Was it a force she would have to battle, and if she won, would she then be accepted as heir to the Covenant? If that was the way, what if she lost? She would not be able to rule . . . and what would be left of her, of Kailyn?
No . . . the Power must be a force of goodness and light. It suddenly struck her that in all their years together, all the hours and days spent learning what her father had to teach, he had never given her a clear picture of this Power of Times. Why hadn't he? All at once, she felt betrayed. How could Father have failed me like that?
She answered herself -- he wouldn't have. If he had been able to show her, in words, what the Power was like, he would have done it. Even after a lifetime with this odd thing, this Power, as a part of you, you still can't describe it to someone else?
She sighed aloud -- if that were true, then how would she ever know, without doubts, that she had it?
Of course the Crown would tell her for now, but what about forever?
It was all so elusive. Like love. She glanced back at McCoy, his face a gray mask of sadness. Kailyn felt a compulsion to tell him it was all right not to love her -- but it wasn't all right. She wanted him to love her -- didn't she? Oh, I don't know what I want. She groaned softly, then turned bright red when Frin, the taller guide,
looked back sharply to see if she was in distress. She smiled quickly at him; reassured, he went back to watching the trail.

When the young Kinarri reached a narrowing of the trail with a stone arch across the path, they stopped, and Shirn stepped to the front. He exchanged a few words with his nephews and took the lead himself. They passed through the arch, which Spock stopped to examine briefly as McCoy looked over his shoulder.
"Fascinating. This is not manmade."
"It looks almost like a doorway."
And indeed it was, for the trail, which had risen only gently for the last hour, suddenly turned steeply upward. What had been a hike became a genuine climb, and McCoy grunted as he tried to keep up. Safety ropes had been looped around everyone's waist, and Spock helped the doctor in a number of places where finger- and toe-holds were next to nonexistent.
Finally, they reached a flat overlook, and Shirn signaled a halt. Thankfully, McCoy flopped to the ground and doubled himself over, trying to catch his breath.
"From here," said Shirn, "I must take Kailyn alone." 
"Wait a minute," McCoy wheezed. A coughing fit enveloped him, and Spock leaned over to offer a steadying hand.
"Why are we not able to accompany Kailyn?" Spock asked. 
"Because that is what her father requested."
"But we came all this way -- " McCoy began.
Kailyn cut him off. "This is our way. My father told me I'd have you with me until the last moments. It's something I have to do on my own." While she spoke, she avoided McCoys eyes.
He watched helplessly as the safety ropes were detached. Kailyn and Shirn remained linked, and they climbed a steep precipice, disappearing
disappearing over the top. McCoy staggered to his feet and Poder placed a powerful hand on his arm. To help me or stop me? McCoy wondered.
Spock came over to relieve the young guide and eased McCoy down on a flat boulder.
"We just can't let her go like that, Spock."
"We have very little choice."
"Never mind that she needs our support. It's got to be dangerous. Shirn's not exactly a spring chicken. What if something happens to him, or to her? I -- "
"I know you are worried, Doctor. I, too, am concerned. Logically, this is not the best method." 
McCoy looked searchingly at the Vulcan. Of course, the face revealed nothing; but McCoy believed what he sensed -- a texture in the voice he'd only rarely heard, a real warmth. He wanted to thank Spock -- but there was nothing worse than an embarrassed Vulcan, so he kept quiet.

This was no easy trail. Kailyn wondered if humanoid footprints had been made here since the Crown was hidden all those years ago. Her fingers and toes ached from gripping cracks and ledges that seemed too small and weak to hold the weight of a person.
"Don't look down," Shirn warned, from above her.
"Should I look up?"
"Only as far as my feet. I'll worry about what's ahead." 
"But I -- "
Her words were swallowed in a breathless scream as the outcropping under her feet broke away with a sickening crack. Pebbles clattered down the cliff face and Kailyn dangled by the safety rope. The
scream stopped as soon as she gulped a mouthful of cold air, and Shirn calmed her quickly.
"I've got you. Don't struggle. Be still, Kailyn." 
She felt the rope tighten around her middle. It squeezed tight enough to cause pain, but she remained quiet.
"Reach up with your hands, child. Don't try to pull -- just steady yourself. Press gently on that sharp rock. That's the one."
Without extra motion, she did as she was told. The sharp rock was solid.
"All right. Now, put your foot in that crevice."
The foot obeyed, as if by itself. The left foot followed. The rope made her feel secure now, and a moment later, she leaned close to Shirn at the top of what she now realized was a sheer stone face at the very peak of the mountain. And suddenly, the land around them was nearly flat.
Virgin snow carpeted this eerie white world above the clouds. Harsh sunlight flooded straight down, and it was hard to judge distances. She gave her hand to Shirn, and the old man seemed to walk aimlessly. Tagging along like a lost child, Kailyn glanced all around the alien landscape. The rest of this planet had been rugged and dangerous, but not totally unlike Orand or Shad. But the mountaintop was blank, featureless, as if the creators of this world had run out of things to put here. Perhaps they suspected no one would ever come to a place so high and desolate. Or had it been intentional, a respite from the turmoil of nature's children -- the wind and rain, the land, the water, the people and animals all jealously fighting for predominance.
But on this summit, there was no sound, no voice, no fang or spear, no footfall save those of Shirn and herself. There was only light, the purest force, the beginning of Creation . . .
. . . And Iyan, God among Gods, lit the stars, one by one, the Book of Shad recorded. And when they were lit, Iyan was happy. For now in the light of glory, He could make the places and the creatures that would live among them. "I have made the light, given unto the stars. They will burn and die, but in living will create new stars. When one dies, I will light another, and never again will there be darkness unto the Universe." Iyan saw the light and it was good . . .
Light, thought Kailyn, recalling the legend of the holy book
"We're here," said Shirn.
Kailyn blinked, realizing where she was. Before them was a hump of snow-covered rock, with an opening that angled underground.
"Are you ready?"
Kailyn nodded, and Shirn entered first. She lifted her eyes and gazed at the sun for a last look. Even stars died, but while they lived, they gave life. While Kailyn lived, what would she give to the universe, to her world, her people? It was time to find out.

The tunnel wound into the great mountain. Shirn lit the way with one of the lanterns salvaged from the Galileo.
"It's warm in here," Kailyn said after a few minutes. "Not what I expected being inside a mountain like this."
"This is a volcano -- but don't worry. It hasn't erupted in recorded history. Perhaps it will someday. For now, it just produces heat and hot springs."
A bead of perspiration coursed down Kailyn's brow, and they took their parkas off.
"How far have we gone?" she asked.
"Not very. It seems longer because of the darkness." 
A moment later, they came to the tunnel's end -- a dome-shaped grotto with moisture dripping from the ceiling and a carpet of moss
covering the floor and creeping up the walls. Shirn rested the electro-lantern on a large rock and went directly to a nook in the wall. He withdrew something wrapped in a shimmering metallic cloth and brought it over to Kailyn. She looked at him questioningly.
"Open it, Kailyn."
Mesmerized, she carefully spread the corners of the wrapping and beheld the Crown of Shad.
It was not spectacularly jewel-encrusted or garish. In its simplicity, it was a classic work of art, and would have been even if it were not a sacred Crown. A simple silver headband, still shiny after all these years waiting at the top of the mountain. It had four crests, one on each side, signifying the four directions and the four gods of Shaddan lore. At the base of the front crest, symbolic of Iyan, God among Gods, were the two crystals of the Covenant. Five hundreds years of order, peace, and prosperity had rested on the meaning and belief behind those crystals, as the future did now.
The crystals were multifaceted, and each polished surface was pentagonal. Though they were only an inch or so in diameter, the depth of the foggy interiors seemed great, as if each was a window upon some unnamed elsewhere and otherwhen. Kailyn tipped the Crown and the fog swirled, like the snowy confetti inside a liquid-filled children's toy. The fog roiled within the crystals, a smoky mixture of browns and grays.
Kailyn seemed paralyzed, as she stared at the silvery object in her small hands. Everything that had transpired since the departure from Orand raced through her mind, a jumble of events unfolding and meshing together like the shapes in a kaleidoscope. Somehow, the pieces fit, through sweep and drift, to finally lead her to this spot and moment.
"Say your prayer, and put on the Crown, my child."
Kailyn nodded obediently. Then she knelt on the soft green moss and faced -- which direction? She'd lost track and she blushed.
"Which way is south?" she asked, for south was where the sun of Shad rose, and the direction of Iyan.
Shirn smiled and turned her to face south. She murmured the prayer her father had taught her many years before, in preparation for this day.
"I pray for guidance, that I may follow the path of the gods, and of my fathers and mothers, that I may be a true daughter of the Covenant, that I may lead our people always in light and never darkness. Thanks be to Iyan, and my father and mother."
Her lips were dry and her throat felt like cotton as she swallowed. Her heart began to pound and her hands trembled ever so slightly as they clutched the Crown at her breast. She wanted Shirn to tell her what to do, but the old herdsman had stepped back into the shadows behind her.
Slowly, she lifted the Crown over her head, her melancholy eyes rising to follow it. Then she lowered it, closer and closer to her hair.

"Dammit, Spock," McCoy railed, "I knew we should've gone with them."
He had long since regained his strength and he paced round and round the overlook. The sun, which had been straight overhead when Kailyn and Shirn left for the last leg of the journey, was on the downhill slide toward its evening horizon. Spock sat impassively on the flat rock, while Frin and Poder alternately chatted quietly to each other and stared in boredom out over the adjacent mountains.
"Doctor, we had no choice in the matter. Meanwhile, you have been walking so continuously up here that you will be too exhausted to make the descent."
"Oh I'll make it all right. This is just training. God knows I've gotten more exercise on this trip than I've had in the last twenty years of my life. But that's not going to get my mind off how mad I am. If I hadn't been at death's door when Shirn took her away, I'd have fought those young bucks myself if I had to -- "
Spock abruptly swiveled and looked past McCoy, but the doctor was too busy to notice. He continued berating himself, Shirn, Spock, and the young guides for the whole situation.
"Doctor . . ." said the first officer emphatically. 
McCoy finally looked at the Vulcan, then spun around to see Kailyn and Shirn climbing back down the last rocks. He rushed over to greet them, to hug Kailyn -- but he stopped short and his ear-to-ear grin faded when the Crown Princess reached bottom. Her face was blank, her eyes red-rimmed. He hadn't seen her like that since her father's medical crisis back aboard the Enterprise. Not even his rejection of her love had drained her so thoroughly. He felt chilled, far more than the weather warranted.
"What happened?"
Kailyn looked up at him. New tears filled her eyes. "I failed." She threw herself against McCoy and cried into the soft fur of his parka.
The doctor kept his face close alongside hers. He didn't want anyone to see that he was crying, too.
Chapter Twenty
Spock and Shirn huddled at the edge of the overlook, and it was clear that the old chieftain was deeply distraught; but at the same time, he was adamant -- the Crown of Shad would not be going down the mountain with them.
"I am sorrier than you can ever know, Mr. Spock. I wanted her to succeed, as if she were my own child. But the Power seems beyond her."
"Seems?"
"She was able to clear the crystals slightly, but not completely. I gave her three chances -- that's why we were gone so long. I tried to calm her, allay her fears as best I could . . ."
"I am sure you did, but her failure does not then appear to be a conclusive one."
"There is no room for degree in this," Shirn stated sadly. "I swore to King Stevvin eighteen years ago that I would uphold his law."

The trip back down to the herders' plateau was much easier than the ascent, and it was made in a hurry before night could settle and bring out the prowling zanigrets. But it seemed twice as long to McCoy, in his funereal mood. He'd wanted to walk with Kailyn, but she'd asked to be left alone, an outcast -- so he followed a few steps behind.
Once they reached the caves, he overruled her protests and ordered her to rest -- with a sedative to back him up. He and Spock left her in seclusion and repaired to the scroll room.
"It was all my fault," McCoy said, is face buried in his hands. He sat crumpled on a corner rug, all elbows and knees, like a broken marionette haphazardly discarded by an uncaring puppeteer. "I'm the worst thing that ever happened to that girl, Spock. I should be courtmartialed for interfering with the mission."
"Doctor, you are being unnecessarily punitive in your self-appraisal."
"Dammit, call a spade a spade," McCoy said harshly. "I was sent along to help, to care for Kailyn's choriocytosis -- "
"Which you did admirably. Or have you forgotten that you saved her life once."
"Saved it for what? So I could mess up her psyche so much that she couldn't handle the test of the Crown?"
"We have no proof that she would have been able to perform any more effectively in any case. We all expressed doubts about her maturity and motivation when we first met her and evaluated her."
"But I thought she'd gotten over all that."
"Perhaps it was only wishful thinking. You humans are prone to it," Spock said gently.
But McCoy was too deep in his own misery to even muster a smile. All he could do was shake his head. "I'm supposed to be a psychiatric specialist. I saw what was coming, and I didn't do anything to stop it. I was warned. Christine saw it, Jim saw it, even you did -- and I yelled at everybody to stay the hell out of my life, that I was a big boy and could take care of myself."
"The mind is not an exact device. It is susceptible to errors in action and perception -- "
"And I made every error in the book." He closed his eyes. "All because I was feelin' so damn sorry for myself, because I felt old. Well, everyone gets old. Why am I so pigheaded that I can't deal with it?"
"Kailyn was not in love with you because you felt, as you phrase it, old -- she loved you because of what she saw in you."
"Yeah -- a damned fool."
"No . . . a caring individual who took a deep interest in her, far beyond the needs of a military mission."
"And look at the price she paid because of me."
"Did she not also gain things of great value?"
"Like what?"
"The respect and affection of people who she had never before met . . . the ability to overcome great obstacles in striving toward a goal -- "
"Don't you understand?" McCoy cried. "She didn't reach that goal, all because of me. I destroyed not only a young girl's life, but the future of a whole planet. Shad is doomed to more civil war because I had to satisfy my own stupid vanity. If that doesn't deserve a court-martial, I don't know what does. I want you to report that."
Spock fixed McCoy with piercing eyes, forcing the surgeon to look at him. "Star Fleet employs living beings, flesh-and-blood creatures with -- "
"All the weaknesses that flesh is heir to," McCoy quoted bitterly.
"Yes. Command expects the best possible performance from its officers -- no more, no less. As far as my report is concerned, Doctor, that is what you contributed to this mission."
"Then if this is the best I can do, I don't even deserve to be a doctor."
Spock was beginning to understand the human emotion of exasperation. McCoy was so bent on picturing himself as a despicable worm, there seemed no way to fish him from his pool of self-pity.
"I had not decided whether to inform you of this, but since you seem determined to belittle yourself far out of proportion to your -- "
"Inform me of what?"
"What Shirn told me on the mountaintop."
Finally, McCoy's attention turned away from his self-directed character assassination.
"What are you talking about, Spock?"
"When Kailyn put the crown on, she did manage to clear the crystals slightly."

"She deserves that Crown," McCoy hissed.
Shirn sat on the steps of the main altar, trying to remain calm and steady.
"She did not do what she had to do. Why should she be rewarded for that?"
"Because this is not a normal situation! She's not succeeding to the throne in an orderly way like her father did and the Kings and Queens before him."
"I know that, Dr. McCoy -- "
"Then why won't you take into consideration?"
"Because I can't. This matter isn't up to me."
"It is now. If you let her take the Crown, no one would ever know what happened up on that mountain."
"Listen to yourself," Shirn thundered. "Listen to the foolish thing you've said. No one would know? She would know. What if I let her take the Crown and she went back to Shad? What if they asked
her to demonstrate that she has the Power -- when she doesn't? Even worse, what if she became Queen and had neither the wisdom nor maturity to lead, nor whatever mystical aid the Power can offer? Think about these thing before you ask me to break an oath to Kailyn's father, an oath I swore on this very altar, before his gods and mine."
The Kinarri chieftain was seething, and McCoy knew he had pushed him too far -- but it was also too far to apologize. Not now. He turned and left the main cave as quickly as he could, the clicking of his boots on the rocky floor the only sound. It echoed off the ceiling and walls and lingered after McCoy was gone.

The hours crawled by. It would be another day before the Enterprise might -- might -- reach Sigma 1212. Meanwhile, another sleepless night lay ahead. That McCoy could not face. For now, he seemed to be running out of refuge. Kailyn was still sleeping in the smaller chamber, and Shirn was not likely to desire his company after their confrontation at the altar. Frankly, McCoy didn't want his own company. The only companion he hadn't alienated -- lately -- was Spock.
The Vulcan glanced up from the scroll he'd been taping on his tricorder. McCoy sidled into the room, feeling like a supposedly beneficial insect -- the kind no one really wants around but no one wants to swat either.
"Mind if I join you, Spock?"
With a nod from the first officer, he sat on the rug and glanced at the roll of parchment.
"What's that you're reading?"
"Nothing you would find of interest. Simple agricultural records. Besides, I assume you did not come in here to engage in research." 
A half-dozen snappy comebacks suggested themselves, but
McCoy couldn't even mount a halfhearted effort to fire them off. "You're right," he sighed.
"No other remarks?"
"Nope. You seem to be the last person on Sigma who'll stay in the same room with me, so I'd better not press my luck."
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Me? No. But you can help Kailyn. I know she needs somebody to talk to, but I think I eliminated myself from contention. Would you -- ?"
Spock was already on his feet. "Of course, Doctor. I doubt I could ever replace you as a father confessor, but I shall do my best." 
"Thanks, Spock." For everything.
But Kailyn was not in the sleeping chamber. Without a word to alarm anyone else, Spock quietly left the caves and ventured outside phaser in hand and a cautious eye roving in search of trouble.
Fortunately, Kailyn was easy to find, standing at the wall overlooking the dark valley pastures. She neither started nor turned when she heard Spock's voice behind her.
"Why are you outside of the caves? You know of the dangers out here."
"That's why I'm here," she said flatly. "I want to die." 
Spock stood beside her. They were away from the cliffs and relatively safe from any animal attacks. Since she appeared more willing to talk under the screen of nighttime darkness than within the confines of the cavern, he made no attempt to get her to go back in. "Do you really want that?" 
She kept her eyes focused on some distant star. "What do I have to live for?"
"Why do you wish to forfeit your life at such a young age?"
"Because, at such a young age, I've failed at everything of importance
importance, and disappointed everyone who's ever cared about me or meant anything to me."
"No one has handed down such harsh judgment upon you, Kailyn."
"No one has to. I may be a child, but I'm aware enough to know that I let you and Dr. McCoy down, and Shirn, too. And I've destroyed the dreams my father had for our planet . . . and finally, that means a whole world will suffer because of me."
"Odd. Dr. McCoy lays claim to many of the same failures as you."
At that, she turned, mortified. "He does? Why?"
"He believes he is to blame for your self-described failure today."
It's my own fault."
"Has it occurred to you that no one is at fault?"
Kailyn stared at him, her whole face a question. "How could it be nobody's fault?"
"No one sabotaged your effort today -- not Dr. McCoy, nor yourself. The same events might have transpired regardless of the circumstances. You haven't let anyone down -- except perhaps yourself."
She lowered her eyes, but said nothing.
"I assume I still have your attention?"
She nodded, her face still turned down.
"Good. Please understand -- this is not a lecture. I have no intention of telling you what to do. But there are certain important factors you should consider and I shall endeavor to point them out. First, you were given a task -- an immense task for one so young -- with very little preparation."
"But it had to be that way, Mr. Spock."
"I am aware of that, and I am glad you accept that no one was to blame for that unfortunate situation."
Spock paused, and his voice softened, losing its pedantic edge. "Most serious of all, you were forced to face something very complex and mysterious in a new, intensive way."
"What?"
"Yourself." He steeled himself for a task he preferred to avoid -- self-revelation. "I understand, better than you can imagine. When I was a boy on Vulcan, I led a childhood very different from most children, as you did."
"Why?"
He was encouraged that she was looking at him now, and asking questions. "Because I am half-human -- my mother was from Earth. Though I appear outwardly to be a full-blooded Vulcan, my emotional development was a process of extreme conflict. All Vulcan boys must face the kahs-wan, a test of physical stamina and wits that marks the passing from childhood to maturity. For me, the kahs-wan ordeal was even more important -- it was the time when I had to choose between human and Vulcan life paths. Do you know how different they are?"
"Yes. But why are you telling me this?"
"You and I talked about handicaps last night. Whether I chose to live as an Earth human or as a Vulcan, my hybrid heritage would present me with a handicap of sorts. My mother once told me how much pain it caused her to know that I would never be fully at home on Earth or Vulcan." 
"Is that why you became a Star Fleet officer?"
"I suppose it is a major reason."
"It's strange that on a planet where logic is so important, the fact that you were half-human would be a stigma."
"Vulcans do not claim to be infallibly logical. Unfortunately, we
do maintain some residual emotional responses. I was a victim of one -- a remnant of bigotry."
"But what made it a handicap?"
"My obviously Vulcan appearance would have set me apart on Earth, and my human blood causes urges and impulses that are a constant irritant to a Vulcan. When I allow a human characteristic to come to the fore and be publicly displayed, I may feel that I have failed in my effort to be a Vulcan."
"But you're not a machine. You're bound to have lapses. Nobody's perfect . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she took a deep breath. 
"That was a very mature observation, Kailyn. I had to realize very early in my life that one often fails to measure up to one's own ideals. Once I reached that understanding, I found relative peace."
"Then what's the point of having goals if you don't reach them?"
"Not reaching a goal on a given day does not preclude reaching it tomorrow, or next year."
"But if I don't have the Power today, I . . . I'll never have it," she said in a trembling voice.
"That may be true, but you still have a whole life to live. One failure does not mean all is lost. Let it be motivation to improve, to deliver optimum performance in your next undertaking, whatever it may be -- not to give up and quit trying."
Her lower lip quivered and she looked up at him. "Is it all right to hug a Vulcan?"
He nodded formally, and very carefully she put her arms around his shoulders, barely squeezing. He was amused by her caution, as if she were afraid of violating some taboo. After a few moments, he could feel her rapid heartbeat slow down a little. He took her small, cold hand in his own, and they returned to the cave.
McCoy slept because he was exhausted. Spock slept because his bio-feedback told him he needed this night of rest to maintain a peak of efficiency. Kailyn did not sleep.
It was just an old parental reflex, rekindled since Kailyn had been with them. In the middle of the night, McCoy rolled over for a one-eyed bed-check, saw Spock sleeping noiselessly -- and Kailyn's mat empty.
He sat up like a shot, stumbled out of the bedroll, and shook Spock, who was alert and fully awake in a second. It was clear almost immediately that Kailyn had not simply wandered to another chamber. Her parka was nowhere to be found. The supply pouch was taken, along with a phaser, a vial of holulin, and a hypo.
"She went back up the mountain, Spock -- and we've got to go after her."
"I wonder how long ago she departed?"
"At most two hours -- that was the last time I woke up and she was still in bed. Come on."
McCoy couldn't get his parka on fast enough. He knew she'd gone back to confront the Crown -- and herself -- one more time. He also knew she'd had enough of a head star that by the time they caught up, she could already have succeeded -- or died.
Chapter Twenty-one
Kailyn kept the beam from the elctro-lantern sweeping along the trail and up the overhanging cliffs, hoping the light would give pause to any beast contemplating attack. The lower portion of the climb presented little difficulty, but as the altitude increased so did the winds. She pulled her hood tight around her face; that, and the blowing snow, made visibility next to nothing.
She thought of turning back. She knew she was risking her life, that she might never reach the cave at the top of the mountain. But try as she might, she couldn't accept life without this wild stab at fulfilling a destiny woven so deeply into her soul. She knew that everything Spock had said to her was true and right, but it all paled next to the Crown and the Covenant. She was born to tread that one road out of all the infinite routes possible through time and space. So many had sacrificed pieces of themselves, put their lives on the line so she could find that road -- she was the focal point, and the light of five hundred years of succession blinded her to any alternatives. For Kailyn, there was only one choice.
And now, there was also a growing sense of unease, a tightness in her gut. At first she dismissed it as a fear of the mind, a demon of doubt playing tricks on her. But then the weakness, the tingling, spread. The demon was real all right, and his icy touch stole down her legs and arms.
Kailyn stumbled, catching herself on the edge of the trail, one foot dangling over the side. She tried to remember what McCoy had taught her about choriocytosis, and she matched up the symptoms. Crouching in case she lost her balance again, she wobbled ahead and rolled onto her side under a protective ledge. Her head was spinning, but she saw the chunk of snow fall on the trail a few yards away. Her hand found the phaser pistol and she leaned a few inches forward. The night was shattered by the roar of the zanigret.
She flashed the lantern out, and the beast leaped from above, charging toward her. She squeezed, and the phaser beam hit it square on the chest. The great jaw opened wide, fangs dripping frothy spittle, and it fell flat, as if its legs had been sawed off in an instant. It was dead, no more than fifteen feet away.
Kailyn tried to put the phaser back into her pocket, but it slipped from her hand and buried itself in the snow. She crawled back under the ledge. The white mountain cat seemed to waver as she stared at it -- what was happening to it?
Nothing . . . it's you. She held her hand up before her face and saw five fingers multiplying first to ten, then fifteen, then more than she could count. They seemed part of someone else's hand, distant and cold. She commanded them to clench, and after an alarming delay, they obeyed, folding into a loose grouping without strength.
Pass out soon . . . freeze to death . . . another zanigret comes along to eat. Got a few minutes left, then good-bye, Kailyn. Need a shot . . .
The voice echoing unevenly in her skull had to be her own, though she fancied it coming from the dead animal glaring at her with eyes wide and fangs outstretched. Was she talking inside her head or outside? Can't tell.
Can't do it, can't do it, the voice chanted mockingly. Can't give
the shot . . . afraid to. Can't do what you never did before. Can't, can't, can't. . . .
She shook her head violently, trying to bounce the voice loose from the spot where it had dug its unyielding claws into her brain. But the voice only sang more insistently. She stopped listening. Hands fumbled with the pouch, found the medikit. Her hands? Who else's? Hypo held up before her eyes. Three hypos before her eyes. One of them must be real, she thought with a fatalistic shrug.
The hands unbuttoned the parka, then slid aside the clothing underneath. Bare skin, mottled red as soon as the cold hit it. Goose bumps. The hands chose a spot beside her navel and pressed the air-jet tip of the hypo against it.
Can't do it, the voice jabbered.
"Can do it," Kailyn muttered. With great effort, she pushed the plunger and the device hissed its preset load of holulin into her muscle tissue.
A fainting sensation was replaced by a calming. The whirlwind inside her head receded as the drug did its work. And she let out a long, long breath -- one it seemed she'd been holding all her life. A wave of relief washed over her and she felt free and powerful. The hands clutching the hypo once again belonged to her, and . . . Was this an after effect of the drug? She didn't care -- all that mattered was the strength she felt newly flowing from within. Eagerly, she gathered herself together and stepped out onto the trail again.
The only witness was the dead zanigret, and it watched with unblinking eyes as she went. Fifteen feet from its head, the forgotten phaser pistol lay in the snow.
"Doctor, stop and rest," Spock shouted over the howl of the wind.
"No time," McCoy called back. His foot hit an icy patch and he sprawled backward.
Spock's strong grip lifted him quickly. "Doctor -- " he began in a warning tone.
McCoy shook his head. "I'm all right -- but she may not be." He peered ahead into the snow pirouetting through the lantern beam. "What's up ahead?"
Warily, they approached a dark mound blocking the path. Spock flashed the light over it -- a pile of loose snow glimmered back. "It would seem to be a small avalanche."
He moved the light up to where the slide had begun; it was a smooth line from the cliff above down over the precipice. Spock flipped open the tricorder slung over his shoulder.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking for a body," Spock answered grimly.
McCoy held his breath until Spock closed the scanner. "Anything?"
"Negative. I had not realized these rock and snow formations were so unstable."
"Maybe the wind did it."
"Whatever the cause, we must proceed with extreme caution."
They picked their way through the blockage and moved ahead. Up the trail, McCoy stepped on something soft underneath the falling and blowing snow. His heart skipped a beat and he stumbled back; Spock caught him. 
"There's something buried there," he said through ashen lips. He leaned back against the inner wall as Spock knelt to brush away the snow from whatever was lying under it.
The back leg with its vicious talons was all they needed to see, but McCoy's sigh of relief was far from complete -- the zanigret carcass only compounded his sense of foreboding as he sidestepped around the beast, then backed away from it. A few yards ahead, he
kicked something small and hard, and inhaled suddenly.
"What now, Doctor?"
McCoy bent down and sifted the snow with his foot. He picked up the phaser and handed it to Spock.
"Well," said the Vulcan, "we know she made it this far. This phaser was likely the cause of the zanigret's death."
"Thank the lord for that, but why did she leave it behind?"
"I don't know. Do you think she would have needed a shot by now?"
"Probably." '
"What if she did not take it?"
"I don't even want to think about that."
But he did think about it -- and the awful ways Kailyn might already have died.

The lantern light flooded the steamy grotto. Kailyn lay back on the moss-covered ground, the parka folded under her head as a pillow. Through closed eyelids, the bright lantern looked like sunlight. The warmth of the air, the sweet smell of the moss, the sounds of trickling water nearby -- it all seemed like a summertime dream as she relaxed.
But this was no summer idyll; she was at the top of an arctic volcano, for one purpose. Slowly, she rolled onto her knees, then stood. The Crown was back in its niche, carefully swathed again in the woven metallic cloth. She set it on her parka and unwrapped it. Somehow, it seemed less imposing this time, as if the shine had dulled. She thought of it as a living thing that had put on its best face before, but was not prepared for such a late-night visitor to rouse it from rest.
She straightened up and held the Crown out in front of her. The
prayer . . . she murmured it quickly, then held her breath. Facing a glassy pool of water as a mirror, she placed the Crown abruptly on her head. She closed her eyes and concentrated.
The crystals ceased their inner turmoil. Kailyn bent closer to the water and looked -- they were clearing. They'd been dark and murky as a fogbound dawn; now, they turned frosty, a steely blue-gray replacing the muddied mist within. Kailyn swayed and sank to her knees; the Crown toppled to the ground. Tears ran down her cheeks as she saw that the crystals had reverted.
Her whole body slumped and she began to cry with deep, heaving sobs. Motivation to improve, said a voice, ringing in her ears. Spock's voice. She sat back on her heels and throttled the next sob as it tried to escape her throat. She reached for the Crown, and placed it on her head again. She thought about Spock and McCoy, and the tenacity they'd displayed time and again since the Galileo had left the Enterprise -- how many times she herself would have given up had the choice been hers. And her father, waiting patiently all those years for the tide of fortune to pick them up and sweep them back to Shad and peace. Shirn, and Captain Kirk, steadfast in their duties. Not a single image of the Crown intruded.
A rush of light-headedness hit her. Her breasts rose and fell as she panted for air. Another shot, another shot, the shrewish voice taunted again.
She tried to turn and lurch toward the medikit across the grotto. Her legs melted beneath her and she pitched over on her side. The Crown rolled off and she reached for it, dragging it before her eyes.
The crystals were clear. The dark haze had given way to a pearly azure and she could see through them. She sat up and gazed in wonder around the cave, at the moss and rock. Everything looked sky-blue through the crystalline lenses. Magically, her breathing
became strong and regular. Her heart soared and she cried out triumphantly. She had won.

*  *  *

Orange and pink streaked the indigo sky as the first glimmerings of dawn tinted the Kinarr mountain range. Spock and McCoy hauled themselves up over the last ridge and stood wearily at the top of the world. The wind puffed occasionally, and footprints were still visible under the fresh cover of morning snow.
Following the tracks, they found the opening into the mountain. From light back into darkness, the beam led the way, McCoy prayed they'd find Kailyn sleeping inside, but didn't expect to.
"Oh, my god," he breathed when they entered the dead-end grotto. Kailyn lay motionless on the ground, curled up on her parka. McCoy stepped over and knelt uncertainly.
"Kailyn . . .?" he whispered.
She turned over, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and smiled. Then she took the Crown from its cover and ceremoniously set it upon her head. The crystals sparkled clear and blue.
Wordlessly, McCoy hugged her harder than he'd ever hugged anyone in his life.
"Your father would be proud," said Spock.
Kailyn's dewy eyes beckoned him, and at last he was drawn into the embrace.
Chapter Twenty-two
Shirn paced along the cobblestones beneath a cloud-powdered midmorning sky, his feet tracing the groove worn by years of sheep hooves walking to and from the pastures. A shout from a lookout came down the stone steps, and the old herdsman peered up, shading his eyes against the reflections off the snow. He could discern three people walking slowly down and he came to meet them at the bottom.
"I should have you flogged," he snorted, "but your faces tell me I would be flogging the next Queen of Shad if I did."
Kailyn skipped off the last step and threw her arms around Shirn. The careful climb from the mountaintop had done nothing to quench her euphoria.
"You did a foolish thing going back there yourself," he said reproachfully.
"But is not the nature of leadership to occasionally do things others consider foolhardy?" said Spock.
With a wry smile, Shirn had to nod. "Yes, yes, I suppose so. You must all be tired. You didn't get much sleep last night. Come inside and rest. When you've caught up -- we'll tire you out all over again with a celebration all night tonight." 
He spread his arms and led them toward the caves.
"Two feasts in short order!" cried Shirn, his voice reverberating through the packed eating hall. He hoisted a silvery goblet and everyone did the same. "What a pleasure! Drink, my friends and kin!"
Glasses and cups tipped bottoms up, and trays of freshly prepared food were brought in, dwarfing even the religious celebration of just a couple of nights before.
"You folks sure know how to throw a party," McCoy chuckled, digging in heartily. "I'll miss this when we're back on that dull starship." He sighed. "Spock, do you think the Enterprise'll find us up here?
"Most likely."
"Too bad . . ."
"Doctor, I have every expectation that by this time tomorrow, we shall be well on our way to Shad."
"And then you'll finally be rid of me," said Kailyn. "No more babysitting."
McCoy grinned like a farmboy playing hooky. "You don't need a babysitter, young lady. You've proven that."
"Weren't you afraid when the zanigret attacked?" asked Shirn seriously.
"If I hadn't been on the verge of a fainting spell I, would have been. It's lucky I wasn't thinking very straight."
"Yeah." McCoy drawled, "but if that cat had jumped you two minutes later, you wouldn't have been able to shoot straight."
"I don't think I did shoot straight. How else could I have hit it?"
"Look at this -- at her age, and she's already telling tall stories," McCoy said with a laugh.
Echoes of shouting intruded from the main cavern, and Shirn's ears perked up. A moment later, Frin, the young mountain guide, rushed in with a fearful female companion clinging to his hand. He
squatted next to the old chieftain and whispered in his ear.
"Uncle, you'd better come out."
"What's going on?"
'Traders from the lowlands have arrived -- "
"So deal with them -- "
"But they have a slave to trade, Uncle."
"We don't need slaves. We -- "
"She's making much noise. They refuse to take her back with them. If we don't trade for her, they threaten to slash her throat right here."
Shirn made a disgusted face and Frin helped him to his feet. "Excuse me, my friends. These lowland tribesmen have a way of arriving at just the wrong time to sell us just the wrong thing. Enjoy yourselves and I'll return as soon as I send them on their way, or at least shut them up for the night."
As Shirn and Frin left the dining cave, Spock got up to follow. McCoy grabbed his wrist. "Where are you going?"
"To satisfy my curiosity."
McCoy shrugged, and he and Kailyn wandered after Spock. Out in the large central chamber, the chaotic shouting partly resolved into a growling alien tongue that made McCoy shiver. He gripped Spock's shoulder.
"They're the ones who captured us." He drew back into the shadows and tried to pull Spock and Kailyn with him, but the Vulcan pressed forward. Several Kinarri were on the fringes of the free-for-all, trying to make peace. And in the center, a hoarse female voice roared over all of them. 
"You filthy swine! You'll pay for this brutality! You animals . . . putrid scum!"
As Spock ventured closer, he could only see that she was kicking
and biting anyone who tried to subdue her.
"My people will come back and burn you to the ground, all of you! We'll torture every last one -- you'll dread the day you were born! You can't treat a Klingon this way!"
"A Klingon?" exclaimed McCoy.
"Fascinating."
At last, four of the huge hunters, with the help of several Kinarri hands, caught Kera's feet in a rope. They trussed her like a wild boar and threw her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her and forcing her into momentary silence. The old hunter with the wild silver hair stood over her, shaking his head in a mixture of anger and rueful cynicism. It appeared his luck with live merchandise had gotten no better.
A crowd had begun to gather as people poked out of the feast to see what the commotion was. Spock found Shirn off to one side. The chieftain was not happy.
"Why do they bring things like this to our domain?" he lamented. "We've told them time and time again we have no use for -- "
"Purchase this slave," said Spock quietly.
Shirn did a double-take. "Why?"
"She can be of use to us."
"As a slave?" Shirn's countenance revealed his astonishment.
"No. As a source of information. She is a Klingon, and undoubtedly part of a larger force sent to sabotage our mission, perhaps to kill us and Kailyn and steal the Crown."
"As you wish, Mr. Spock."
Shirn waded back into the crowd to authorize the trade, and Spock, McCoy, and Kailyn slipped back to the feast, avoiding the silver-haired hunter.
"Good," said McCoy. "I'd hate to see a custody fight over us."

For the first time in days, the silver-haired hunter was happy. Not only had he gotten rid of that shrieking, wild-animal female, but he'd finally gotten his shiny-tipped spear. He could hunt better for simple animal animals now, and he hoped bad fortune would follow another hunter for some time, keeping slaves as far away from him as the sun was from the moons. . . .

"Your suspicions were right," Shirn said as he took his place on the dinner rug again.
"The hunters were willing to talk to you? asked Spock. 
"Oh, yes, yes. The leader was so happy to get a steel-pointed spear, he would've gladly stayed and talked all night. But their language makes my brain hurt."
"You deal with these people often?" said McCoy.
"They come up now and again, to trade furs and roots and wooden handiwork. We don't have much wood up here, so the trade is useful. We give them sheep wool and meat, and some modern tools we get from interstellar traders that come by."
"What of the Klingon?" said Spock. "How did they capture her?"
"They were out on a morning foray, much like when they found you. She was lost in the forest, dazed. She was so easy to capture, they were all the more shocked when she regained her strength and fought like a cornered zanigret."
"An apt description."
"She was so beaten and bruised," said McCoy. "Did they do that to her?"
Spock turned an inquiring eyebrow toward him. "Why are you
suddenly concerned with the welfare of a Klingon intelligence agent?"
"It's just that those hunters didn't seem brutal when they had us."
"They don't usually beat their prisoners," said Shirn. "They said they found her that way, and they found the body of a male of her kind, too, along the river."
"Must've gotten caught in one of those killer storms," McCoy mused.
"Along the river," Spock repeated, frowning.
"Is that significant?" asked Shirn.
"That's where we came down," said McCoy. "Do you think they found the shuttle wreck?"
"It is probable, since we left the automated emergency beacon on."
McCoy squinted quizzically. "How in blazes did they wind up here in the first place?"
"The only logical conclusion is that we were followed almost from the start."
"You mean since we left the Enterprise?" said Kailyn with a shiver. "How could they? This was a secret mission."
"Not so secret as we figured," said McCoy. "We aren't out of the hole yet, are we, Spock?"
"I would assume not. We must consider these possibilities. One, that the Klingons knew about the entire mission somehow, perhaps from an informant close to the King. Two, that this unfortunate Klingon spy team was not operating in a vacuum, that other Klingon support forces must be in the vicinity. Three, that the Enterprise is likely to run into further interference when it approaches this planet."
"And four, we can't count on Jim finding us here anymore," McCoy said grimly.
"It is imperative that we remove ourselves from Sigma and attempt to rendezvous with the Enterprise in space."
"But how?" asked Kailyn. "We don't have a ship."
"But the Klingons might have," said McCoy quickly.
"That," said Spock, "is our only reasonable opportunity. And if such a ship exists, it would be fairly close to the shuttlecraft."
Kailyn tugged at McCoy's sleeve. "But what if the Klingons were just dropped here by a large ship? What if they didn't land in one?"
"Then we could be in a lot of trouble."
"Shirn," Spock said, "can you guide us back to the lowlands to search for this Klingon vessel?"
"Of course. We can leave first thing in the morning. But what do I do with this slave, this Klingon wild woman?"
"I would like to question her," Spock offered.
"I mean after that. I don't want her here, and I don't want to kill her . . ."
"Ship her back to the hunters." McCoy suggested wryly. 
Shirn gave him a sour look.
"I believe the good doctor was joking, though I have never quite understood his sense of humor" Spock said. "If you can hold her here for now, when and if we meet the Enterprise, we will take her aboard as an espionage prisoner."
"I liked my idea better," McCoy pouted. "You have no sense of poetic justice, Spock."
"I suggest we get plenty of rest tonight," Shirn said, clasping his hands and yawning.
"But what about the celebration?" Kailyn asked, a bit disappointed.
"When we get back to Shad," said McCoy, "there'll be more celebrating than you'll know what to do with."
If we get back to Shad, said the ever-worried voice in his head.

Shirn and a party of ten led Spock, McCoy, and Kailyn down to the base slopes of the Kinarr Mountains. It was far easier than their original journey up to the herders' valley two days earlier, since the natives knew the shortest, least arduous route to the lowlands.
In a way, McCoy hated to go. He paused when they reached the level where Sigma's pervasive skirt of clouds swallowed up the sun and all its brightness.
"Y'know, I'd never be able to live on a world where I couldn't see the sun," he said wistfully to Shirn.
"Perhaps that's why our ancestors climbed the mountains -- they sensed that holy lands should be golden, not gray."
The caravan moved rapidly through the foothills, swinging wide of the valley clans and their hunting grounds. The raging white-water current that had nearly killed Spock now trickled gently within the hollow, wearing its placid prestorm disguise. Spock stopped to consult the maps.
"Our landing point is about one-half mile in that direction," he said, pointing east.
And so it was. They found the scattered remains of the little shuttlecraft, and McCoy felt a lump in his throat. "I don't usually get sentimental over machines, but I feel sorry for the poor thing."
"It reminds me how lucky we are to be alive," said Kailyn.
"There but for the grace of God go I," McCoy said.
"How far can you search with your little box?" asked Shirn, pointing to the tricorder.
"Several miles, depending on what it is we are searching for,"
Spock said. He activated it, and slowly rotated to cover all directions. As he did, McCoy watched over his shoulder.
"Ahh, yes, today must be our lucky day," McCoy finally said with a broad grin.
The first officer was less certain. "It would seem to be a vessel."
"Where?" said Kailyn.
"One mile due north."
At Shirn's wave, the Kinarri took the lead again. After a while, they reached a humpbacked hill -- from the crest, they saw the Klingon scout ship, resting in a forest clearing not far from the stream. McCoy shook his head in amazement.
"I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be happy to lay eyes on a Klingon ship."
"We live in strange times, Doctor," said Spock, walking down the hill.
"Was that a joke, Spock?" he called after him. From a Vulcan? Couldn't be . . .
The Kinarri were eager to explore the newfound oddity, but Spock advised caution. "We do not know definitively that there are no other Klingons awaiting the return of their comrades. Dr. McCoy and I will approach first, with our phasers. I do not want to endanger your people, Shirn. Wait until we signal that the situation is secure."
McCoy swallowed nervously, hefting the phase and testing his aim with one eye squinting. "Don't shoot until I see the whites of their eyes?"
"Shoot if you see any part of them. On stun. Ready?" 
The doctor nodded and they gingerly closed on the quiet ship. It was about the size of a shuttlecraft, though with a smaller passenger
compartment. Spock and McCoy crouched behind a low clump of bushes.
"Do we knock?" whispered McCoy.
"A direct though cautious approach seems correct."
With that, Spock slid silently alongside the vessel and flattened himself amidships, next to the closed hatch. McCoy did the same and took a mirror position across the hatch. Spock lifted his eyebrows as a signal, then swiftly reached for the door switch and twisted it. There was a vacuum whoosh and the hatch cover retracted. Trigger fingers tensed, they waited.
Then, with a powerful step, Spock vaulted into the scout ship and McCoy followed -- but there was nothing to be found, except darkness and ghostly quiet.
"How very thoughtful of the Klingons," Spock said with obvious satisfaction.
"Should we check for a parking ticket?"
"A parking ticket"
"It's an old Earth joke, Spock. Forget it."
"Please . . . expand my horizons."
McCoy sighed. In all the years he'd known Spock, he'd never gotten over a dread of having to explain colloquialisms. "See, back in the old days when everybody had private motor vehicles, they used to park them wherever they could find a space, including places they weren't allowed. So -- "
"Why did they manufacture and sell more vehicles than they had room for?"
"The free-market system -- stuff yourself till you choke."
"Highly illogical. But I still fail to understand your reference to -- "
"You didn't let me finish. The police gave summonses to violators.
They had to pay a fine, or appear in court if they wanted to fight the ticket. When the old Apollo missions went to the moon, they brought these little lunar rover cars with them, and they left them there. When we finally went back to the moon to settle down and build permanent stations, somebody went out and put parking tickets on the rovers."
"Why?"
McCoy rolled his eyes. "Because they'd been parked there for about thirty years."
Spock pursed his lips and McCoy wondered why he always went through with these explanations. "Spock, your a lousy audience."
The first officer jumped out and waved to Shirn's group on the hilltop.

The Klingon vessel proved to be in good working order, with a considerable amount of fuel left. After a cursory run-through of the control systems, Spock announced that he would have no trouble piloting the ship away from Sigma. The time had come to depart.
"We really appreciate everything you've done to help us," McCoy said to the old herdsman.
Shirn bowed his head. "I was only fulfilling a promise made a long time ago to an honorable man."
"It takes an honorable man to do that," said Spock.
"I'm just happy for you, Kailyn, that my hasty judgment didn't keep you from the Crown."
"You were only doing what my father asked of you. For that, I thank you."
Shirn looked at each of them. His eyes were wet, and he embraced Kailyn, then McCoy, and finally Spock. "May the winds of Kinarr be at your backs, always."
Spock raised his hand in the Vulcan salute. "Live long and prosper, Shirn."
"You take good care of yourself, y'hear? said McCoy in a husky voice.
Shirn gazed at the young Princess. "You will lead long and well, Kailyn."
"I hope I can do as well as you" she said softly.
Spock turned away first and climbed into the Klingon ship. McCoy came up next, and he gave Kailyn a hand. Shirn stepped back as the door hissed shut. He and his people waited until the rocket engines fired, kicking up a plume of flame and dust. The ship lifted slowly and unsteadily at first. Then it accelerated and whisked up over the hills and woodland. When he could no longer see it or its contrail, Shirn turned and headed for the sunny skies of the holy valley of Kinarr.
Chapter Twenty-three
"I'd make an awful Klingon," McCoy muttered, hunkered down in the uncomfortable scout-ship seat. "How can they torture their people by making them fly in these tiny match boxes?"
"Perhaps that accounts for Klingons' foul humor, Doctor," said Spock.
"What if there's a Klingon battle cruiser out here somewhere?" Kailyn wondered.
"Don't ask things like that," McCoy snapped. "I'd rather know where the Enterprise is."
"That is a valid concern," Spock agreed. "The ship should have arrived here almost twenty-four hours ago."
"Is it possible they left without us?" Kailyn said in a small voice.
"Unlikely. A better probability is that the captain encountered some difficulty relating to Klingon interference. We shall achieve orbit outside the planet's storm belt, and remain for a period of time. If the Enterprise does come within sensor range, we will be noticed rather quickly."
"And what if it doesn't get here after a while? said McCoy.
"When that time comes, we will evaluate our position logically, in light of whatever data we have available."

"Are we within scanning range of Sigma yet?" Kirk asked tightly.
Chekov and Sulu exchanged quick glances, and Kirk noticed. He settled back in the command seat with a wry smile. "I know . . . I just asked you that. Forgive me, Mr. Chekov."
"Yes, sir. We are almost in range. All scanners on maximum forward sweep. If there's anything out there, we'll pick it up." 
"Very well."
At moments like these, Kirk realized just how trustworthy his crew was, without exception. He'd have to let them do their jobs, and he channeled his nervous energy into tapping on his armrest control panel. As soon as there's something to report, they'll report it. . . .
Chekov tensed in his seat, eyes locked onto his readout screen. Kirk sat forward, at the edge of his chair. "Something?"
"A small vessel, sir, at the very limit. Too far off for positive identification."
"Verified, sir," said Sulu. "Moving in high planet orbit."
Kirk swiveled. "Uhura?"
"All channel open for reception, sir. We're hailing on all frequencies. No communication as yet."
"Additional sensor data, Captain," said Chekov.
"Is it the Galileo?"
Chekov hesitated just a beat, and Kirk tensed.
"Negative, sir. It's a Klingon scout vessel."
Everyone on the bridge looked quickly at the main viewscreen. The mystery ship was just a shapeless spot against the backdrop of stars and the gray face of Sigma 1212.
"That could explain why they don't want to talk to us," Kirk said grimly. "Sound Yellow Alert."
Uhura punched up the intraship channel as the wall beacon started flashing. "Yellow Alert," said the computer voice over the
speakers. "Yellow Alert -- stand by for status update."
"Sulu, cut speed for standard orbital entry," said Kirk. 
"Another problem, sir," said Sulu. "Several storms in low- and mid-orbit ranges."
"Maximum orbit, then."
"Captain," Chekov broke in, "we have another visitor." He leaned over and switched screen channels. The long, insectlike shape of a Klingon battle cruiser wavered into view.
Chekov's fingers danced across his console. "Deflectors on maximum. Weapons crews standing by, sir."
Kirk sat back and stretched his legs. Waiting had made him edgy, but at least now he knew what he'd been waiting for. The time had arrived for action.
"Go to Red Alert."
The claxon sounded and the bridge lights dimmed to a reddish glow. The computer voice sounded shipwide: "Red Alert -- Red Alert -- all hands to battle stations!"
"Continuing orbital approach, sir," Sulu said.
"Maintain. Chekov, what's the Klingon doing?"
"The cruiser is also making orbital approach, Captain. But he's aiming for the scout ship."
"Well, they're not going to get away without a damn good explanation. Close on the scout, Sulu. Let's beat 'em to it."
"Captain Kirk" Uhura said sharply, "receiving a signal from the scout vessel. Channel Four-B. It's . . . it's Mr. Spock."
Kirk broke into a surprised grin and stabbed his comm selector. "Spock, you've got a lot of explaining to do -- "
"Indeed, Captain," came the reply. "We are all well. You are almost twenty-four hours late . . . very unlike you, sir."
"Okay, okay. We both have a lot of explaining to do. You know
there's a Klingon battle cruiser coming to greet you?"
"Affirmative."
"I assume he's expecting to find Klingons aboard. Will he be disappointed?"
"Nobody here but us chickens," said a familiar Georgian drawl.
"Good to hear you, Bones. Stand by for -- "
"Captain," Uhura cut in, "Commander Kaidin of the Imperial Cruiser Nightwing is demanding an explanation for our presence."
"Tell him to cool his heels. Spock, we'll have you out of there in a minute. Scotty, coordinate with the transporter room and beam our people out of there, on the double. Then stand by for maximum warp."
"Aye, sir."
"Uhura, put the Klingons on main screen."
"Yes, sir."
The cruiser Nightwing faded and Kaidin's thundercloud visage took its place. "Kirk, get your slimy vessel away from our scout ship."
Kirk countered Kaidin's glare with a mirthless smile. "I see you got right to the point, Commander. This is Federation territory. You're here only by authority of the Organian Peace Treaty, which clearly specifies that the . . . ahem . . . visiting vessel must show cause for its presence upon demand. And I'm demanding, right now."
"Save your threats, Kirk. Star Fleet cowards never back up words with weapons."
"Captain," Scott whispered, "they're safe and sound in the transporter room -- and so's the Crown."
An instant later, Kaidin's studied hostility gave way to surprise as a junior officer entered in near-panic and murmured urgently in the
commander's ear. Whatever he was told made Kaidin forget his channel was open to the starship.
"What?" he hissed. "How could our agents have vanished from their ship?" The Klingon turned, saw Kirk's face in his viewer, spat a string of curses that covered several languages -- and the Enterprise viewscreen went abruptly blind.
"Take us out of orbit now, gentlemen -- warp eight!"
The giant starship heeled over to the right, and the intense force of acceleration pressed the bridge crew deep into their seats. On the screen, the star field became a blur.
"Report," Kirk ordered.
"The Klingon cruiser hasn't even changed course," Sulu said with barely disguised glee.
"They're still trying to figure out who was on that scout ship and what happened to them," Kirk said lightly. "I don't think they'll be bothering us again on this trip. Cut speed to warp five and lay in a nice, straight course to Shad. Scotty, you have the con."
Kirk eased out of his seat and headed for the turbolift.

Kailyn took the news of her father's death stoically, and the formal debriefing went smoothly. The reports could be filed later, as far as Kirk was concerned. The mission was actually still incomplete, and he preferred to allow some time for unwinding on the two-day trip back to Shad. After all, they had a coronation to prepare for.
In fact, the best remedy for all the recent tensions was a long dose of R & R; unfortunately, that wasn't possible just yet. The next best thing was a return to quiet routine, and Captain Kirk so ordered. 
For Kailyn, that meant light reading and exercise, mixed in with some special reports of information she would need to know by the time she arrived home.
Spock turned his regular duty shifts, played chess with the newly programmed computer, and began indexing the history scrolls he'd found so absorbing on Sigma.
Down in sick bay, McCoy put his feet up whenever possible -- they'd earned the rest -- and listened to music with Kailyn as he thought about the sun that had warmed his soul high up in Shirn's mountains. He also resumed as commonplace a job as he could think of -- the annual physical exams needed to update crew records. Kirk was next on the list, and he came in at the end of his watch.
"How're you feeling, Jim?"
"Well, I'd say you people gave me a few more gray hairs this last week or so, but other than that and the bags under my eyes from lack of sleep, I'm fine." He stretched back onto the diagnostic bench. McCoy turned it on and the scanners did their work, flashing results on the readout screen. 
"Mm-hmm," McCoy mumbled. "Uh-huh . . . mm-hm. Press down on the hand bars."
Kirk made a face. "Bones, why do doctors do that? It's very disconcerting to lie here and listen to you go -- "
"Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh? For what?"
"You've been hitting the cookie jar while I was gone." 
"I have not."
"Then why are you ten pounds overweight?"
"What? That's impossible."
"Scales don't tell lies, Jim."
"And I do?"
"A little white one, maybe." McCoy glanced back at the screen. "Everything else measures up just fine. Heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, muscle strength. Weight's the only problem."
"I swear I've been following that awful diet you gave me, doing more than my normal exercise . . ."
"Maybe you've been sleepwalking past the food synthesizers. How do I know? Am I my captain's keeper? Maybe you've been noshing, as my old Jewish babysitter used to say, and you don't want to admit it to your kindly family doctor for fear he'll draw and quarter you." 
"I swear . . . wait a minute. Ten pounds is -- what? -- about one-sixteenth of my normal weight? If I gained that much, wouldn't it show up in some of those other figures -- heart rate, muscle strength, something? If this thing's supposed to be so accurate -- " 
"I guess it would show up -- "
"Ah-ha, but it didn't. Ergo, your scale is lying."
"Jim, it's not an antique dime-store scale that tells your fortune. It's a computerized sensor system that can detect a hundredth of an ounce -- "
"And it has to be calibrated, right?"
"Sure, every so often."
"Then it can also be miscalibrated."
"Jim, vanity is not becoming -- "
"Check it."
" -- in a man of your breeding and character -- " 
"Bones, check it -- "
" -- and I don't think we're going to -- "
"Check it," Kirk roared.
McCoy snapped a mock salute, leaned behind the machine and opened a small access door.
"Mm-hmm . . . uh-huh . . ."
Kirk rolled his eyes.
"Son of a gun," said McCoy.
"Don't tell me. Let me guess. Might your wonderful device be, oh, ten pounds off normal?"
"When you're right, Jim, you're right."
"I won't even say I told you so."
McCoy marched away from the table to the nearest intercom.
"Hey," Kirk protested, "finish me up."
"I've got to call Chekov before he withers away to skin and bones."

The intercom whistled, and Chekov heard McCoy call his name over the speaker, but he was unable to answer just then. He was dangling from the high rings, fifteen feet off the floor of the gymnastics lounge. Uhura glanced up at him from the balance beam, her left leg arcing gracefully in midair, toe pointed like a ballerina's.
"Want me to get that for you?"
"It would be most helpful." he said tightly.
Stifling a giggle, the lithe communications officer stepped to the end of the beam, flipped head over heels, and landed on the floor in a perfect dismount.
"Doctor, Chekov is sort of hung up right now," she said seriously as she hit the wall switch. "Any messages?"
"Yeah. Tell him to report to my office first thing, okay?"
"I will."
"McCoy out."
She crossed her arms and adjusted her skintight leotard, which hid nothing -- though she was much more voluptuous than the traditional gymnast, there was not a single out-of-place bulge or extra ounce of fat on Uhura's body. "Chekov, if you just hang there, it's no exercise at all." 
"Just tell me how to get down."
"Oh?" she said innocently. "I thought you knew."
"Don't make little jokes, or I'll fall right on top of you. Tell me."
"Just drop down. The floor's padded enough to -- " 
He didn't wait for the rest, and he landed with a resounding thud.
Uhura ambled over. Chekov was flat on his back, eyes closed. "That wasn't very graceful," she said. "You'd lose a lot of points." 

The office door whisked open and Chekov limped in, still in his sweaty gym suit. McCoy gave him a surprised stare. "Where have you been?"
"Trying to lose ten pounds."
McCoy's head bobbed nervously. "Ahh . . . about those ten pounds . . ."
"What about them?" asked Chekov with the wary eyes of a cat near a dog kennel.
"Well, it seems that, uh . . . I've heard how hard you've been trying to lose them -- "
" -- and how everything I eat has no calories and less flavor -- "
"I don't know how this could happened. It was only this one table. I guess in all the excitement, somebody just wasn't paying attention  . . . I'm really sorry this happened, and believe me, the person responsible will be even sorrier when I get my hands on -- "
"Dr. McCoy, what are you talking about?"
McCoy looked at the ceiling. "You . . . um . . . you're not ten pounds overweight."
"Anymore?" Chekov queried cautiously.
"Never were. It was a mistake. You can go back to your old routine."
Chekov slumped into a seat. "I don't believe this," he muttered.
McCoy leaned close. "Would you like to hit me? Would that make you feel better?"
"It would -- but I'm too weak from hunger."
Chapter Twenty-four
The recently recaptured capital buzzed with anticipation of its first coronation in many years -- this, the coronation that would preserve the planet.
Fighting between the Loyalists and the Mohd Alliance continued in some outlying provinces, but news of the return of the Crown had had the desired effect -- sealing the fissures in the Loyalist Coalition and infusing its armies with the spirit needed to quash the revolt. The war would soon be over.

The Great Hall of the Temple of the Covenant was filled from wall to wall with Shaddans of every age and description. Government ministers stood elbow to elbow with dirt farmers, country priests with cosmopolitan merchants, old women with small children. The giant doors in the rear were thrown open and thousands of pilgrims stood in the plaza listening to the choir sing from the balcony.
A blaze of sacramental candelabra on the wall behind the altar glimmered like heavenly stars. The archpriest, a towering old man resplendent in pure white robes, read from the holy Book of Shad. But in the half-sacred, half-circus atmosphere, at least as many spectators paid their attention -- and money -- to vendors in the open
square, hawking everything from food to royal pennants and religious statues.
Finally, the archpriest turned toward the back of the Great Hall and lifted his arms to the choir balcony high above the inside crowd. The singers soared to a crescendo and suddenly stopped. At that signal, the voices in the temple and out in the plaza lowered to a murmur; then, silence.
"That's amazing," McCoy whispered to Kirk. The senior officers of the Enterprise occupied a front pew, close enough to feel the heat of the candles arched over the altar.
The shimmering Crown reposed on a velvet pillow of midnight blue, and the priest regarded it with a fond smile, as if it were a favorite child back with its family after a long separation. The near-complete stillness stretched to minutes, when the priest signaled the choirmaster again. The singers began a melodious hum, bass with a counterpoint melody of sopranos woven in, quiet and delicate as a butterfly at rest.
A crimson drape, reaching from the floor to the ceiling forty feet up, parted and Kailyn stepped regally toward the priest, her hand held by Haim, King Stevvin's trusted First General. Kirk watched the old warrior, now stooped with age but with a strong and steady step as he led the Crown Princess to the center of the pulpit stage. The captain threw quick glances at his officers -- Spock, looking incredibly dignified in his dress uniform; Scott, with his jaw set at attention; and McCoy, surreptitiously wiping a proud tear from the cThis book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

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thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 

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POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
For Albert Nessim Hassan
and in memory of his parents
Maurice and Regina Hassan
Prologue
The fire-presence tuned the precognon. Mists of thought and the flow of time meshed to show four small lives at a fire in a crystal cave.
"Both species are young," the fire-presence said, "but of some interest. The divided one, V-Two, spans both worlds. It will state the problem:
"Prometheus brought fire to man and for his reward was chained to a rock to be eaten by vultures. What is disquieting is that intelligent life forms all over the galaxy understand that legend -- both the fire-bringing and the vultures." 
"Sublevel One, analysis of content -- analogy of our research problem to the ancient legend of the subject's Human half-world," the cool one said. "Sublevel Two indicates understanding of irony. Sublevel Three: Does the level of thought indicate a possible advanced Level One concept?" 
"Unlikely," the fire-presence said. "However, the subject is the anomalous, potentially outside-the-maze radical subject, V-Two. It is atypical. It is a half-breed. We have tagged it for longitudinal lifetime study with special emphasis on its nonstandard cross-connects with other individuals, which are unusual." 
"Its thought will continue?" 
"If it lives."
The forward probability construction continued in the mists of time. The dark-haired, pointed-eared younger V spoke in the crystal cave: 
"There is both the god in man, which reaches for fire and stars, and that black-dark streak which steals the fire to make chains, exacts a price from the firebringer -- and lets loose the dogs of war and the vultures of destruction. There is the greatness and the callousness. Nor are we alone in that duality -- your species or mine. Every solution to the Promethean flaw that intelligent life in the galaxy has found is, at best, partial. It is also . . . temporary. Nevertheless, it is our solution." 
"Forward construction of thought level does rate advanced Level One," the cool one said. "That is unknown in these subjects. The out-of-maze subject V-Two has subject-to-subject designation?" 
"Spock of Vulcan." 
"Now project a similar level of forward construction for the other out-maze radical, V-One." 
The projection swirled and shifted to another scene. It appeared to be on a primitive star travel ship. The older Vulcan, V-One, spoke: 
"The essence of the classic double-blind experimental design is that neither the subjects nor the experimenters who manipulate or observe them shall know which subjects are in the experimental group and which are the controls. It is the only scientific design that defeats the illogical susceptibility of intelligent beings to placebo effects and terminal self-delusion. That is not, however, of much consolation to the control subject who dies while the experimental group gets the real cure for cancer. Nor to those killed by false cures. The price of the fire has always come high."
"V-One has also previously demonstrated some possibility of Level One, has it not?" 
"For ten of its planet revolution time spans." 
"Now project V-Two's atypical cross-connects with his H Primaries, and the effect of the introduction of V-One?" 
The scene widened to show the H subject -- fair, smaller than the two Vulcans, yet clearly a commanding presence. Behind him stood yet another H male, dark of hair and blue of eye, his vibrations supportive, nurturing. They spoke: 

H Primary One: Then -- we are the subjects? 
H Primary Two: Or -- the controls. 
V-One: Both. And such 'experimenters' as we have reached are as blind as we about which worlds serve what purpose. The grand design is elsewhere -- and the Designers yet unknown. 
V-Two: However, the Designers must also have some blind spot. Callousness is always blind. There must be something that we could use -- a third blind . . . 
H Primary One: Spock, you've hit it! Gentlemen, do you remember the story about the rats who trained the psychologists . . .? 

"Extrapolation indicates a pronounced 'observer effect,'" the cool one said. "The subjects have detected much of the experimental design and conceived a plan to confront it. If the subjects know that much, will it not affect the experiment?" 
"That has been taken into account," the fire-presence said. "No subject on all the experimental and control worlds has yet correctly formulated the experimental design question: Is there some fatal flaw in the
design of intelligent life as such -- and if so, can it be separated from the greatness . . . ?" 
"And if these subjects should succeed in doing so?" 
"Then it will be time for the 'psychologists' to interview the 'rats.' " 
"This group of little ones is quite interesting." 
"It is not a group. They have not yet met V-One." The fire-presence turned to the First-Among for decision. 
"I concur in the design," the First-Among said. "Initiate test to destruction." 
"It is begun," the fire-presence said. 
THE H PRIMARY ONE SUBJECT WAS DISORIENTED. IT HEARD VOICES THAT HAD NOT YET SPOKEN. IT REMEMBERED THE FUTURE AND FORGOT THE PAST. ITS JUDGMENT WAVERED IN THE FACE OF PRESENT SHOCK AND FUTURE NIGHTMARE. IT RAN -- AND DID NOT KNOW WHETHER IT RAN FROM DANGER OR INTO IT. . . .

PICK UP H PRIMARY ONE SUBJECT FOR FULL BODY-BRAIN PROCESSING. . . .
The order went out, completing the pattern which had already begun.
Chapter One
Captain James T. Kirk angled his horns menacingly and bluffed out a devil-horned Helvan who tried to bar his way. Without pause he ducked past and around a corner, out of sight of the horned crowd that had become a mob. 
He scaled up over a fence and flattened into a handy alcove while the pursuit pounded past. For a long moment he had not thought he would make his rendezvous with Spock and the landing party. Dr. McCoy's elegant semisurgical makeup jobs on the horn implants were supposed to make Helvan safe for Kirk's democracy. They had not. 
He wore the short horns of a Helvan male in a dormant phase, not the deadly spiked horns of a Helvan male in falat. The fact that the short horns would strike any Human as devilish was neither here nor there -- let alone how they looked on Spock, who had the ears for it. . . . 
The Helvan sky shaded from lavender to great flaming clouds of red-gold, which seemed always caught by some sunrise or sunset of the double sun. The Helvan culture was little beyond Stone Age, but much of the city was built of great crystal sheets and columns from some natural quarry. The effect was mirrored red-gold splendor, as easily a scene out of tomorrow as a vision of hell. 
Kirk reached to use his communicator. Somehow in this atmosphere
atmosphere of revolution the Helvans had spotted him for a danger. Worse, what was now happening to Spock, Bones, and the landing party? 
It suddenly occurred to him to wonder why he had ever divided his forces in this dangerous situation. Then he looked up -- and his stomach knotted. 

Spock waited for the rendezvous with almost Human impatience. He did not say worry. Yet his brief question to Kirk as to the wisdom of separate missions in the street-mob Helvan atmosphere of impending revolution had been brushed aside with uncharacteristic brusqueness. True, time was limited. The disappearances on many planets, including especially this one, were increasing alarmingly. 
Once Spock might have pressed the argument further. 
The 2.8 years he had spent with the Vulcan Masters, attempting to expunge his Human half, had not wholly been erased by his return to the Enterprise. 
Nonetheless, Spock should have insisted on the foolhardiness of separation. 
Kirk was 4.5 minutes late. McCoy was overdue. Chekov appeared to be in some rather vague state. Uhura was missing. And Spock was far from the total logic of Kolinahr. . . . 

Kirk backed against the wall. The beings who had come out of nowhere were not Helvan. They were not of any known species. 
And they struck Admiral, Acting Captain, James T. Kirk, possibly the most experienced commander in the galaxy in dealing with unknowns, as gut-level terrifying. 
They were not large -- perhaps a head shorter than he was. They
had conical noses on mouthless heads that had a vaguely mechanical look. Yet he sensed that they were beings, not robots. How he knew it, he did not know. But he knew also that there was some sense of utter callousness about them, as if they had no empathy or fellow-feeling for a living being. 
He shook off terror and tried a standard nonverbal greeting. 
One no-mouth raised an appendage and sent a shimmer like heatwaves toward him. 
It seared his nerves. He didn't fall, but he couldn't move. 
They came to him and one inspected him. Hard finger-tentacles probed into his ears, mouth, then felt him over like prime beef or breeding stock, adding rage and disgust to his terror. 
Somehow he sensed that this was all familiar, as if he had even seen pictures of these . . . things. 
He knew that the disappearances he had been sent to investigate had come to investigate him. 
Ninety-nine out of a hundred who disappeared did not return. And those who did . . . .
Spock! 
Kirk knew that he had called Spock mentally only after he had done it. Spock was a touch telepath. But Kirk had reached him mentally once or twice -- the last time over the light-years from Earth to Vulcan, to haul Spock out of his self-imposed Vulcan exile.1
One of the mouthless things touched Kirk's forehead and the world exploded. 

Dr. McCoy bolted forward and caught Spock as the Vulcan suddenly sagged. Uhura caught his tricorder as it fell. They had arrived from separate directions only a moment before the Vulcan's eyes
went blank. Chekov came to help take Spock's weight as McCoy went for his medical scanner. 
But the Vulcan straightened away from both of them. "That will not be necessary, Doctor. I am undamaged." 
"The hell you say," McCoy muttered, running the scanner anyway. "What do you call that performance?" 
"It was Jim," Spock said. "A distress call. Then . . . nothing." 
The Vulcan's eyes narrowed against pain. "Doctor, the Captain may be dead." 
"May be!" McCoy said. Perhaps only McCoy knew the full truth of times when he and Spock had believed Kirk to be dead. "Then . . . he may not be?" 
Spock was already consulting his tricorder. "Doctor, I get . . . no sense of his continued existence." He looked up. "And no identi-loc reading. If he were injured, the Helvans would possibly take him to the Helvan hospital you inspected today, Doctor. How bad was it?" 
McCoy stared at him. "Hospital? I inspected no hospital." 
Chekov and Uhura looked at him strangely. "Doctor,"Uhura said, "we saw you go into the hospital." 
Suddenly something swept through McCoy, a strange feeling of horror and disgust, nameless and terrifying. Abruptly he began to be aware of physical symptoms, pain. 
He checked his chronometer. It was much later than he had thought. 
"Mr. Chekov," McCoy said, "what happened on your weapons inspection of the Helvan Summer Palace?" 
He saw the blank look he knew had been on his own face come to Chekov, then to the beautiful dark features of Uhura as she tried to place her afternoon. 
"Memory lapses," McCoy said. "We all have them."
"Fascinating," the Vulcan said. "Possibly even illuminating. I calculate we have moments only before major street violence erupts. We must find the Captain." 
He strode off with Vulcan swiftness and the Humans struggled after him.
Chapter Two
McCoy caught Spock's arm and called a halt, indicating he, Chekov, and Uhura were only Human. The Vulcan had set a killing pace, dodging threatening crowds. They had searched everything within reason and some things without.
Spock gave McCoy and the others a moment to breathe, then indicated the forbidding Helvan hospital entrance, some of the dying on its steps. They would have to search there -- probably for Jim's body.
"Spock," McCoy said, "even if I don't remember it, that hospital has to be a charnel house. It's the Dark Ages here -- when you went to a hospital to die."
Spock nodded grimly. "At least, it was. Those reports of accelerated change we came here to check indicated a jump of two levels on the Richter scale of cultural development -- a matter of centuries, within two years. Let us hope they have had their Pasteur."
He started across the street, but at that moment a commotion erupted out of the alley beside the hospital. An angry mob burst out, manhandling some unseen figure at its' center.
Spock and McCoy jolted forward on a surmise -- and then they could see that the tousled, battered figure was Kirk. They could not see whether he was dead or alive. Somehow he had lost his horns. The crowd was ugly, armed, lethal, carrying clubs, knives, swords,
and the new powder-and-shot tubes -- and the limp body of a starship Captain.
Helvan voices in the crowd were screaming, "Demon! Hornless monster! Burn it!"
McCoy saw Spock plow into the ugly crowd with that Vulcan strength which he seldom fully unleashed, now flinging Helvans aside like tenpins. McCoy, Chekov, and Uhura formed a flying wedge behind him.
McCoy never knew how they got through the knives and clubs. He saw Spock knocking weapons out of hands with a possessed ferocity that would not be blocked. And he found himself and the others wading in with something of the same feeling and with every unarmed combat skill they could muster. Then they reached Kirk.
Spock took Kirk's body up into one arm and turned to cut a path back out of the crowd.
Spock would try for a place where they could not be seen to transport up, not to disturb this culture or chance violating the Prime Directives of noninterference by showing the transporter process.
McCoy saw that they wouldn't make it. Some Helvans were raising the powder-and-shot tubes.
They gained a slight space in the crowd and Spock spoke into his communicator. "Enterprise, emergency beam up, now!"
A shot rang past them. Then McCoy sensed the beginning of the transporter effect, which he hated and had never been happier to sense. It could beam his molecules all over the galaxy any time -- out of this.

McCoy had Kirk on the new translucent main diagnostic table in the Enterprise Sick Bay. Dr. Christine Chapel had threatened to have
McCoy packed off for treatment, too, and he was realizing that he had picked up a nasty assortment of bruises and a bad cut on one leg. But a temporary spray dressing had to do.
Kirk was the casualty -- and of a peculiar kind. The Helvan horns had been removed by some sophisticated process that did not leave wounds. It was, if anything, more sophisticated than the Federation process McCoy or Chapel would have used. Accelerated development or not, it could not possibly be within reach of the native Helvans.
Beyond that, Kirk seemed to have been gone over thoroughly with some sophisticated but extremely callous kind of physical examination.
There were marks of instruments and red marks that seemed to be burns of some unknown kind of radiation.
Kirk was in deep shock, his vital signs critically low.
Spock had stayed in Sick Bay, making his report from there, until moments ago when he had been summoned to the bridge by an urgent eyes-only Starfleet Command communiqué.
Now he came back in, looking grim.
"He'll make it, Spock," McCoy said quickly. "He's responding to the medication for shock."
Spock did not answer, but McCoy saw the lines of theVulcan's face alter.
It was here in Sick Bay that Spock had come back from deep shock after his mind-link with Vejur, and in that unguarded moment he had taken Kirk's hand, suddenly grasping through that "simple feeling" the sterility of Vejur's vast and terrible logic -- and the sterility of Spock's own attempt at the total nonemotion of Kolinahr.
Yet the Vulcan who had sought Kolinahr as an antidote to his
pain still remained, maintaining long meditations, silences -- stiff with the disciplines of the desert and the cause they had not cured. Whatever cause had sent Spock away from Kirk, McCoy, and the Enterprise . . .
This stranger who had come back to them was still not their old Spock, who could usually be teased, deviled, baited -- and give as good as he got in his own Vulcan way.
Even with Kirk -- maybe especially with Kirk -- there had been a certain stiffness.
But now Spock reached out without a word and put his hand on Kirk's shoulder. "Jim!"
Kirk's eyes opened, found Spock's face, then were jolted by some inner horror. His body jerked bolt upright and Spock had to restrain him.
"Things -- " Kirk seemed to choke and his eyes went blank.
"Tell me what you remember," McCoy said, holding him from the other side.
Kirk's eyes focused. "Nothing, Bones. A crowd chased me. I got away. Then -- nothing."
"You were late for rendezvous?" Spock asked.
"Yes."
"Then it was at that time I received . . . your call," Spock said.
"I got through on the communicator?"
"No," Spock said. "Not on the communicator."
Kirk looked to McCoy, puzzled.
"Spock damn near collapsed when something knocked you out," McCoy said. "He said he lost the sense of your existence."
Kirk made no comment. "What else?"
"Memory lapses," McCoy said. "We all had them. Me, Chekov, Uhura. Not Spock as far as I know. We lost time. We had no memory
memory, but a vague, overwhelming feeling of horror and . . . shame."
Kirk grimaced. "I'm with you there, Bones. Why . . . shame?"
McCoy shook his head, shrugged. "Helplessness maybe? Something we feel guilty for? I don't know. But something definitely had you, Jim."
"Other than Helvans?"
"Jim, Spock found you just in time to keep Helvans from burning you -- as a hornless demon."
Kirk reached up to feel for the shorn-off horns.
"Neater than I could have done it," McCoy said.
Kirk managed the first hint of a smile. "Can't say I'll miss them. However, on Mr. Spock . . . "
Spock mustered a trace of the old long-suffering look, but it was forced. "It does require a certain . . . presence . . . to carry them off. The doctor -- " He looked at McCoy's head and shook his own, despairing.
Privately McCoy agreed. "I thought they looked rather rakish," he said. "You should see how the women look at Spock now."
Kirk grinned. "Everyone on this ship always sees how the women look at Spock."
McCoy seized the relaxed moment. "That's better. Rest now, Jim."
But Kirk sobered, shook his head. "Something was wrong with us, Bones. Even before the memory lapses. This crew has been together a long time. We track each other, keep each other on the track. Not today. I made a stupid command error -- splitting up, letting them pick us off one by one. Nobody stopped me. My apologies, Spock. You tried."
Spock nodded grimly. "Insufficiently."
"Jim," McCoy said, "we were apart for nearly three years. You, Spock, me, the others -- maybe we lost some of that old edge."
Kirk's eyes considered it. McCoy knew there had been a time when Kirk had wondered whether he had lost his own edge in those years when he had tried to survive the loss of the ship and of all of what he had had out here -- in a desk job at the Admiralty.
"No," Kirk said finally. "I could buy that if we hadn't functioned well against Vejur, and since. We have our stresses. But this command crew is still unique -- the best in the fleet." He shook his head. "No, it was something down there. Mr. Spock, if we could break my memory block, we might have the key to the whole mystery. Would you attempt the Vulcan mind-meld?"
Spock's face became unreadable and he did not immediately answer. The pain he had gone through Kolinahr to try to escape would perhaps become unendurable in the lowering of personal barriers that such a mind-link would involve.
There had been no duty-occasion for a mind-link between these two since Spock had made his decision to go to Vulcan. Until now Kirk had seemed to follow McCoy's advice not to look a gift Vulcan in the ears. But the blunt fact was that, but for the grace of catastrophe, the three years they had been apart might have been forever.
They had dealt with it by falling back on naval tradition and the slow, invisible reweaving of old patterns. Kirk had respected the Vulcan's new, severely posted private space. Now he had to ask.
McCoy stepped into the breach. "Absolutely not," he answered before Spock's silence could become longer. "You are barely out of shock, Jim. We have no idea what kind of blocks, barriers, compulsions, or terrors may have been planted in your mind. Touching them with the mind-meld could throw you right back into terminal shock."
He turned to Spock. "Out, Spock. Doctor's orders. I'm going to put him to bed. He won't settle down until you leave."
"Sound medical advice," Spock said. "I concur."
"Well, that's a first!" McCoy said, but it sounded a little tired even to his ears.
There had been a time when Kirk wouldn't have asked, nor needed to.
Spock turned at the door. "Captain, I was obliged to file a full report. Starfleet Command has ordered us to rendezvous with a fast Federation Scout. Estimated time, fifteen point four hours."
"For what purpose?"
"To take aboard a passenger who will carry sealed orders for us."
"Who?" McCoy asked.
Spock looked at him from behind his Vulcan mask.
"Undisclosed," he said, and left.
Chapter Three
Kirk awoke, screaming.
He heard himself -- a shocking sound -- and jolted up, thrashing, trying to escape some nameless dread.
Some terrible strength caught him, held him hard. He fought it with the strength of frenzy and could not move it. Suddenly he knew that strength.
"Spock!"
"Here."
For a long moment Kirk let himself remain motionless, trying to recapture the elusive substance of nightmare. But the night shapes all faded to the metallic taste of terror.
Some half-formed thought lingered, and the words that came to him for it were: What punishment do you set for me?
But he was not certain whether it was he who asked, or of whom he asked it, for he had not spoken aloud.
Spock answered, "For what offense?"
Kirk shook his head.
"Whom do you ask?" Spock said.
Whom I have offended. It seemed to be the voice of the nightmare that spoke silently in his mind.
Kirk shook himself and drew back. "Forgive me, Mr. Spock. I did not mean to force what you would obviously prefer not to give. The
mind-touch will not be required, nor your presence. Thank you. Good night."
Spock did not move. He started to reach for the position of the mind-touch. "My disciplines are at your disposal. Else I would not have come back from Gol."
Kirk pushed the hand away. "Spock, it is a matter of record that you went to the mountains of Gol to wipe out your Human half, including your mother's people, your friends -- even the memory of their names. Including mine. And I went to the Admiralty in a handbasket. Sorry if I called you back and disturbed your pristine purity of Vulcan soul. I would have called us both back from some other hell, if necessary. And we both know I'll have you here on any terms, as the unequaled officer you are, if nothing else. But I didn't have to like that cold, Kolinahr bastard who came back aboard and cut friends to whom he owed his life dead. I saw that bastard again tonight, Spock. I won't ask him again. For anything. Dismissed."
The Vulcan's face set hard. "What would you know of Vulcan soul, or of the cost of what you have disturbed-to me? I am not Human."
"If I don't know that, who does?"
"I."
Kirk sobered. "Spock, we have lived with that, too. From the pon farr to the spores. You've banged me -- or us -- around once in a while. So what?"
Spock looked down at him. "The danger of my being Vulcan, Admiral, as of the mind-link, is to you."
Kirk frowned. "What danger, Spock?"
"Duty has forced a link between us too often, too closely. You reached me from Earth to Vulcan, on Gol. You reached me today."
"Or else I would be dead. Both times."
Spock nodded. "For that reason, I cannot shield against that contact, nor can you. But in your untrained state, further contact between us can make your natural mental shielding unselective -- unable to shield you from the thoughts of others nor to prevent you from broadcasting your own thoughts. Apart from anything else, Starship command would become an untenable position for you."
Kirk winced. "And I have just spent three years proving how untenable any other position is for me." Then he came up on an elbow. "Spock, I wasn't in command today. I'm carrying some alien mental time bomb. Unless I can break it, I'm not fit to command now."
Spock looked down at him and without a word, his face still set in the mold of cold ferocity, put his hands on Kirk's face in the position of the link.
Kirk caught Spock's wrists and tried to break the hold, even though he knew that Spock knew how badly he wanted and needed the link. Kirk still had no right to force the Vulcan into that closeness. But the Vulcan hands did know what he needed, and would not be moved. Kirk felt the touch of the mind-probe, merciless this time and tasting of the hot desert winds and cold nights of Gol. The deliberately cold touch met some almost equally cold resistance of his own. 
Then it met the black mass of rage and shame that this day had left in him, and even the Vulcan mind-meld could not penetrate that. The effort exploded into fire and he could feel the Vulcan's attempt to withdraw as Kirk sank down into night.

McCoy stood beside Kirk in the transporter room. Both of them looked more presentable than anyone had the right to expect, but Kirk looked as if he had slept in hell.
McCoy had also had a rotten night. It would have been better if he hadn't let Spock relieve him from the night watch over Kirk. But the Vulcan could go without sleep without trouble and McCoy couldn't. Finally McCoy had yielded to that logic.
This morning McCoy learned that Uhura and Chekov, whom he had had under watch in Sick Bay, had also suffered severe nightmares.
Alpha hypnosis and all the standard techniques had failed utterly to break the block in anyone's memory, and Kirk confessed that the Vulcan mind-link had also been tried -- and had failed.
Now they were beaming aboard some mysterious hotshot sent by Starfleet Command whose name was not announced, but who carried sealed orders for their ship. Hell of a way to start a day.
Transporter Chief Rand worked the controls and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy moved on into the chamber.
The image started to form -- a massive, solid male, the ears . . . pointed. For a moment McCoy thought that it was Spock's father, Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan. Then the transporter shimmer coalesced into an equally powerful but strange Vulcan who resembled Sarek a little -- perhaps mainly in the look of unalterable certainty.
Spock had already raised the paired-fingers Vulcan greeting sign, and McCoy struggled to do the same.
"Live long and prosper," Spock said.
This Vulcan, like Sarek, also looked somewhere on the high side of a hundred, which was Vulcan prime -- less than half the Vulcan 250-year life span.
This one looked Human forty and would have a hundred years of Vulcan accelerated thought processes and full adulthood behind him.
"Prosper in command, Spock," the Vulcan said.
Spock stiffened. "Allow me to present Admiral, Acting Captain, Kirk, in command."
The Vulcan glanced at Kirk, then virtually ignored him. "No. I express condolence."
"For what, sir?" Kirk demanded, his natural respect for Vulcans sounding strained.
The Vulcan stepped down and moved past Kirk, extending a message cube to Spock. "Kirk is relieved of command."
Kirk stepped to confront the Vulcan. "By what authority?" he asked. "Who are you?"
The Vulcan did not answer. Spock said, "Savaj of Vulcan."
It was one of those names people put on lists of ten from all of history they would want to meet in heaven or hell. McCoy had vaguely thought that this particular Vulcan legend had moved on to some Vulcan equivalent.
Kirk stepped back fractionally. "Sir, that is a name I would put beside Commanding Admiral Heihachiro Nogura. I cannot believe that he, or you, would relieve me without showing cause. Are you, personally, relieving me?"
"No." Savaj turned to Spock. "You will assume command of the Enterprise." 
Spock looked at him stonily. "I resist that order, S'haile Savaj."
"Rule of Seven, Spock."
"No proof exists."
"None is required."
Spock's face set.
"Translate, Mr. Spock," Kirk said.
"The closest Starfleet regulation would be, 'Commander possibly unfit to command through no fault of own.' It is nonpunitive, not considered a blot on your record. It requires no proof or hearing.
You may request one. To do so would mean leaving the ship."
"My scoutship is waiting should that be your decision," Savaj said. "You are granted the option of remaining aboard in nonpunitive suspension as First Officer."
"I will appeal to Commanding Admiral Nogura," Kirk said.
Savaj shook his head. "It was he who granted you the option."
"You would not?" Kirk asked.
"Captain, your record is one of excessive risk-taking and dependence on favorable random factors -- frequently in the person of your Vulcan First Officer. It is no secret to you that I have more than once opposed in Federation and Starfleet councils decisions that ultimately went in your favor."
"I am aware of that, sir," Kirk said stiffly. "I had hoped for a time when we could discuss it in person. Perhaps we could -- "
McCoy could see Kirk beginning to turn on the charm-them-out-of-their-tree routine, which he had been known to try even on T'Pau of Vulcan.
"That is useless," Savaj said. "There is no question of fact or logic. I have been apprised of your considerable powers of persuasion, by T'Pau of Vulcan among others."
Kirk looked uncomfortable. McCoy settled for trying to look inconspicuous. Faking Kirk's death with his trusty spray-hypo had been one of McCoy's finest hours -- if you didn't try to look at it from the Vulcan viewpoint. T'Pau had not been pleased.
Savaj caught McCoy's discomfiture and glanced at him. "As I have also heard of your penchant for trickery, Doctor. You Humans are an interesting species. One shudders to contemplate an effect that would augment your species' natural weaknesses." He turned to Kirk. "That appears to be the result of the alien effect you have encountered on Helva. Your excessive risk-taking yesterday, for
example, Captain. It is in your nature, but you normally try to control that weakness. Yesterday you could not. Your command judgment may now be affected in ways you cannot know. In command you could be deadly. Even Spock could not counterbalance your judgment on Helva."
Kirk faced Savaj bluntly now. "I have considered that possibility, sir. This ship has dealt before with situations in which my command judgment might have been, or was, affected. We have done so without outside help or interference and without relieving me of command. We can do so again."
Spock nodded. "I concur with the Captain. The balance judgment I can offer he has in any case, as if it were his own."
"Commendable," Savaj said, "but insufficient. Command is not by committee. Nor is it properly by a lesser over a superior mind."
"Now wait a minute," McCoy cut in. "Starfleet recognizes special talents, including Vulcan ones. Nowhere does it recognize one species as inferior or unfit to command another. Individual -- "
"Have you observed Mr. Spock's individual mind to be superior, Doctor?"
"Superior to what?" McCoy protested. "Can Spock calculate to seventeen decimals? Certainly. But as for -- "
"That will be enough, Doctor," Savaj said. "Mr. Spock, there is some indication that Vulcans of advanced training may be immune to the alien effect you encountered on Helva. Humans, by their own account, are not immune. Are you, in this instance, Vulcan, Mr. Spock?"
"You are aware of the Vulcan path I have chosen, S'haile Savaj."
Savaj turned to Kirk. "I have consented to Nogura's recommendation that you remain aboard, on one ground. Nogura considers that this command crew has a special rapport that is unequaled in Starfleet
Starfleet. There is some evidence that your command-crew rapport may be the only known detector of the alien effect you encountered."
"How?" Kirk asked.
"The rapport made you uniquely aware of each other -- Spock detected your disappearance, you noticed each other's memory lapses and unusual behavior. It is believed other starship crews have been affected -- and have not known it." McCoy spoke up. "Are you saying other starships may be commanded by captains who still don't know it?"
"Precisely," Savaj said.
"Then they're a damn sight worse off than Jim is," McCoy said. "I'm certifying him medically fit for command."
"Unfortunately, Doctor, your medical judgment is also in question."
"Not on this ship," Kirk said. "At need Dr. McCoy will be backed up by his staff and I by mine. Mr. Spock has resisted the suggestion that he take command. What is your position in that event, sir?"
Savaj faced Kirk bluntly. "I am the man who will take command if Spock does not."'
Chapter Four
Kirk faced Savaj silently for a long moment. "I was not aware that you retained active Starfleet Command rank, Admiral Savaj." 
"Life rank," Savaj said. "It serves." 
"And if Spock takes command?" 
"My recent scientific interests include factors bearing on your mission to investigate accelerated social change on various worlds and associated mysterious disappearances. The Enterprise is now ordered to use your special command-crew rapport to track the alien effect. Should that mission fail, Admiral Kirk, my figures indicate that Starfleet will not survive. Nor will galactic civilization." 
Kirk found himself struggling to put that in proper perspective. Not long ago he had broken every rule in the book to relieve young Captain Will Decker from command of the Enterprise. He, himself, was the better man for the job, Kirk had argued. 
"Mr. Spock," Savaj added, "is half Human. I have no such difficulty. It is not clear what effect Spock's mixed heritage may have -- nor his well-known rapport with his Captain. I am here, among other things, to observe that particular rapport. It would be of no use to relieve you, Kirk, if your friendship still makes it command by rapport." 
There had been a time when Kirk would have been certain of that. With the strange Spock who had returned from Vulcan, he
was not so sure. He turned to lock eyes with Spock, but the Vulcan's eyes were opaque, telling him nothing. 
"Spock commands or he does not," Savaj said. "Choose." 
Inconceivable to be on this ship and not to command. . . . Not as inconceivable as to let her go off without him. 
"Take her," Kirk said to Spock. 
Spock looked for a moment at the alternative: Savaj. 
"You will log my protest, S'haile Savaj," Spock said. "I assume command." 
Savaj inclined his head fractionally. "Captain Spock." 
Savaj turned toward the door and gathered Kirk up with the gesture of "after you." 
"Mr. Kirk," he said. 

Kirk overhauled Spock in a corridor. Kirk had escorted Savaj to VIP guest quarters, assigned McCoy to see to the full Vulcan's research needs. 
"All right, Spock. Who is Savaj -- apart from the obvious?"
"Is not the obvious sufficient?" 
"It is legend," Kirk said. "Even strictly as a Starfleet Admiral, Savaj set the mold. He is one of my own heroes. But his Starfleet career can't have been more than half his life -- even counting basic discoveries in a dozen-odd sciences. Apart from some admiralty decisions early in our last five-year mission, I don't think he's been heard from for years." 
Spock made no comment. 
"Spock," Kirk protested, "you don't hide a mind like that for ten years. What do you know of Savaj personally?" 
Spock stopped by a turbolift. "The S'haile Savaj's public life is a matter of record. His privacy is his own."
Kirk turned, shocked. The Vulcan was a blank wall. Kirk made another attempt. "What does S'haile mean?" 
"A title connoting respect. Its further meaning is also private." 
Kirk felt his jaw set. "Spock, this is us. Or do you want me to address you as Captain?" 
Spock turned to him. "Yes, Mr. Kirk, I do." 
He stepped onto the turbolift. Kirk followed, seething. 

Spock took the bridge. He moved without ceremony to the center seat. Eyes followed him -- the word had preceded him. He took no notice. 
"Sir?" Uhura said, perhaps carefully not giving him a title. "Permission for long-range scoutship to depart?" 
"Granted," Spock said. "Set course to return to Helvan." 
Kirk sat down at the science station. It was, of course, the first station he had fully rated on following the Vejur crisis. The nerve center of the ship, with its override ties to all library computers and ship's functions, it was the first station the Captain had to know, as it was his job to know all of them. This one he would never play like Spock, but he would do in a pinch. 
He had not contemplated this particular pinch. 
McCoy came onto the bridge, bounced on his heels, barely restraining a harumph for Spock's attention. 
Kirk had already keyed the library computer. "Savaj of Vulcan," he read out. "Appointed Starfleet Admiral upon Vulcan entry into Federation. Previous Vulcan background unknown, protected by Vulcan privacy. It is assumed his previous record was commensurate with recommended rank and later exploits. Became Fleet-Commander of all-Vulcan wing of Starfleet with primary responsibility for Vulcan exploration ships, which opened some 32 percent
of the now explored galaxy. In his own right Savaj is a scientist of galactic renown in half a dozen fields. Medical discoveries credited with saving of millions of lives. Has taught at Starfleet Academy, Vulcan, and, more rarely, Earth, where cadets called him 'Ironpants' -- not to his face." Kirk looked up, summarizing. "Scientific honors -- every top award. Starfleet citations and medals, similarly. However -- the last ten years of his record are essentially blank." 
"On wacation?" Chekov offered from weapons control. 
"Vulcans, I am reliably informed, don't take vacations," Kirk said. Whatever they did, it was certainly no vacation -- and no picnic. "Certainly not for ten years," he added. 
"Then what has he been doing?" Uhura said. "Sir, do you know that this same Savaj wrote the book on alien communications -- first lingua code development, much of the basis for the universal translator -- the seminal work in my field. There's no way that that mind hid under a bushel for ten years. More important, what is he really doing here?" 
"I can tell you that," McCoy said, breaking a sulking silence. "He's driving our celebrated crew up the bulkheads. Gives them that bland, unblinking Vulcan scrutiny -- right away they feel they've been running a sloppy ship. He carries himself as if he's Admiral of the Fleet and six kinds of royalty." 
Spock looked up for the first time. "That is approximately correct, Doctor, by Vulcan standards." 
"Spock, you're always pulling Vulcan royalty out of a hat. I suspect you of being Vulcan royalty yourself. And I don't much care if Savaj is. I'm beginning to feel like a witch doctor myself." 
Spock brightened. "Indeed, Doctor." 
"Have a heart, Spock. Get him off my back." 
The turbolift opened to deposit Savaj.
"Doctor," Spock said, "I am aware of no research which indicates that unblinking scrutiny is detrimental to the practice of medicine -- or witchcraft." 
McCoy groaned. "If you're going to go double-Vulcan on us, Mr. Spock, you'll have to excuse me. I have to go boil a potion -- with a slow burn." He turned to leave. "Medical check, Jim. Five minutes." 
"There will be some delay, Doctor," Savaj said. "Mr. Kirk, I have run the doctor's medical records on landing party symptoms. You will now run correlation checks, periods of rapid cultural change with records of unusual disappearances. Those who disappear and return may have severe amnesia accompanied by feelings of rage and shame, often with physical symptoms and marks of unusual examination." 
Kirk looked up at him. "I have been running those checks, Admiral. Answers are coming now." 
The computer began to print out. 
CORRELATION: DISAPPEARANCES WITH SUCH SYMPTOMS KNOWN ON MANY WORLDS. E.G., EARTH: TWENTIETH CENTURY. CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS BY ALLEGED "CONTACTEES" UNDER HYPNOSIS SUGGESTED LINK WITH WIDESPREAD "UFO" PHENOMENON.
VULCAN: DISAPPEARANCES  . . .
Savaj reached down and cut off the printout. 
He dropped a recording-cube in the slot and a hologram appeared in the main display tank. "Planets believed affected by the phenomenon we are tracking," Savaj said. They winked on in light in a familiar star map. They included virtually every Federation planet -- and a similar spread in Klingon and Romulan Empires, other areas. 
Savaj keyed another display. "This is a familiar asymptotic curve, representing a mathematical function that increases geometrically
toward infinity. It is well known that if in your twentieth century you had graphed rate of increase of speed of manned travel, it would have remained flat for centuries, then shot up within decades, and within some years after that suddenly approached infinity -- at just about the time the speed of light was, in fact, broken. An accomplishment which was then considered impossible." 
He flashed another display -- now it showed such an asymptotic curve in three dimensions -- a composite of curves that all shot up suddenly to infinity. 
"Rapid change," Savaj said, "accompanied by outbreaks of savage violence, upheaval, death, and disappearance. This graphs the recent curve on many worlds." 
Uhura stared at the display and suddenly leaned forward. "But if all those curves increase to infinity, it would be the end of galactic civilization." 
Savaj nodded, indicated one curve. "This projects the death rate." 
Spock looked at the graph and projected it. "Soon to exceed the population of the known galaxy." 
They looked at each other and began for the first time to grasp the magnitude of the menace. Their mission against Vejur had saved the planet Earth. Now the threat of annihilation included Klingons, Romulans -- not only their friends, but also all their enemies and all their homeworlds and all the worlds yet unknown that were theirs to roam. Kirk queried the computer for a time scale. The death rate went to millions within the month -- and off the graph within the year. 
Their galaxy was ending . . . .
Chapter Five
Kirk checked into McCoy's office and found the doctor preparing suitable potions: two Saurian brandies.
"I'm not sure the two of us, drunk, can handle a sober Vulcan, let alone two, Bones. Otherwise, it's a hell of a good idea."
"It's prescribed. What's got into Spock?"
"He's 'not Human!' "
"What else is new? Or -- did I miss something?"
"I must have." Kirk waved it off. "Anything for a headache?"
"Not one that size." McCoy eyed him, seeing bruises that seemed to have showed up since yesterday. "Jim, are you all right?"
Kirk grimaced. "No, I'm not."
McCoy came around the desk. "My God -- if you're admitting it . . . !"
Kirk waved him off. "Bones, we have to break my mental block. Spock can't help me. There's no mistake about Savaj's figures. This thing has been going on for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but it's coming to a head now. We're drinking to the late, great galaxy."
He handed McCoy a computer printout. It was an account of a disappearance that might have been Kirk's own, down to the rage, shame, marks on the body. Dateline Earth, twentieth century.
"Could be a dozen things, Jim. Hysteria. Wishful thinking. We
know that Earth had some early galactic traffic, but we've never really solved the UFO mystery. There's no hard evidence for the 'contactee' type of report."
"Bones, what hard evidence do we have for what happened to me -- and you -- yesterday?"
McCoy took the untouched brandy glass out of Kirk's hand. "I can recommend the neopentothal."
"Make it a double."

McCoy administered the hypnotic drug, fine-tuned the sensitive scan that should help break down virtually any unconscious block, patient willing.
He began to ask the preliminary relaxing questions -- name, rank. After a moment's hesitation Kirk answered with some satisfaction, "Captain James T. Kirk, Commander, U.S.S. Enterprise." Then he frowned as if there were something more he should have remembered, but dismissed it. That was who he was. That was who he had always wanted to be.
McCoy pressed on. The hypnoscan showed areas that Kirk defended strongly as a matter of privacy, and with the uncommon dynamic quality of Kirk's mind, which Spock had long ago sensed in the mind-link. McCoy knew what some of those private areas were, could wish he knew more about one or two, but he would not have probed.
He was looking for the main mass of resistance that would be the recent trauma. And there it was, like some large, gray, foreboding presence. Of dangerous size.
"You are moving back in time," McCoy murmured, "back through the night." 
Kirk's head started to lash back and forth in negation. "Past the
night," McCoy said hastily. "It is yesterday afternoon. Everything is all right. The crowd's rough, but you're on your way to the rendezvous . . . "
Kirk relaxed to wary intentness. His body was stilled with the body's natural release of the biochemical that kept the muscles from moving violently in dreams. But McCoy could see in the trace movements, like a puppy's dream of being chased, the gathering of anger in the crowd, the start of the chase. "Crowd . . . closing on me . . . "
McCoy could follow the chase on Kirk's face -- only the ordinary fear and coping with it of an experienced man, none of the gut-terror of trauma. Then there was a moment when Kirk got past the danger, thought himself safe . . .
Then -- terror struck. McCoy had never seen that kind of fear on Kirk's face. He saw Kirk try to fight it down, respond, make contact. "Things . . . " he murmured. "No mouths. No . . . fellow-feeling . . . " Then he seemed to freeze. "Don't touch me . . . Stop . . . Spock!"
Suddenly the terror burst through the hypnotic state, even defeating the body's own drug against movement. Kirk came up off the platform like a mad thing -- a crazed animal pushed beyond the limits of Human terror. He flung McCoy against a wall without noticing it and crashed blindly across Sick Bay, smashing into things. McCoy struggled to stay conscious, to get to an alarm . . .
Before McCoy could reach an intercom the doors burst open and Spock was there, catching the blind, animal Kirk, stopping the frantic movements, holding him by main force.
McCoy saw Savaj move in from the doorway, the full Vulcan's face unyielding, emotionless, his Vulcan strength ready to assist. But Spock required no assistance.
McCoy moved in with a counterhypnotic hypo, but before he
could reach Kirk Spock's presence communicated itself directly. Kirk stopped, stayed still, seemed to collect himself, then focused his eyes.
Spock turned Kirk around and inspected him for a moment, saw sanity, and let his own features harden to coldness. "Mr. Kirk, what is the meaning of conducting a hazardous medical experiment involving key personnel of this ship without consulting its commander?"
"Consulting!" Kirk flared. "Who appointed you God?" He caught himself, mastered the outburst a little, saw Savaj looking on with infuriating coolness. Kirk smiled dangerously. 'Forgive me." He inclined his head fractionally in Savaj's direction. "I had forgotten who had that authority." He moved away from Spock and met his eyes. "Captain Spock, apart from anything else, I am now First Officer and Science Officer here. It is within my authority to conduct research, and within McCoy's prerogatives to do what he considers necessary as Chief Medical Officer."
Spock shook his head. "Not anymore. Circumstances render both your judgments suspect. Mr. Kirk, your normal tendency to risk yourself, sometimes in unwarranted manners, may be magnified by the same effect that you admit affected your judgment yesterday. It has done so again. At minimum you should have requested my presence as a protection against what just happened."
Kirk grimaced, caught by his own sense of fairness. "I apologize for that. To you, too, Bones."
McCoy shrugged. "I've never known anybody to break out of a hypnoscan like that, Jim. What they did to you must have been -- intolerable. Beings, Spock. He definitely contacted some kind of beings. Things,' 'no mouths,' no 'fellow-feeling,' he said."
Spock nodded, as if it came as no great surprise. "How did you know to come charging in here, Spock?" McCoy asked.
"It is my responsibility to know, Doctor." If Savaj noted that that was not an answer, he gave no sign.
Spock turned to Kirk. "Mr. Kirk, I did not seek command, but if I command, I command. A ship does not serve two masters. You will respect that or confine yourself to quarters."
Kirk looked at him stubbornly for a long moment and McCoy thought that there was an anger there that would not soon subside. They had been through too much together for Spock to take his tone with him -- and in front of Savaj. Kirk's own command over Spock had been definite, but almost always with a light hand.
But how many times must Spock have wished that he could order Kirk not to pull some particularly dangerous stunt?
And now he could.
Even their resident Vulcan must be just Human enough to relish that. 
Finally Kirk nodded. "Understood . . . sir."
Spock inclined his head in acknowledgment. "If you are fit, you may continue with Admiral Savaj's briefing tour of the ship."
Kirk turned on his heel and went out with Savaj.
Chapter Six
Kirk walked stiffly with Savaj, more irritated with himself than with Spock -- which was saying something. Bad enough that this full Vulcan had seen Kirk panicked and being dressed down in front of him. But also Kirk had lost his own temper.
"Admiral, I apologize for that remark about appointing God."
"My authority does not extend quite that high, Commander."
Kirk looked at Savaj, trying to read Vulcan devilment -- or mere literal-mindedness.
"Neither does Spock's," Kirk ventured wryly, "although apparently one could get an argument about that in some quarters."
The Vulcan's face remained impassive -- much harder to read than Spock's father Sarek's, doubtless because this full Vulcan had not married Spock's formidable Human mother, Amanda.
Kirk shrugged. "Captain Spock's point about requesting his presence as protection was well taken. I regret you had to see the consequences of that omission."
"One regrets consequences, Commander, not the seeing of them."
Kirk clamped down on his temper again. "Yes. Of course. What would you prefer to see next, Admiral? Engineering?"
"Your recreation deck."
"Rec deck? Certainly. Forgive me -- I hadn't thought a Vulcan
would be much interested." The turbolift arrived and Kirk gave the destination as they stepped in.
"This is predominantly a Human ship, Commander. Maintenance of its most significant mechanisms in operating condition does frequently take place there, does it not?"
"Yes, it does. I've often wondered what would perform that function on an all-Vulcan ship."
Savaj turned to look at him. "You would have had substantially more difficulty with that, Commander, as a lone Human there than Spock has had here."
They emerged onto the rec deck. The great vaulted space was filled with Humans and a variety of other species who worked almost as hard at their play. 
Most of the special-purpose alcoves opening off the walls at all heights were open, too -- everything from specialty shops to chess alcoves to coffee places and conversation pits, plus privacy alcoves, some reached by null-grav shaft. In the physical activity areas even the air was full with null-grav sports. The great sea wall opened on the landscaped tank filled with playful swimmers -- and the liquid that resembled water, except that air breathers did not drown in it.
Everywhere was talk, laughter, bright bodies flashing with trained grace -- the look of a happy ship. Few knew the seriousness of the present problem, and while Kirk caught some curious looks at him, his crew seemed to regard any interruption of his command as local and temporary. They had long been accustomed to regarding Spock as a kind of extension of himself. Some nodded and he saw the word Captain on their lips.
He turned to Savaj. "Spock finds certain pleasures here. Would a full Vulcan find them . . . illogical?"
"Unrestful, perhaps," Savaj said. "But then a Vulcan would not
attempt to use them for that purpose."
"What would I have found difficult as, say, your First Officer, sir?" Kirk asked.
"I assure you, Mr. Kirk, you would have found it quite impossible."
"Specify?"
"To push the buttons. To calculate what a Vulcan would do in infant school. To avoid broadcasting emotions to the distraction of all." Savaj saw Kirk getting irritated. "Most of all, to calculate the logic of risk. Under my command you would have failed to do so only once."
"Mr. Spock has attempted to deal with that problem, perhaps with some success. But it remains true that risk is our profession."
"Logical risk."
Kirk smiled. "I know of no logic by which a fish climbs up on land or a man to the stars. But my species does it -- and yours, sir."
"And is that how you justify the risk you are taking with Spock?"
Kirk looked at him sharply. "What risk?"
Savaj did not answer immediately. After a moment he said, "By what right do you hold a superior mind under your command while refusing to take his advice on matters of risk -- exposing him also to the consequences of your actions?"
"It is a matter of record that Spock has been free to accept his own command for many years now. He has refused to do so."
"Vulcan loyalty to a commander is considered a cardinal virtue."
"So is loyalty, Human or Vulcan, to a friend, Admiral. I take Mr. Spock's advice when I can. When I expose him to risk I know at least that he serves as he chooses."
"He serves as he must." Savaj dismissed it with a hand. "Commander
Commander, it is also of record that you play chess. I would find that instructive."
Kirk inclined his head fractionally. "We could play the infant school version, I'm sure."
Savaj merely raised an eyebrow blandly. "That will do."
Kirk had put an edge on it, and he immediately regretted that. It might too easily be true.
If you made a list of the ten best minds in the galaxy, you could make a case that Savaj was at least two of them. On the other hand, Kirk played chess with Spock.

The moment they started to set up the three-dimensional chessboard it became a shipwide event. Everybody off duty imperceptibly drifted over. One of Uhura's young communications ensigns manned a talkie with which he evidently intended to patch in a running account to the duty stations. They had done that now and then for some particularly historic game between Kirk and Spock. But here was fresh meat. Probably Kirk's.
Kirk saw little flurries of betting and bookmaking in the background and was pleased to see that the odds weren't totally one-sided. Doubtless a mistaken loyalty. He saw Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, who had been watching over Kirk at every chance since Helvan, making book on him to win.
Kirk heard an ensign murmuring, "Don't worry. The Captain'll psych him out."
"I wouldn't count on it," Yeoman Trian whispered, looking at Savaj, "but I'll root for it."
McCoy got wind of the game and strolled in. He sidled over to Kirk, ran a medical scanner. "Vitals still not up to par, Jim. I'd advise rest."
Kirk flashed a subdued grin at McCoy for giving him a graceful way out, but shook his head. "Unrestful, doubtless, but man does not live by rest alone."
Kirk drew white and played a standard but solid king's pawn opening to a standard reply, and for a few moves they developed their pieces to control key squares, ranks, and levels, feeling each other out, trading an occasional piece evenly or for advantage of position.
Savaj had the advantage of that Vulcan mind, which could calculate alternatives like a multiphase computer. Most Vulcans who played Humans gave them at least a queen handicap -- about what a Human would give a bright six-year-old. Kirk had been maybe too stubborn to accept one from Spock and had gotten his pants beaten off, routinely, until at some point he had begun to develop subtle psychological advantages -- which sometimes worked.
It had spoiled him for playing most Humans.
Spock came in now, did not speak, but stood watching.
"Pawn to queen's Level One," Kirk said. "Admiral, would you care to define 'logical' risk?"
He half-expected Savaj to insist that full Vulcans did not converse over chess. But Savaj answered, "A child's definition begins with exclusions -- no risk that is unnecessary, avoidable, reducible by ordinary or extraordinary means. Example: How would you describe a style of command, Mr. Kirk, in which a commander knows a cloudcreature to be lethal to himself and his kind, harmless to a better qualified First Officer under his command, yet goes to face the creature himself over that officer's strong protest?"1
Kirk gave Savaj points for psyching, too. How was it that the full Vulcan had picked out, from their unfortunately too well known record, the very incident that was Spock's classic example? Kirk
looked up to see Spock's face. And did it really rankle so deeply with the Vulcan First Officer still?
"That First Officer," Kirk said, "was right."
Savaj looked up, surprised, as if Kirk might be showing some promise.
Spock managed to keep expression off his face.
"That commander," Kirk said, "may have had certain thoughts, intuitions, even hunches, at the time that suggested that there might be a need for a second live bait, which could only be himself. That proved to be the case. If the cloud-creature had escaped to spawn, the consequences were unthinkable. Nevertheless, the First Officer would have been safe -- and might have been quick enough on the first try."
"A 'nevertheless' is not an admission of error, Mr. Kirk," Savaj said.
Kirk moved a rook to line it up, file and level, with his queen.
"No. It is not," he agreed. "Mr. Spock was right, and I was playing a long-shot hunch that I wouldn't have been able to explain properly then or since. That case may have been a mistake, potentially fatal. But I know that I have often gone with the subliminal 'feel' of such decisions -- maybe a form of lightning calculation I can't use consciously. Very often they work out."
"Until the day when the favorable random factors run out."
Kirk met the Vulcan's eyes. "Until that day."
Savaj had answered his move by taking Kirk's rook -- and leaving a small opening on a crucial square on king's Level One.
"Logical risks," Savaj said, "must reduce losses to the bearable -- or the inescapable."
"And if losses would be intolerable and the odds are absurd?"
"Reevaluate," Savaj said. "Reinforce. Refuse risk. Make peace." He looked at Kirk levelly. "Die, if necessary. The universe does not
always arrange the triumph of virtue."
"No, but I prefer to rearrange the universe to that effect when possible. Change the name of the game -- "
He looked up at Spock. It was an argument they had had very early, when Kirk had run his Corbomite bluff against the overwhelming force of Balok's great ship. Spock had argued an analogy with chess -- in the face of overwhelming force, concede. Kirk had changed the game to poker and bluffed to convince Balok that Kirk held all the cards -- in the shape of a self-destruct weapon that would destroy them all.2 Spock had never again conceded defeat. He stood now watching, face impassive.
Kirk made his move, through the small opening with the bishop he had reserved for the purpose while distracting with a more visible threat. "Check," he said.
"I told you the Captain would psych him!" some exuberant Enterprise voice said. "Mate in one move."
Kirk saw it then. A layer-on-layer trap designed precisely to draw him into trying his psychout move, playing on his slightly free-wheeling, risk-taking style.
Savaj had only one move, and it would both block Kirk's check and checkmate his king. It was as neat a trap and as complete a reading of him as Kirk had ever seen.
He reached out and tipped over his king in acknowledgment. "Thank you," he said. "I found it most instructive."

But Savaj was already rising. "Captain Spock, a word with you. Mr. Kirk."
He moved off with them across the rec deck, McCoy trailing.
"Captain Spock, you have been his First Officer how long?"
Spock's look became cold. "The figure is a matter of record."
Savaj nodded toward an exercise mat they were approaching. "You also work out with him."
"On occasion," Kirk said. He thought he saw where Savaj was going and resented it on Spock's behalf.
"I would like to see such a workout," Savaj said.
Kirk looked at Spock, and Spock shrugged an eyebrow. They went to the changing cubicles.
It was Savaj's turn to raise an eyebrow when they came back in the belted jackets and close-fitting breech clouts of the Vulcan asumi discipline.
"A green sash, Mr. Kirk? That is a considerable achievement for a Human."
"Spock is a considerable teacher."
They crossed right arms to each other's right shoulder, in token of a match not to the death, then released, bowed, paused for one moment of attunement.
The V'asumi duo-katas were an exercise and an art form based on a simulation of combat. As such they were fatally fast and potentially lethal -- if either partner missed a beat in reading what the other was to do or in demonstrating a blow millimeters short of deadly impact.
Perfectly done, a V'asumi became almost a dance of menace, and of perfect control -- the ancient dance of sworn warrior brothers.
They had given no name to it when they had learned it, and they had not done it since Spock returned from Vulcan. But by unspoken consent it was what they would do in the face of Savaj.
The entire off-duty crew assembled again to watch.
They dissolved into action.
Kirk feinted and attacked. Spock read him and slipped him over his shoulder, throwing him by his own momentum. But Kirk used
the same momentum and a leg scissors to bring the Vulcan down to one knee. Spock slipped Kirk's hold and caught him again. Kirk smashed with an elbow -- pulling the blow by millimeters. In combat it would have smashed Human ribs into lungs -- and possibly inconvenienced a Vulcan. Spock locked Kirk against his chest in a hold that threatened to set in for the winter; somehow he slipped out of it -- turned and launched a high kick. Spock caught it out of the air, caught his momentum, and carried him into a high lift. It was a terminal V'asumi maneuver. In combat Spock could have done what he wished.
They turned it into a flying dismount, Spock giving him the momentum for a high back flip to a landing in front of Spock. They locked wrists in warrior's acknowledgment and stepped back to bow.
There was spontaneous applause from the crew -- rather long and loud. Kirk raised a hand to subdue it and walked with Spock to a stone-faced Savaj.
Savaj indicated with a fractional jerk of his head "Come with me," and they walked through the crowd toward the changing cubicles, McCoy joining them.
"I never thought I'd see that again," McCoy muttered.
Out of earshot of the crew in the changing corridor Savaj turned on Spock. "Call thee this Human friend, Spock? Then by what right soften him to his death? Think you a Romulan would handle him so gently?" The Vulcan formal mode sounded scathing.
Spock faced Savaj and there was some primitive look between them. "He has survived Romulans."
"Thy friend has no brother. His own fire-brother condemns him to the first savage. It is no act of friendship."
"The practice is V'asumi not K'asumi. The difference in strength is ineradicable."
"V'asumi may properly restrain strength, not power. Difference is no excuse for acceptance of less than full potential. Centuries ago the ineradicable difference argument was made against the female of this species."
Spock shrugged. "Early studies showed, in that case, a potential strength increase of sixty percent -- later, still more."
"And where is your interspecies study, Spock? The Human potential is limited only by acceptance of limits. How can you let this Human -- or any Human -- go into battle in this condition?"
Spock looked as if he would be embarrassed if he knew how -- and he did.
"Mr. Spock has respected our diversity," Kirk began.
Savaj managed an impolite expression. He inclined his head toward a changing booth and stepped into it. Spock punched in a code for the fabricator. Energy shimmered behind the transluscent door and Savaj stepped out momentarily in an asumi jacket -- tied with the scarlet sash that Spock also wore -- the highest rank. But Savaj's had a fine gold chain woven into it.
He turned without a word and Spock followed him back out to the mat.
"Spock," McCoy muttered under his breath, "you don't have to do this."
"Yes, Doctor, I do."

Spock and Savaj squared off on the mat, locked right arms, bowed -- and became the sudden, feral incarnation of all Vulcan. The desert lived here, and the le matya.
Kirk understood suddenly that the green sash he had earned with
such pride was only a Vulcan child's earning, doubtless earned by Vulcans before the Kaswan trial at the age of seven.
Kirk was the child.
These two were the adult.
Kirk could not follow the moves -- bone-jarring throws, nerve holds that would have felled an ox -- demonstrated only to the point of fading consciousness here, blows that would have shattered bone, now pulled to a dull crunch that would still have filled McCoy's Sick Bay if tried on Humans.
For a moment beyond the fight Kirk caught Uhura's eyes, shocked, and rapt -- the look of a jungle huntress. He caught a somewhat similar expression on other faces -- Rand's, Trian's.
But he was focused on Spock. Every eye in the crew was riveted to Spock.
For all Kirk had known, he had still never known the Vulcan's full potential. Once Kirk had seen the end of a fight, and an enemy, who had called that Vulcan's full potential forth.3 But this was a demonstration of consummate skill that went on long beyond the point where one Vulcan would have killed the other in a fight to the death.
Kirk caught himself wondering: In a fight to the finish between these two, who would finish?
Savaj was older -- in that ageless Vulcan way that only appeared to make him stronger, more massive, full-grown, weathered oak against Spock's more slender strength.
On the other hand, Spock had that strength which did not seem to come from muscle alone, but from somewhere out of the ground -- maybe from that indomitable will by which he had come to live, an alien among strangers.
Spock got in a good, hard-slamming fall and looked as if it gave
even his Vulcan half some satisfaction. One for captain and friend possibly, or just one for himself.
But "Ironpants" Savaj could take it as well as dish it out. The fall would have put a Human off the duty roster for a week. Savaj was up in one controlled roll, caught Spock, and put him down with a force that seemed to rock the deck.
Spock got up rather slowly and his face wore some trace of the savage look that Kirk had seen on occasion. It did not bode well even for Ironpants Savaj.
"Jim!" McCoy muttered. "Aren't you going to stop this?"
"How, Bones? I'm open to suggestions." In fact, his instinct was to order it. The difficulty with that was that he was not in command. And if he had been, it looked a lot like ordering a cessation of hostilities between Tyrannosauri rex.
He was considering pulling some stunt . . .
Savaj gave the hand-signal-of-senior that the encounter was ended. Spock's jaw set, but he straightened, bowed, and gave the countersignal.
Then Savaj turned to Kirk, inviting with an eyebrow. There was a faint gasp from somebody as the crew realized what he meant.
Spock signaled Kirk imperceptibly: No.
But it was an offer Kirk couldn't refuse. Nor did he really want to. He was none too pleased with the thought of stepping onto the mat with that le matya after what he had just seen. On the other hand, even Savaj wouldn't give him the full Vulcan treatment, and he did know a move or two.
He went in with some thought of getting in at least one good lick for what Savaj still had to know about this mission and wasn't telling -- and for the way he had just talked to Spock.
Kirk stepped onto the mat. He sized Savaj up as they bowed and
decided that that had been a serious mistake.
Then Savaj moved, and he was certain of it.
The full Vulcan put him down in an easy fall, with zero effort at all. Savaj half-cushioned the fall, then gave him a hand up, let him set himself, and make his move -- and took him down as easily again.
There was no sense of excessive force or massive use of the great strength. It was merely skill and the simplicity with which adult would restrain child or hulking male some untrained, slender youngster.
Kirk was not untrained, but against this hundred-year skill and depth of power he might as well have been.
He felt something snap and went in with the best move Spock had taught him -- to try one fall in earnest. It was supposed to work against superior strength. A flying use of body momentum-
Savaj caught him out of the air, absorbing the momentum without difficulty, and to Kirk's cost -- as if a tree caught him. Then Savaj put him down, hard -- not full force, but jarring.
For a long moment he pinned Kirk down. "That's better, Commander. Honest Human emotion. Rage. Would you care to try for the sixty percent? You will need it where we are going."
Kirk strained against him with every muscle he owned. Savaj didn't flicker a muscle, but if full Vulcan eyes could laugh, these did.
Kirk stopped. "I'll have it," he said through his teeth.
Savaj rose in one movement and pulled him to his feet. "Tomorrow, then?"
Kirk nodded. Savaj strode off toward the changing cubicles.
Kirk turned to Spock, jerked his head toward the mat. "You heard the man. Let's go." If it was still the command tone, he was beyond caring.
Spock shrugged fractionally and obeyed, stepped onto the mat. Form did not demand a second ritual. Kirk tried a quick move on Spock. For once Spock answered like a Vulcan, not at full strength, but with more power than he had ever used on Kirk in his right Vulcan mind. He caught a lock hold and Kirk strained against it with all he had, as if he would build the 60 percent on the spot.
But it was not to be that simple. Spock kept the hold until the point was well established, then released him and let him turn to lock eyes.
Kirk knew his own eyes were now making the accusation Savaj had made.
"Tomorrow, Mr. Spock," he said flatly.
"You forget yourself, Mr. Kirk." The tone was Vulcan and the demand in the dark Vulcan eyes was inflexible.
Kirk caught a hold on his temper and lowered his eyes fractionally in acknowledgment. "Captain."
He felt the crew looking on in shock. McCoy was moving in with some idea of breaking up the moment.
Kirk turned and moved off toward the changing cubicles, realizing that he was angrier than he had known, probably more than he had a right to be. Nonetheless, he was.

McCoy followed Spock into the changing corridor, grumbling at him. "Did you have to call him down in front of the whole crew? Rank gone to your head, Spock? Or is it those devil horns you won't let me take off? Acting the part?" 
"Do not forget yourself, Doctor," Spock said, opening the door of a cubicle.
"Captain," McCoy said, not respectfully. "Come off it, Spock. You said for years you didn't want command. Did a Vulcan lie?"
"What I want is irrelevant, Doctor. What I have is command. You will excuse me."
He stepped in and closed the door of the cubicle. McCoy heard the faint sound of programming the fabricators for a change. Colors started to shimmer behind the translucent door.
Then McCoy realized that some sound was subliminally wrong, the pattern of forming fabric also somehow wrong.
He reached for the outside release, but it did not open the door. There was a thrashing inside and a muffled sound. McCoy rammed a shoulder against the door, but bounced off.
Suddenly Savaj was there. He smashed his fist through the tough door, then ripped it out.
Spock was naked, enclosed in some transparent cocoon of thick stuff that seemed to be shrinking rapidly around every part of his body, swiftly crushing in throat and Adam's apple, threatening ribs and internal organs.
Savaj ripped Spock out of the cubicle and tore at the fibrous stuff at face and throat with his hands.
Kirk appeared from somewhere and also started trying to clear the stuff, but it would not yield to Human hands -- as McCoy also was finding out.
Savaj ripped it apart at Spock's throat and mouth, cleared an airway, but it was still crushing his whole body. Spock did not cry out, but it was clearly beyond even Vulcan techniques for controlling pain.
Savaj lifted him and bundled him into the next cubicle, closed the door, and programmed the fabricator to strip.
"If this one is defective, too -- " Kirk began.
But Savaj had hit the control. Colors shimmered behind the panel -- life or death. Savaj snapped the lock on the door as they
faded. Spock collapsed out into their arms.
McCoy checked him with his hands. Alive. Breathing. Nothing broken that he could find in a moment. The heartbeat ridiculously fast, even for a Vulcan -- but McCoy wasn't complaining.
"Bones?" Kirk demanded.
"Okay." McCoy said. "Hell be all right."
Kirk nodded. He had pulled off his asumi jacket and was putting it over the naked Spock as the crew began to pour into the corridor. Then he turned to the problem, picked up a scrap of the fibrous stuff Savaj had torn off Spock's throat.
"Mr. Scott. This is thickening fabricator base, isn't it?"
Scott took the scrap. "Aye, Captain."
"Check the cubicle, Engineer."
"Aye, sir." Scott leaned his head in, snapped open a panel. "I'm nae certain how it was done, but something bollixed the programming to transport in straight, hot base instead of a uniform. It would make a deadly shrinkwrap."
Kirk looked down at Spock. "If Spock had been alone -- "
"More precisely," Savaj said, "if I had not, unexpectedly, been nearby, Captain Spock would be dead. Vulcans are somewhat vulnerable to asphyxiation and to extreme pressure on ears and body. No Human in your crew would have had the strength to aid Spock in time."
Kirk nodded. "Your actions were timely and exemplary, sir, and I thank you."
"One does not thank necessity, Commander. Nor random factors. There was every reason for someone to suppose that I had long ago gone."
"Someone?" Kirk said. "Are you implying that someone did this?"
"I imply nothing. Random failure of the cubicle Captain Spock
used earlier -- to which he would almost certainly return, since he would have left a transporter hold code for personal articles there -- seems excessively convenient."
Kirk straightened. "There is no one on my ship, Admiral, who would attempt to kill Mr. Spock."
Savaj met his eyes. "I do not know that, Commander. Nor do you. There is at least one stranger aboard your ship."
"You, Admiral?" Kirk almost smiled. "Do you wish me to consider you a suspect?"
"Certainly," Savaj said. "We are faced with what is either an inexplicable accident or a still more inexplicable attempt on Spock's life. We are pursuing a still less explicable alien effect. Nothing is beyond suspicion." He looked at Kirk, now wearing only the loincloth of the asumi outfit. "You left the floor some minutes ago, Mr. Kirk. Why had you not changed?"
Kirk looked shocked. "Me? Kill Spock?" He shook his head helplessly. "Wrong track, Admiral. The fact is" -- he looked a little sheepish -- "I went to cool off."
"The fact is, you had something from which to 'cool off.' Captain Spock twice used his authority to reprimand you -- once in front of me, once before your whole crew." Kirk dismissed it with a shrug. "Irritating, sir. Scarcely lethal." He turned. "Mr. Scott, take that system apart. Find out what happened. Bones, get Spock to Sick Bay."
"That will not be necessary, Mr. Kirk," Spock said. He lifted his head from McCoy's arms. "I am functional. Clear the corridor. Savaj may remain." 
McCoy said, "I'm not moving, Captain Spock."
"That is your prerogative, Doctor. No one else's." He looked at Kirk, and Kirk looked ready to take something apart, thought better of it, turned stiffly, and left.
Savaj punched a robe code and let it form in an empty cubicle, retrieved it, and brought it to Spock. Spock pulled the robe on to replace the skimpy coverage of Kirk's asumi jacket.
But the Vulcan was barely into the robe when a red alert sounded.
Chapter 7
McCoy tried momentarily to restrain Spock, but the Vulcan was up and moving for the intercom at the end of the corridor. They met Kirk there. Kirk had beaten Spock to it by old reflex.
Sulu was already on the small screen. "Helm. Unidentified presence. Vessel of unknown type. Maybe it's not a vessel. It seems to pop in and out -- like a skipping stone -- maybe on a dimensional interface."
Savaj nodded as if with satisfaction. "That brought them."
Spock turned on him. "Brought whom?"
"Unknown," Savaj said. "Possibly whoever is studying what we just did." 
Spock looked at him narrowly. He turned to the intercom. "On my way. Admiral, Mr. Kirk." Spock handed Kirk the asumi jacket he still held, as if urging Kirk to cover himself, and moved for the turbolift. McCoy trailed them.
In the turbolift Spock turned on Savaj. "Admiral, you will be good enough to explain whether or in what manner you are using this ship to draw some alien presence -- without the prior knowledge of its commander."
Savaj inclined his head. "Unorthodox, Captain, but essential. The hypothesis I was testing required that you have no prior knowledge."
"Specify."
"I believe that the presence we are studying is studying us."
"Scientists?" Kirk said. "Some alien task force?"
"Experimenters," Savaj said. "Source unknown. Purpose unknown."
"Then what did you count on to draw them?" Kirk asked.
"Mr. Kirk, you and I played the most combative and territorial of intellectual games. I baited you and Captain Spock on grounds of your well-known friendship -- and with uncomfortable truths. I arranged for three of the most competitive men in the galaxy to meet in its fiercest combat sport. I may even have succeeded beyond my aims if Captain Spock's accident was anything else. But in any case, they came."
"Are you saying," Kirk asked, "to study . . . aggression?"
"I believe that is what I said." 
"Flawlessly logical," Spock said coldly. "Presuming that is the experimenters' intent -- and that they do not dissect subjects who exhibit the required characteristics."
Savaj's look was glacial. "That is a distinct possibility, Captain Spock. However, we are not necessarily expected to survive this mission. We are merely expected to save the galaxy. If possible."
They reached the bridge.
An alien ship loomed on the screen, maybe twenty times their size.
"Whatever you gentlemen are doing," McCoy complained, "it's working."

Kirk watched the alien ship skip-fade out into nothingness. It still showed on the mass scanners, but it reflected all penetration
scans and might as well have been a black box. Now an invisible black box.
"Lingua code," Spock ordered, but they all sensed it was useless.
Kirk fought down a sudden recurrence of nausea and shame. He was still shaken by that scene in the corridor when Spock had nearly died. Then something solidified into anger within him, Savaj had been playing with them, pulling the strings of what he knew would get a rise out of them on some deep level. It had. Even the chess had been as cutthroat as Kirk had ever played. Savaj had seen to it that he was defeated on all grounds, before his crew, but worse, had implied that Spock had been pulling punches on him.
Not only in asumi. In chess.
He tried to shake the anger off, remembering the moment in the corridor when he had been certain that the fibrous stuff had done its work. If Spock had died . . .
He stood up and went over to the command seat. "You shouldn't be here, Captain Spock. There's no immediate action. Let me take it and you go with McCoy."
"Negative. Unnecessary."
Kirk dropped his voice. "Spock, don't play ironman. You were close to death. You could have internal injuries."
"Mr. Kirk, you will not argue my orders."
Kirk flared. "I will if they are 'illogical,' Spock, as you damn well argued mine -- and properly. And on that subject, you are now going to work me out at full speed and skill to build maximum strength. And if I catch you in less than full Vulcan mode, in that or in chess, you will rue the day."
He had said it with some heat, but with some touch of the old humor. 
But suddenly he saw the primitive look that had flared in Spock's
eyes against Savaj. "You do not command," Spock said, "and you will not threaten." 
Kirk moved closer -- with what intent he was not certain -- but there was some red haze behind his eyes.
"Mr. Kirk," Spock snapped, "you will confine yourself to quarters."
Kirk stopped, stunned. Finally he held to some thread of discipline. 
"Yes, sir," Kirk said, and turned on his heel and left the bridge.

McCoy signaled and popped into Kirk's quarters almost before hearing the muffled "Come."
"What do you call that performance?" McCoy said.
"What do you call Spock's?" Kirk waved it off. "Sorry, Bones. I'm on edge. What happened to Spock down there didn't help. I shouldn't have argued -- but I still didn't figure Spock to let command go to his head."
"Why not?" McCoy said. "He must have despaired of you often enough." He came with the scanner. "Actually, you both need your heads examined. Which I will. That's a high stress reading, Jim."
Kirk grimaced, rubbed his temples. "Headache. Bones, for a second on the bridge I had that feeling again -- the shame, anger -- "
"And blew it off at Spock."
"Yeah," Kirk confessed glumly. He turned to the intercom. "Bridge. Captain Spock, my apologies, and I have something to report about possible alien effect. Permission to return to duty?"
Spock's face on screen was the Vulcan mask.
"Report."
"On the bridge I experienced a repetition of the previous effect, including guilt, anger."
Spock nodded. "Fascinating. Apology noted, Mr. Kirk. Your presence is not required at the moment. Remain in your quarters and follow medical advice to rest."
Kirk started to protest, but the Vulcan had ended the transmission.
"Sound medical advice," McCoy said.
"Get out of here, Bones."
McCoy stood his ground. "You can't treat this lightly, Jim. You've been worked over by aliens who've left some implanted effect tough enough to break you out of a hypnoscan in a blind fury."
Kirk sobered, nodded. "I know it, Bones. But how can I get a grip on that? Is there some other medical test we can try?"
"You didn't get into enough trouble about that?" McCoy shook his head. "We went right to the top. If hypnoscan won't break it, then it's buried so deep nothing will. Maybe . . . time."
"Which we don't have."
"Tough universe," McCoy said wryly. "I'm more concerned right now about this business with Spock and Savaj. Jim, you can't run around trying to make yourself into a Vulcan. You're not built for it."
Kirk shook his head. "Between us, Bones, the son of a . . . Vulcan is right. Tough universe. Nobody gives guarantees I'll be treated gently. By Romulans. By these 'experimenters.' If I could have half again my strength -- "
"You'll break your neck, or your -- "
"Bones, Spock's been holding back -- more than I knew, more than I would have stood still for. I wish I didn't think it was even in chess."
"I don't believe that," McCoy said. "Maybe he plays you mostly from his Human half, now and again -- which is probably good for
him. But I've seen some of those psychouts of yours. And I've seen that one game he had analyzed for you -- when the top grand masters of the galaxy cited you for grand master's level play."1
Kirk looked slightly mollified, reminded. "It takes me weeks to do that, one, two moves a day, if I'm lucky."
"Meanwhile, you can do it. You can't calculate to sixteen decimals in the time Spock can either. But he takes your orders."
Kirk grinned. "Bones, remind me to cite you for grand master's level in bedside manner."
"Your old country doctor."
"You better get out of here now before we both get in trouble."
"Get some rest, Jim." McCoy put a hand on Kirk's shoulder for a moment, then left. In the hall he stopped. The shoulder had somehow felt surprisingly vulnerable. Kirk was in training, but it was the slim training of running and swimming now, healthier, but not quite the look of power the massive shoulders had once given him. McCoy didn't want to see Kirk give what it would take out of him to get the other 60 percent.
He decided to have a talk with Spock -- maybe even with Savaj. There was no way Jim could or would back down, but maybe Spock would see sense.
Savaj was something else.
Chapter Eight
During the ship's night, in one of its outphase stages, the alien ship simply vanished. Mass readings dropped to zero, and the visual did not reappear.
Spock nevertheless remained in the command chair for the rest of the night watch. It was he who saw the red line on guest quarters' life support. 
He alerted Sulu, called Scott to meet him at guest quarters, and shot there by turbolift.
The corridor was freezing cold and the readout panel showed a high concentration of carbon dioxide and dangerous amounts of carbon monoxide. Scott arrived and swore, started dumping and recycling air.
Spock went to the only occupied guest cabin, signaled, got no answer, and found the door jammed by computer interlock. He placed his palms against the door, wedged fingertips into the crack, and forced it until the lock snapped.
He went in and found Savaj in a light body-trance state, metabolism slowed, the sleeping body's ingrained defense against severe Vulcan changes of temperature or pressure. But the trance state was not a defense against the carbon monoxide, to which Vulcans were particularly sensitive and without natural defense.
Spock carried Savaj to the corridor and beyond the cold line and
slapped his face hard to rouse him from the trance.
McCoy was there, blinking back sleep and bending over Savaj with a scanner. He set a stimulant and detoxifier on the spray hypo and pressed it to Savaj's arm.
Suddenly Kirk was there too.
"What happened, Spock?"
Spock looked up. "You were not released." He slapped Savaj again and the Vulcan caught Spock's wrist and opened his eyes.
Savaj was completely awake and fully aware. "Life support?" he asked. 
"Monoxide levels quickly lethal to a Vulcan."
"Apparently a computer error," Scott answered. "I canna understand how, but it's fixed now."
"Reassign to officers' quarters," Spock said, "until you do understand, Mr. Scott. Class One Check."
"Aye, sir. I don't like the look of the carbon monoxide."
Kirk was inspecting the readout. "That's no ordinary malfunction."
"No," Spock said, "it is not. Mr. Kirk, return to quarters. Savaj, with me." The full Vulcan gathered himself and came to his feet and the two Vulcans moved off.
Kirk turned and went to his quarters. McCoy tagged Spock and Savaj to the vacant officer's suite beside Kirk's cabin.
Savaj nodded. "I shall require no assistance."
"An enviable certainty, Admiral," Spock said. "Which regrettably I do not share. It was a most peculiar computer error. And highly selective."
"The thought had occurred, Captain. However, assistance in all probability would be superfluous or unavailing." Savaj turned and went in.
"Spock, you don't mean -- " McCoy began.
Spock turned to him. "Accidents, as you will doubtless point out, do happen, Doctor. I find it disquieting when they happen in sequence and in the face of an unknown alien presence -- which has possibly even affected members of this crew."
McCoy nodded. "So do I. I also find it disquieting when a less mysterious alien presence affects you. A Vulcan presence. Spock, you're pushing Jim too hard."
"That may be, Doctor," Spock said without expression.
"Then you'll stop?" McCoy said hopefully, a little dubiously.
"No."
"But why, Spock? Because some double-Vulcan sits on your neck?" 
"No, Doctor. Because Savaj is right."
"To put Jim -- and you -- on the spot in front of your crew? To push Jim with a strength he can't match -- which he'll break his anatomy trying?"
"To save his life," Spock said. "A function that a Vulcan would properly have performed for his commander. I have not."
"No more than two or three dozen times I could count. Not counting routine crises."
"Failure is counted only once, Doctor."
Spock turned. At the door to his quarters he turned back. "Has it occurred to you that Kirk would not have survived either of those accidents?" He went in without waiting for an answer.

Kirk answered the intercom. He hadn't slept since the accident to Savaj and not well before that -- some kind of vague, recurrent nightmare from which he woke in a cold sweat and which he could not remember.
He'd been running computer checks from his cabin console and pacing. They were still on course back to Helvan. The computer gave no definitive answer on how the accident had happened.
"Spock here," the intercom said on audio. "You may join me on the rec deck, Mr. Kirk, if you wish. Five minutes."
"I wish," Kirk said, somewhere between fuming and forgiveness. "On my way." He pulled on the asumi outfit he had worn back to his quarters and moved.

The rec deck seemed to be largely populated by a crowd of mutterers. They didn't immediately notice Kirk and he had a chance to see that the center of their discontent appeared to be the message display.
He moved over to get a look but was blocked by bodies. One of them proved to be the always noteworthy one that belonged to Uhura.
"What's the revolution?" he said over her shoulder.
She turned, startled. "Cap -- Captain," she finished firmly. "Good to see you, sir. You're not far wrong." She moved a little to let him see over her shoulder.
There was an order posted doubling the all-crew fitness requirement, signed by Spock.
Kirk suppressed a groan, looked at Uhura ruefully. "Sorry."
She nodded. "It is widely regarded as your fault, sir."
"Thanks."
"There's another popular candidate," she indicated over his left shoulder and he looked to see Savaj coming onto the rec deck.
A number of stares ranging from mildly irritated to distinctly unfriendly followed the Vulcan. Kirk felt somehow unaccountably warmed. Uhura's look was toward the distinctly unfriendly end, but
he noticed that she followed the full Vulcan's catlike movement with a certain intentness that struck him as female perception of the Vulcan as exceedingly male.
"Nobody can figure him out, Captain, including me," Uhura said. "I tried to talk to him about his communications breakthrough. But I didn't make one. Might as well have tried it on a tree." She sighed. "Mr. Dobius," she said with satisfaction, naming the seven-foot Tanian with bifurcated head, "wants to challenge the admiral to three falls."
Kirk had to suppress a chuckle, but he managed a more-or-less straight face. "Head him off, Uhura -- thanks but no thanks."
"I dinna see why, Captain," Scott chipped in from behind him, evidently eavesdropping shamelessly. "The Tanian is near the only one who could mix it up close to even with a Vulcan. And Dobius is none too fond of a Vulcan who would lean on a Human with that muscle. Nor am I, begging your pardon, sir. Mr. Spock is one thing. But that cold fish -- "
Kirk turned to look at Scott. The engineer was dourfaced, worried about him. "Mr. Scott, I'm not quite a back number yet. I'll try him a fall or two myself." He put a hand to the back of his neck and grimaced ruefully. "Just as soon as I get over the last one." He let his look include those now clustering within earshot. "Meanwhile I suggest you start figuring ways to work in Captain Spock's new fitness requirement. Very likely he'll be testing strength levels himself soon -- if our visitors of last night don't do it for him."
Some of them sobered. He seized the moment and made his escape. Most of them did not know what was never far from his mind -- that the full Vulcan they resented on his behalf had come close to dying last night on his ship. 
Savaj was exercising alone -- some exotic routine that looked a little
little like a Cossack dance in slow motion, but several times as tough. Kirk knew he couldn't have done it to save his life.
Kirk nodded. "Admiral."
"Mr. Kirk." Savaj did a deep knee bend -- on one leg -- with the other extended parallel to the floor.
Kirk set his teeth and took the plunge. "Would you teach me that, sir?" 
Savaj raised an eyebrow. Vulcans were probably too polite to laugh in his face. Savaj rose, still on the single leg, then extended his hands to Kirk. 
Kirk took the hands, somewhat dubiously, but firmly.
"Mirror," Savaj said.
The full Vulcan turned slightly to one side and raised a knee past Kirk's thigh. Kirk mirrored it on the opposite side. Savaj leaned back slightly, his strength a counterweight for Kirk, and they went down slowly on the opposite legs. Not that muscles did not complain, but Kirk was left little time to worry about it.
Savaj led him then through a routine he could not have begun alone -- nor with another Human. With Savaj's strength and absolute balance to counterweight, guide, support, lift, it was beyond Kirk's strength, but not quite beyond some limit he could reach by transcending. It was a warrior's routine: power, grace, strength, balance, split-second timing, courage, endurance -- working every muscle and nerve, the body -- perhaps the soul. Characteristically the Vulcan also combined their diversities to form beauty. 
Savaj worked it so that the toughest strength moves were his -- a high lift, Kirk extending rigid arms against Savaj's and being lifted, turned above the Vulcan's head and down again into the crossed circle of wrists, then back up into a reverse. A roll, Kirk shoulder-rolling over the Vulcan's back. A carry, Kirk lifted by one stirrup
hand to the Vulcan's shoulders, then above his head, effortlessly. Finally up into a handstand on the Vulcan's hand.
Savaj choreographed the routine. He must have been guiding, telegraphing the movements to Kirk with his hands, his eyes, his body -- although Kirk had no awareness of that. He merely seemed to know what to do. But a Vulcan wouldn't plant that knowing in his mind, surely. There was no time to think about it. Savaj did a vault over Kirk's shoulders, allowing him to support part of his weight for a moment, then finished with another power lift and brought him down to the starting position.
After a moment Savaj disengaged, bowed his head faintly. "Lesson one." 
"Thank you, sir," Kirk said.
"Unnecessary."
Kirk realized that they had drawn a crowd again. He had not really been aware of it while they moved. Now he saw a kind of startled attention in the eyes, as if they had seen something extraordinary. Kirk was something of a gymnast. He knew he had never done anything of the kind. He wondered if any Human had.
"Sir, you lift me as if I were -- not even a child. A child's doll." 
Savaj shrugged an eyebrow. "You must realize, Captain, that I am equipped to lift a full-grown Vulcan of heavier bone and denser muscle in the heavier gravity of Vulcan -- and possibly carry him up cliffs or out of the teeth of the le matya. You are no great feat. The analogy of a mere plaything is somewhat figurative, but essentially correct."
Kirk found himself silenced, for once. And it was a moment before he realized that he had heard Savaj call him Captain. He did not think that Vulcans made mistakes of that kind.
"Few playthings, however, can read and execute a T'hyvaj." The
Vulcan bowed fractionally. "My pleasure."
"Mine," Kirk said. "Tomorrow?" But he suddenly looked beyond the crowd and saw a solitary figure waiting on an exercise mat. Spock.
"If you will excuse me, Admiral," Kirk said, and went to Spock.
"Perhaps you are fatigued by the T'hyvai," Spock said.
Kirk tried his best scapegrace look. "Dead. Never felt better. Ready to take on my weight in le matyas."
"That would be a very small le matya."
"A kitten," Kirk said. "That ought to be just about right."
Spock shook his head. "Unhatched."
Kirk sighed. He stepped onto the mat and bowed. They locked arms.
"Why did you never teach me the T'hyvaj, Spock?"
"I cannot say. It is a thing one may learn from the ancient path."
"Of warriors?"
Spock nodded. "Of T'hy'la from before the dawn of our days. Are you prepared?"
Kirk tried to clear his head and set himself for the asumi. "I am prepared," he answered correctly.
But he was not, or it would have done him no good if he were. Spock took him down as effortlessly as Savaj had lifted him. Then again. Kirk was getting a little tired of this particular diversity.
Then he put his back into it and his mind on it and got in a flying scissors fall.
Somebody cheered. He glanced at them warningly.
But it was the last time he put Spock down. The Vulcan began to handle him not for a fall, but to force maximum resistance, build maximum strength. 
After five minutes he felt as if he had been trying to move all of
Vulcan. Which was approximately the case. It was the technique of the tree. One imagined oneself rooted in the planet; who moves me moves my world. Spock had a vivid imagination.
Kirk backed off finally and made the lesser signal for "Enough."
"Captain Spock, I feel freshly overhauled and thoroughly demoralized. Do you think we could find such a thing as breakfast?"
Spock lifted an eyebrow. "You have my permission to report to the bridge after making the attempt." He moved off toward the turbolift, still wearing the asumi outfit, leaving Kirk flatfooted.
Pavel Chekov had scared up a cup of coffee somewhere and came over to put it in Kirk's hand. "Mr. Spock seems to be taking all this very seriously, sair."
"Thank you, Pavel," Kirk said, but he could not let that pass. "In some three hours, Mr. Chekov, we will be in orbit of Helvan again. By the looks of you, if nothing else, that warrants some taking seriously." The Russian was pale, suddenly gaunt. "How have you been sleeping?"
Chekov shrugged. "Sleep? I seem to remember that was invented by a little old Russian lady from -- "
"You haven't."
"Certainly not if I can help it. And not long. The nightmares -- " 
"Can you remember them?"
"Nyet. Nothing. Just that I want to get my hands on somebody -- "
"Report to Dr. McCoy, Mr. Chekov, and get a REM cycle of sleep. I'll tell Captain Spock."
Chekov shook his head. "Thank you, Captain, but I'm counting on making that landing party."
"There's time, Mr. Chekov. Otherwise you won't be in shape for it. Go."
"Yes, sair."
"Pavel -- I know how you feel."
Chekov grinned and left. Kirk settled for the coffee, a sonic scrub, and a clothes change, not in the closed cubicles, and headed for the bridge.
Chapter Nine
Three hours later they were in orbit of Helvan. Communications and scanner reports from the planet's surface were not encouraging. Conditions had deteriorated rapidly. A full-scale revolution was in progress. Disappearances were increasing. Panic and mob violence were sweeping the planet. 
Kirk slipped away unobtrusively to have McCoy give him horns again -- only to find Chapel artistically completing the job for McCoy. 
"Bones, Spock hasn't called you for the landing party." 
McCoy snorted. "He hasn't called anybody. Including you. Business has been brisk. Come here." 
Shortly Kirk had his horns. It began to strike him as ominous that Spock had never shed his. 
The intercom bleeped. Rand's voice came over it. "Mr. Spock has alerted the transporter room for beamdown -- five minutes." 
Kirk and McCoy moved out fast. They found Uhura in the transporter room staunchly rigged out with full field kit for communications. Chekov was there with a small belt arsenal and standard issue weapons for the party, wearing a rather grim look under his horns. 
Spock came in, took in their presence at a glance. 
Savaj came in behind him. Rand caught an audible breath. If they had ever accused Spock of looking like the devil himself, they
had been mistaken. This was the Son of Darkness, made flesh. The horns merely completed the image, but the Vulcan face was carved from legend, dream, nightmare -- his dark Satanic majesty. If there were a face that would have stood against God, this was the face. 
Spock looked at the assembled party, nodded. "Commendable zeal. Thank you. However, the landing party will consist only of those who are immune to the effect." He turned to Kirk. "A principle of logic and of command that I have commended to you on several occasions. Notably against the cloud-creature -- " 
"Spock, do you know what you can do with that cloud -- " Kirk cut himself off. "Captain Spock, we are not here to remain safe on the ship -- assuming that that is safe, which is doubtful. We are here to study the alien effect. Immunity does not necessarily draw it -- while we obviously do. Immunity may not detect it -- while our rapport did. That's what this crew is here for." 
"Mr. Kirk, not until and unless all the alternatives that can be explored by two Vulcans have been exhausted. We need no detection to know that the effect is operating on this planet. You have already drawn it -- only too successfully. It has had its chance at you. As for rapport, it served only to detect the effect. If there is immunity, there is no effect to detect." 
"Even that is not established, Spock. Vulcan immunity is an assumption. And you are half Human." 
"That is a matter of record," Spock said. "As is the fact that I am in command of this ship. For your information, Mr. Kirk, there is no case on record in which someone has disappeared -- twice -- and returned. I will give this no second chance at previous victims and no Human victims at all until the power of Vulcan has been tried against it. If Savaj or I are taken, as Vulcans we stand some significant
significant probability of extricating ourselves or of learning the nature of the enemy." 
He turned to face Kirk directly. 
"Hear this, Mr. Kirk. I am leaving you the con, against my better judgment. But I am leaving you under strict orders, per all applicable Starfleet regulations. In the event that the landing party disappears, appears to be in trouble, or does not return, you are to mount no rescue mission, allow no one to leave the ship, make no attempt of any kind at rescue. If out of contact for more than four hours, you are to log landing party expended and leave orbit at once for Vulcan -- and not to return without a full complement of Vulcans under a Vulcan Command Officer." 
"Spock," Kirk said carefully, "you are asking me to 'expend' not only an officer and friend who is invaluable to Starfleet and indispensable to me, but also a ranking flag officer of Starfleet, Admiral Savaj, one of the premier minds of the galaxy." 
"No, Mr. Kirk. I am not asking," Spock said flatly. "That is a binding final order of a command officer knowingly going into a potential no-return situation. It leaves you no options, no judgment call. I so log it now. You will answer to Starfleet. Or, should I survive, to me." He turned to mount the transporter with Savaj. 
"Or, should I, to me," Savaj added. 
"Energize," Spock said. 
Kirk said nothing. 
But he looked at Spock with the look that Spock would be able to read as "In a pig's eye." 
He narrowly restrained himself from saying it aloud, by telling himself that Spock would come beaming back to deal with him now -- and to relieve him of the con. 
As it was, Spock would leave the command to him for that edge
of intuition and command judgment that Spock knew to be his and that might well be needed to save the ship. Spock knew well enough that, when push came to shove, having to answer to Starfleet would not stop Kirk. 
McCoy's look at Kirk speculated on whether having to answer to Spock or Savaj would. 
"You know, Jim, they don't necessarily have to be bound by Human-oriented Starfleet regs. They're entitled to Vulcan diversity in that too. Vulcan wing and command code." 
Kirk made a rueful face. "Bones, you could have talked all day without saying that." 
McCoy harumphed. "Listen, I saw Vulcan diversity, remember? T'Pring got to be property in a Vulcan second for challenging a marriage agreement made by her parents when she was seven. What do you figure a Vulcan ship does to an officer who breaks a Starfleet oath sworn as an adult?"
"Bones," Kirk said, "you better go conjure up a spell against our ever having to find out. You really figure I'm going to up ship and leave them there if they get into trouble?" 
McCoy sighed. "I'll go haul out my eye of newt." He started to turn. "But, Jim, maybe Spock has a point. If only Vulcans can deal with this -- and even our judgment is affected -- " 
"Even mine. I know, Bones. It's still the only judgment I've got." Kirk turned to Scott at the transporter controls." 
I want a full life form reading tracking scan on them at all times." 
"Aye, sir," Scott said. "But they're already in the thick of it." 
Kirk was there in three strides. The two Vulcan life forms were surrounded by a mob. 

Spock and Savaj had beamed down into a deserted alley.
Spock tried his communicator. It had been a mistake to leave Kirk the con. Spock knew that look. 
Not that there had been, in fact, much choice. Given what Kirk was, there was little short of sedation or incarceration which would stop him from taking command of that ship if the landing party were lost. Nor was there anyone on the ship who would not back Kirk if he did. 
Spock had bowed to that logic, and it had, nevertheless, been a mistake.
"Spock to Enterprise." 
No answer. No signal, Spock determined momentarily. 
"Jammed," Savaj confirmed, trying his own. "Of little use to relieve him in any case." 
Spock suppressed an almost Human irritation at being read so exactly. "You believe I am remiss in Tzaled."
"No. I observe it."
"Observation noted."
"You have permitted superior judgment to be subordinated to the lesser."
"He has been my commander."
"You are his natural superior."
"That thought has occasionally occurred. However, there is a beyond-level to the complex fact which you have had no opportunity to observe."
Savaj shrugged. "The more reason for that Tzaled level of loyalty to commander. It would in this case require that kind of subadult instruction which is owed to an erratically brilliant and dangerous child prodigy."
Spock nodded. "I commend to you, Admiral, the task of attempting to do so with a Human Beethoven -- or a Kirk."
Spock moved quietly to the mouth of the alley, Savaj following.
What had been a relatively quiet street suddenly filled with a mob. It swirled around them and suddenly swept them up into it -- a raging torrent of horned beings.
They attempted to work out to the edge of it, but suddenly it swept around a corner and jammed them into a crowd of thousands watching as an armed party attacked the Summer Palace. They found slight shelter by a stone column.
Spock saw peasants assaulting the palace with pitchforks. He saw the powder and shot tubes that had been a new object of curiosity here only days ago. And now he saw also well-developed muzzle loaders. Another new party dashed forward, some waving new breechloaders that took a rough cartridge.
"Centuries of gunsmithing," Spock said. "Within days."
Savaj nodded. "The revolution proceeding here is by my reckoning four centuries too early and compressing three hundred years of revolution into a matter of weeks. Unfortunately it is in grave danger of compressing the great liberating revolutions of the normal Richter scale with the later antilife, authoritarian revolutions."
"You have studied the planet," Spock said.
"Three years ago. Stagnant, prescientific -- in early feudalism, with none of the seeds of this change within it."
"You are saying, sociological experimentation," Spock divined.
"Yes," Savaj said. "But much more than that." He indicated he was already scanning with the palmed readout scanner of his tricorder.
Spock did the same. Reasonably normal. Then he noted something which made him take a second look.
Since they had arrived, a wing of the palace had fallen to the rebels. Banners had been brought up, a cannon. Leaders organized
impromptu groups that moved fast to sudden objectives. Spock finally placed the subliminal feeling that was nagging at him.
It was as if they were watching from a slow-motion film, while the Helvan real world speeded past them. But it was not so much the physical world that had speeded up.
"Time -- " Spock began. "No. Psychological time?"
Savaj nodded. "It is a speed increment of a natural phenomenon. There are certain periods on all worlds when a century does the work of a millennium -- only to be followed by a decade that does the work of a century. But now, on this and other worlds, the year becomes the millennium. But not without outside help."
Suddenly someone in the crowd turned, noting the strange instruments in their hands -- and suddenly a horned Helvan male snarled like a mad thing and came at them. Contagion caught the crowd and a sudden horned tidal wave swept toward them.
Savaj caught Spock's arm and they ran. Quarry. They were the hunted, now. Whether they knew it or not, these people must sense the presence of the experimenters -- and now identified Spock and Savaj with that presence. The Helvan response was the wish to tear their throats out.
They dodged around buildings and over walls until they seemed to have lost the pursuit. Savaj had given Spock a flying heave up a three-man height wall and leaped up to catch Spock's hand and swing himself over as Spock lifted him. It was perhaps the first time in twenty-odd years that Spock had been the one to be assisted by a strength to match or exceed his own.
They ducked into a narrow alcove while a contingent of Helvans pounded past.
"This, then, has been your decade," Spock said.
Savaj nodded. "It has been my life. But certainly my decade. I
began to notice it long ago. There is a pattern of anomalies that represents some grand design. The designers remain unknown. It is beyond the capacity of any known life form in this galaxy. It appears to include matched planet samples, sophisticated experimental design, and a supreme willingness to pay the price of knowledge -- in other life forms' lives."
"To investigate what hypothesis?" Spock said.
"Unknown. The intent is perhaps not malevolent. Nor is it benevolent. Some changes are destructive, dangerous; some may be beneficial. However, the alien action amounts to a supreme disregard of any principle of noninterference. It is the antithesis of our Federation's own Prime Directive of nonintervention. The Designers' directive is: Always intervene."
Spock looked at him narrowly. "But you do have some theory as to the experimental hypothesis."
Savaj's eyes studied him. "I do. However, it remains so improbable that I have no logical evidence to support it. I prefer to reserve it until we have gathered evidence."
"I have found," Spock said, "that it frequently expedites the process of gathering evidence to share even what Humans would regard as unfounded speculation."
"We are not Human, Spock." Savaj consulted his tricorder. "There is a power source bearing Thirteen Mark Three that is not compatible even with the new Helvan rate of advance." He gestured to Spock to move out and Spock moved around the Helvan burdenbeasts tethered by the alley.

It was at that point that all the instruments agreed with Savaj of Vulcan: Captain Spock walked around the burden-beasts -- and disappeared.
Savaj checked the communicator, found it still useless, and set off on bearing 13 Mark 3.
Chapter Ten
Kirk turned from his transporter room computer check in sudden alarm. He could not have defined the source of the feeling. Some sense of Spock's presence seemed to have cut out.
A few minutes ago Scott's life form tracking had shown Spock and Savaj elude immediate pursuit and gain a place of apparent safety. The pursuit had been Helvan -- dangerous but not mysterious. Yet Kirk had still felt a nagging sense of severe unease that seemed to go beyond the immediate danger. 
A thought came to him and he stepped back to the transporter room main computer link to run still another check on the accident to Savaj's life-support system and the computer failure that had turned Spock's changing cubicle into a near-lethal death trap. Spock had said that monoxide was quickly fatal to Vulcans; Savaj, that asphyxiation and pressure were. There were not very many things on a Human ship to which a Vulcan was severely vulnerable. 
This time Kirk asked the computer for the probability of two such accidental random computer failures in close sequence, involving hazards particularly lethal to the only two Vulcans aboard. What was the probability that they were accidents?
"Probability approximates zero," the computer answered dispassionately.
Kirk felt a sudden chill. On a ship where at least four Humans
had been exposed to some alien mind-altering effect, two separate attempts had been made on the lives of the only two aboard who might be immune to that effect.
He started to run a program. "Persons capable of necessary computer alteration."
But it was at that moment that he had the sense of something more immediately wrong. His legs started to buckle. The fury, terror, shame, swept over him -- a more volcanic fury than his own and a deeper shame at experiencing terror.
"Spock," Kirk said aloud.
"Nay, Captain," Scott said in sudden alarm. "I just lost him."
Kirk tried to get some sense of the direction the feeling came from, but it suddenly whited out in an incandescent burst of pain.
He found Scott balancing him as he faltered. He cleared his head and moved to read the life form scan. It showed one full Vulcan life form proceeding in a straight line. The other reading, Spock's, had vanished.
"Kirk to Spock," Kirk said into the communicator.
"Kirk to Savaj." Nothing.
"Widen scan." Scott switched to wider map coordinates, which still flagged no other Vulcan life form. "This?" Kirk said, stabbing a finger at a bright spot on the display.
"Power source of some kind, Captain," Scott said.
"Seems to have had a surge just now."
The straight line of Savaj's progress pointed in the direction of the power source.
"Beam me down, pinpoint, inside there." Kirk tapped the bright spot. 
"Sir, I canna do that. Ye heard what Spock said. Even Starfleet
will have your command -- he left Admiral Nogura no way out. And if Spock himself comes back -- "
"Mr. Scott, if Spock doesn't come back, or if Savaj doesn't, Nogura can take my command and -- "
"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but it's Mr. Spock I'd worry about if I were you. Or that other one."
"I am, Scotty. Beam me down." He was gathering two phasers.
"It's on auto," Scott said, motioning a technician to the transporter console and grabbing another phaser. "I'm goin' wi' ye."
"No, Mr. Scott. I'm not going to risk anyone else against those alien effects. There's some chance for a quick one-man smash and grab, in and out. If you can't beam us out within three and a half hours, follow Spock's order." He mounted the transporter. Scott reluctantly returned to the controls. "Now, Scotty."
Scott gave him a look that also put Kirk's last order in the ocular organ of a porcine omnivore.

Kirk emerged in some space where the light was wrong for his eyes, the shapes wrong for his body, the screeches unendurable to his ears.
The sights were so appalling that his eyes virtually refused to take anything in. But he did see aliens of some unknown and inexplicably horrifying kind -- mouthless, yet they screamed.
No. They did not scream.
Now he could see naked humanoids, Helvans, perhaps some others, strapped down to tables with metal bands. His eyes balked. Unspeakable things were being done by the no-mouths to the helpless victims, without the slightest sign from the no-mouths of concern or even awareness of the horror. Some of the humanoids were
merely being examined. Some were being altered. Some had caustic fluids dripping into their eyes.
What perhaps horrified Kirk most was that he was certain it was not sadism. There was not even that much empathy with what the victims felt. There was not even the satisfaction of torturers in these no-mouths. Mere, utter indifference.
Experimenters, Kirk thought. What if that was exactly it? A laboratory technician might vivisect a lab dog and then go home and play with his pet dog. 
Then Kirk saw Spock spread-eagled to a table, no-mouths bending over him. His eyes found Kirk with incandescent fury.
The no-mouths were rushing Kirk now, and he cut a path toward Spock with both phasers firing on heavy stun. The no-mouths were resistant, but finally fell. They climbed over each other and kept coming. They came from behind him. 
He reached Spock and turned to defend the Vulcan, mowing them down.
"T'Vareth!" Spock snarled. "Disobedient fool-whelp."
The no-mouths were closing in. Kirk tried to signal the Enterprise. No luck.
Suddenly Spock found the strength he had not found for himself. In one convulsive heave he snapped the metal bands that bound him and gained his feet. For a long moment he flailed around him with great double-handed Vulcan chops that piled damaged no-mouths at their feet. He reached Kirk.
They fought shoulder to shoulder, sometimes back to back, Spock cutting a path toward a door. Kirk found a fierce grin on his face, compounded of terror and all the times they had beaten the thousands-to-one odds before.
This time they did not. New reinforcements of no-mouths
climbed over fallen ones and kept coming until even the Vulcan was buried in them.
Kirk blacked out on the knowledge that they had both fallen into the hands of utter evil.

He awoke strapped down, metal biting into wrists, ankles. Dispassionate alien hands probed at him. He was face down. For a long moment he could see nothing. Then he managed to turn his head and saw Spock, strapped on another table beside him, conscious of everything being done to or prepared for either of them.
The no-mouths were handling Kirk as if he were an inanimate object. No. Worse. As if he were an animate one whose feelings were of no concern. Terror, shame, agony, rage, mute appeal, intelligence, logic -- instinctively he knew that nothing would reach them.
This was a callousness so profound that it did not even know itself for callousness. It had desensitized itself to any empathy. Kirk knew that he had never been so terrified in his life.
Then something wrenched at his mind and he screamed. No. That was not true. Now he knew the source of the shame. He had been here once before. . . .

Scott beamed down with McCoy and the largest armed party he had ever mounted from the Enterprise -- Chekov supervising weapons deployment, Uhura, Rand, and Chapel showing up with an insistent contingent of volunteers -- virtually everyone on board who was not bolted to a duty station. They had heard that Kirk had gone after Spock and been caught.
Scott had warned this could be a suicide mission -- and a court-martial offense. Nobody seemed to bat an eye.
Scott didn't stop to argue. By his latest readings the place was
crawling with unclassifiable alien life forms -- but there were also humanoid readings, some of them in agony. Two of those humanoids were his own. It was war.
Now armed parties were popping down by auxiliary transporter in groups of six.
There was, Scott had decided, no question of the Prime Directive. Whatever those beasties in the power installation were, they weren't Helvan, and they definitely weren't primitive. But they were savages. Those pain readings! McCoy's face had gone white.
Scott signaled to his immediate party and crept up through the underbrush toward the alien installation's power field. He had gotten Kirk in with a pinpoint single transporter beam, but it had proved impossible to beam him out.
Something rose out of the ground in front of Scott -- a horned apparition.
"Mr. Scott," it said.
If it wasn't the devil himself -- 
"This way," Savaj said, and began signaling to the landing party contingents -- circle here, attack there, take that high point, that autosentry -- now!
It was all done silently and as if Savaj had been doing it for a hundred years.
Which, Scott figured, he probably had. 
It was only as they charged, unquestioningly, on the Vulcan's order that it came home to Scott that this was a full Vulcan -- schooled in the absolute of a thousand years' peace.
But the still-older ancestral Vulcan warrior had come out.
There was certainly neither peace nor pacifism in the Vulcan's face. He might have been a Vulcan berserker from the dawn of time. And yet that savage fighting machine was still guided by the
great Vulcan brain. They seemed to hit every vulnerable point on this side of the installation at once -- phaser armor-piercers breaching the walls, phaser rifles and sidearms cutting down the opposition on heavy stun.
The Vulcan led the point, and often as not he merely smashed his way through the neckless, mouthless gray aliens -- picking up one and heaving it to bowl down others.
Scott tried it. The beastie things didn't seem very big. The one he tried must have been bolted to the floor. He got it with the phaser just as its clawlike hands went for his eyes.
It was impossible not to feel that the things were evil.
Then he saw Kirk. The claw-handed things were still working over him, not responding to the attack, assuming others would deal with it.
Scott's stomach turned over. He heaved a gray-thing over after all and charged. Then he saw Spock, double-bound to a table, suddenly withdraw into himself and put all his life force into one arm. It cut itself against the bands, then snapped them. The arm swept out and knocked three no-mouths down and away from Kirk's table. Another move and Spock's hand shot Kirk's rolling table away from the other no-mouths and toward Savaj.
The full Vulcan broke through the opposition, caught Kirk's table, snapped Kirk's bonds with his hands, and gathered the half-conscious Kirk into one arm, bracing him on uncertain legs.
More no-mouths burst in from another direction, cutting the rescue party and Kirk off from Spock.
"Back!" Spock ordered. "Out! Now!" 
But Savaj was already moving to cut through to Spock, one-handed, the other arm still bracing Kirk -- Scott, McCoy, Chekov, and Rand forming a flying wedge behind them.
Kirk shook his head, trying to clear it, saw Spock, and began to help beat a way through the attackers. He was out on his feet, but in some way some of the asumi moves Scott had seen him practice with the Vulcans were coming through.
They reached Spock and Savaj ripped him free. Scott heaved Spock to his feet and could virtually hear Vulcan rage crackling around him. "I said, 'Out!'" Spock snapped.
And, indeed, Scott saw that the last push to get to the Vulcan had left them surrounded, cut off by overwhelming force. No chance of beaming out from under the power field. No way they were going to get out now at all. . . .

Kirk fought for consciousness. He knew he was moving, fighting, functioning, and that he was neither conscious nor sane.
There was some depth of rage in him that would have annihilated every no-mouth thing in the galaxy, would have pulled the galaxy down on top of them if it killed him.
He waded in to start on the job.
He was aware of Savaj, still bracing him intermittently or trying to cover him from close attack.
Then it filtered through to Kirk on some level that was still sane that his immediate Enterprise party was completely surrounded and its position was quite hopeless.
Hundreds of no-mouths, some of them using animal-control devices now, had cut the Vulcans, Kirk, McCoy, Chekov, Rand, Uhura, Dobius off from the rest of the Enterprise landing force.
In moments they would be buried in sheer numbers. He saw Spock, alive, naked, fighting the no-months to deadly effect, but without logical hope of escape. Savaj, also, was selling their lives dear, but without reasonable doubt of the inevitable outcome.
Kirk saw no out himself. But he had never bought that as a policy. Without much thought he found himself climbing up over fallen no-mouths and finally up onto the solidly packed shoulders of standing ones and toward the breakthrough point they had to reach.
He would be pulled down in a moment. But he looked back and saw what some instinct told him would be the effect. The two Vulcans moved as one. Spock began chopping into the no-mouths with great double-handed blows that no flesh could stand against. Savaj picked up a no-mouth and used it as a battering ram. The giant Dobius followed his example. Rand stiff-armed the cone-noses with the heel of her hand. Scott found some way of heaving them over, and McCoy was making some effort to come up over the top after Kirk.
Kirk wasn't sure whether they were madder at the no-mouths or at him. Either concept suited him for the moment, so long as they came after him.
Clawed hands were pulling him down when they reached him. Savaj bulldozed him forward over the top, and suddenly they were through. They linked with the main Enterprise party trying to reach them and all made for daylight.
"Take a prisoner," Kirk croaked, and saw Dobius hear him and pick up a no-mouth by the scruff of the neck it did not have.
Kirk himself was barely on his feet, was being bundled forward, off and on, by Savaj, Spock, or McCoy, who was muttering, "Fool stunt."
"Got you," Kirk managed without breath. "For a doctor you make a pretty fair berserker."
"You haven't seen anything yet," McCoy snapped warningly.
Groups were being picked up by transporter while they covered the rear. 
Finally the shimmer picked them up, the last group, as a new wave of no-mouths poured over the position they beamed out of.
Kirk collapsed neatly onto his knees on the Enterprise transporter platform.
They seemed to be all over him. Doctors, med-techs, Vulcans.
Somebody had produced a grav-stretcher blanket. He gathered that and his dignity around him, what was left of it, and got to his feet. He considered it a major accomplishment.
Spock also was on his feet -- not steadily, but his Vulcan mode was in working order. Without thought his hands deftly produced some Vulcan fold-and-tuck arrangement with one of the light medical coverlets that made it look like the perfectly groomed uniform of the day.
The thought and the baleful look he reserved for a somewhat bedraggled Human who achieved no such elegance. "Mr. Kirk, you are relieved of duty and authority pending further action."
"Understood," Kirk managed.
"Mr. Scott, you will show cause why I shall not also cite you for gross insubordination and mutiny."
Kirk cut Scott off. "It was my responsibility."
"You have none," Spock said glacially.
"Your binding order by chain of command ends with me," Kirk said firmly. "If Mr. Scott has anything to answer for, it is to me." Privately his eyes made a note of that for Scott.
Spock ignored him. "Mr. Scott, return to duty pending decision. Guards, take Mr. Kirk to the security section of Sick Bay." Two security guards hesitated, then moved in beside Kirk.
"Take him to main Sick Bay," McCoy snapped. "Damn it, Spock -- "
"Doctor," Spock said, freezing him with a look, "as of this moment and retroactive to my assumption of command, this ship is under Vulcan rule of command."
"What Vulcan rule?" McCoy said dangerously.
"Instant, unqualified, unargued obedience."
"Spock," McCoy said, "this is an all-worlds ship, under uniform Starfleet code, subject to predominance of Humans and favoring best Human naval exploration tradition."
Spock took McCoy's arm -- not harshly, but very firmly -- and moved him toward the door. "Not when I command, Doctor." McCoy looked down at the Vulcan's grip on his arm, shocked. It was not something Spock, in ordinary mode, would have done. "A Vulcan commands in Vulcan mode, pursuant to the treaty that resolved the then Vulcan Fleet Commander's early objection to formation of a United Federation and Starfleet."
"Don't cite me the then Vulcan Fleet Commander, Spock. I wouldn't know him if I tripped over him."
"A distinct and immediate probability, Doctor." Spock steered McCoy around Savaj.
McCoy blinked, gave Savaj a long look. "You were the V'Kreeth?"
"That is irrelevant to your duties, Doctor," Savaj said blandly.
Kirk turned from the security person who was not so much guarding as supporting him.
"The Shadow Commander," he said in some awe.
McCoy also knew the legend. He drew himself up stoutly. "V'Kreeth Savaj, on this ship in medical matters my rule prevails, or you will replace me as Chief Medical Officer."
Savaj merely looked at him. "At need, I will. Attend the patient."
They had arrived at the security Sick Bay. Spock indicated a force-barred cubicle for Kirk and one for Dobius's alien prisoner.
McCoy started to balk, but Kirk caught his arm and drew him over the threshold to the diagnostic couch.
"I'm not going to argue while I have a patient in unknown condition," McCoy began. "But -- "
Savaj cut off the "but." "Nor at all. Proceed."
McCoy hissed a spray hypo into Kirk's arm before Kirk could protest. "He needs rest now."
McCoy turned and advanced toward Spock. "Now-you." The Vulcan's eyes were on the medical readouts over Kirk's head. He seemed to find them adequate. He froze McCoy with a look.
"I shall deal with my medical condition in the Vulcan manner, Doctor. First, I will see to the ship and interrogate the alien prisoner. After which you will have this prisoner ready to answer charges in the Vulcan mode."
Spock turned on a heel and Savaj followed him out.
"I don't need rest, Bones," Kirk complained. "I need a bomb shelter." 
"What do you think I tried to give you? Not that I don't have a couple of photon torpedoes for you myself. You had to go alone, did you? And that last fool stunt?"
Kirk shrugged, a hint of rueful apology. Finally McCoy came and examined him more thoroughly in the old manner of the country doctor, and there was more healing in Leonard McCoy's hands than in the hypo. Kirk found himself shaking again, his body violently trying to throw off some of the effect of whatever the aliens had done to him, now and before.
"Bones, I've wanted to kill. I don't think I've ever wanted to annihilate, extirpate, wipe some whole enemy kind off the face of the
galaxy." He fought not to be violently ill. "I do now." 
McCoy looked toward the cubicle that held the captured alien. "So do I." 
"Are we wrong, Bones? A hundred times -- no, more than that -- we've tried to understand some alien or enemy -- communicate, change their minds -- or even our own. Make terms. Make peace. Live together. Now -- " 
"Does the cow make terms with the butcher?" McCoy said.
Kirk locked his hands together to stop the shaking. "I wish you hadn't put it quite that way, Bones."
"Me, too. Jim, get some sleep -- and you'd better dream up some way for the lamb to make peace with a couple of Vulcan snarth." 
Kirk shook his head. "I'll be hanged for a sheep, Bones. I'm not even innocent this time. Hell, I haven't got a leg to stand on. Guilty as charged. And I'd do it again. How am I supposed to explain the 'logic' of that to a couple of double-Vulcans?"
McCoy snorted. "Spock knows. Not that it will do you any good. Three years back on Vulcan -- plus Savaj on his neck. I think he's really reverted this time. Jim, didn't the V'Kreeth open up a whole quadrant of space -- and single-handedly attempt to keep Vulcan from joining in forming the Federation? I thought he must be dead."
Kirk shrugged. "Evidently that thought was somewhat premature, Bones. No Vulcan's Starfleet record goes back beyond the treaty -- by rule of Vulcan privacy. Savaj's record starts then -- as full admiral. The V'Kreeth was known to the Federation only by that name -- also the name of his legendary exploration ship. It was his position that Vulcans should not serve jointly with Humans and other Federation species, nor in positions that would force them to be under the command of a Human or other less advanced species, where the Vulcan
might be forced into moral compromise. Hence Starfleet's all-Vulcan ships, like the Intrepid. The treaty did not prohibit a Vulcan from serving on an integrated ship voluntarily. But Spock was the first -- and you know his father didn't speak to him for eighteen years." 
"What ever happened to Vulcan Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations?" McCoy grumbled.
Kirk felt himself beginning to fade again. "I think the V'Kreeth argued there was no conflict. It was not prejudice -- merely fact, a logical recognition of diverse nature and natural superiority. It would be unjust to subordinate the greater to the lesser."
"Where have we heard that before? -- and on how many battlefields?"
Kirk nodded. "Except -- he also argued Vulcan's thousand-year peace against our much more recent savagery-and still possible lapses. He had a point. Bones, how would you really feel if you were Spock and could calculate circles around any of us, read minds, control emotions, heal yourself, follow the discipline of peace -- but toss us like children if you chose -- and yet somebody asked you to take my orders?"
McCoy pursed his lips. "More to the point is, how did Spock feel about it? Which is, damn glad to do it, most of the time."
"Which was, Bones. I never heard the end of the damn cloud-creature. What do you think he's going to do about this?" 
But Kirk found his eyes closing, beyond his will. Dimly he knew that McCoy put a hand on his arm and stayed with him.
Chapter Eleven
Kirk marched stiffly down the corridor to Spock's quarters. McCoy had patched him up sufficiently, with a compression spray-dressing to brace some bent ribs and a few other odds and ends. There didn't seem to be a spraysplint for broken sleep or a medicine for nightmare.
Now Kirk had been summoned to the Captain's quarters, under guard. The security guards eyed him in consternation, but did their duty. McCoy marched resolutely off his right shoulder, uninvited by Spock, but not budging.
The security party signaled at the door.
"K'vath," Spock's voice said. The door opened and the security lieutenant ushered Kirk inside.
The Vulcan's cabin looked like an anteroom of hell. It had again been decorated, after Spock's return to the refitted Enterprise, in the deep red of Spock's Vulcan preference. The weapons collection had been reinstated on the wall in remembrance of Vulcan's savage past. The attunement flame again cast flickering light and shadow from the demonic sculpture carved to house it. Of the flame-sculpture's true purpose only a few had dared to ask. But if the gargoyle had been set to guard the gates of hell, no one would have been surprised.
Now, with the two Vulcans still wearing the horns of Helvan and
the look of guarding the gates themselves, the Vulcan rendition of Human nightmare was complete.
Kirk stepped forward and gave formal greeting in the Vulcan manner.
Spock remained seated and did not return it. He looked at Kirk as if he inspected some miscreant brought before him in disgrace. "Doctor, you will absent yourself from these proceedings," Spock said flatly.
"I have the right to be here. I am his doctor -- and his friend. Also yours, damn it."
Spock said nothing, nodded to the security men to escort McCoy out. The guards hesitated fractionally.
"By uniform code, I am entitled to counsel of my choice," Kirk said. "McCoy is my choice."
"By Vulcan code, logic speaks for itself," Spock said. "Security, remove the doctor and wait outside."
This time the security team responded to the direct order -- with apologetic looks to McCoy and Kirk. On Kirk's signal McCoy set his teeth and went out with them, not to make it worse for Kirk.
The door closed behind McCoy and Kirk was alone with the Vulcans.
"T'vareth," Spock said dispassionately.
Kirk resisted an impulse to shift his feet, as if he were indeed called on the carpet before Spock.
"Captain Spock, I unquestionably disobeyed your order, for which I apologize. In my judgment it became neces -- "
"You will not speak without permission."
Kirk bit off a protest. "Permission to speak?" he asked. "Denied."
Kirk felt his own temper rising. "Logic speaks for itself, you said." 
"Silence!"
Kirk straightened and remained silent.
"Logic speaks," Spock said. "Innocence defends. Guilt merely presents itself for justice."
"Even guilt has its reason," Kirk risked. "You would be dead."
Spock rose from the desk and looked as if he would come through it. "My life was mine to risk and mine to extricate, if possible. Has it occurred to you what we might have learned if the experimenters had continued to work on me, alone, against trained Vulcan capacities to resist and remember?"
Kirk let himself show that it had not occurred to him that in Vulcan mode Spock and/or Savaj might have dispassionately put themselves in a position to be taken by the experimenters and been quite prepared to endure whatever happened, possibly even death, on the chance of learning something.
And would Spock, with that iron constitution -- and with the mental disciplines that Kirk had seen defeat the Klingon mind-sifter,1 plus the healing disciplines he could use -- have survived long enough to learn something vital? Perhaps to transmit it to Savaj?
Maybe Kirk had screwed that up.
Then his mind flashed the picture of what the no-mouths were doing or about to do to Spock when he came. Kirk shook his head. "No. It didn't occur. At some point such sacrifice might buy a galaxy -- or be unavoidable. Not then."
"The judgment was not yours to make," Spock said.
"Nor should it ever have been," Savaj said.
Spock's eyes seemed to harden in agreement. "Your species, with whatever effort, has never understood the diversity of mine. Out of respect for your diversity, I have not fully used Vulcan command mode, even when in command for some position or period. Now we cannot afford the luxury of such restraint. Full Vulcan command
mode is an augmentation state in which a Vulcan can subcompute a thousand options before you can consider two. My logic-alternative mode can play the options out, many moves deep, in subtle detail, while taking in additional data -- calculate with it to any number of decimals, make vital decisions -- while still carrying on a conversation with Humans and a simultaneous confrontation with an enemy commander. But that Vulcan command mode, once engaged, cannot be switched off. Nor is it safely balked. A commander in that mode requires instant, unqualified, and detailed obedience. Those who cannot have followed his thought process must follow his orders -- exactly. He is obliged to give no explanation. I offer none. For your information, I am in Vulcan command mode and will so remain. You will conform to that fact."
Kirk raised a hand. "Question, sir?" he said quietly.
"One."
"Does a Vulcan in command mode ever give up -- or ever make a mistake?"
For a long moment he thought that Spock would come through the desk. The "give up" was dirty pool. Spock had never suggested giving up again since Kirk's early, outgunned Corbomite bluff succeeded.2 Indeed, they had often bucked odds together that Spock calculated at thousands to one -- against them. The "mistake" was possibly worse. Spock had made a few beauties -- especially once or twice in early days when he had been in command, doubtless not using the full Vulcan mode, but being Vulcan enough to raise the hackles on stiff-necked Humans. Then Spock had gotten the hang of commanding Humans -- extremely well.
But this Spock who had returned from Vulcan after all but succeeding in extirpating his Human half was not the same Spock.
He stood now with controlled deliberation, the cold, Kolinahr
face turned on Kirk. "Mr. Kirk, that question is no longer yours to ask. You have no oath, no word, no honor even to abide by your own consent to serve under my command. You have risked your life, mine, Savaj's, the ship, the crew, and this mission -- perhaps including the fate of the galaxy. You are self-confessed to insubordination and mutiny. You are unrepentant. You are unrepentant?"
Kirk weighed the answer for a long moment. "I regret that I was unable to obey your order. It is true I gave my oath to Starfleet discipline and my consent for you to take command. I broke that discipline and that word, risked all you have said. But I am not Vulcan. As what I am, I could do nothing else."
"Unrepentant," Savaj said, "and defiant. No fleet can exist without discipline."
Kirk shook his head. "No fleet can exist without discipline, and no sane sentient being can exist without 'some things which are beyond the discipline of the service.' "
That quote was still dirtier pool. "Beyond the discipline of the service" was the phrase Spock had used to Kirk about the secret of Vulcan "biology" that Spock would have died to keep. Spock very nearly had died when the pon farr, the deadly Vulcan time of mating, had hit him at a time when Starfleet ordered the Enterpise away from Vulcan -- not knowing that the order was a death sentence for Spock. Kirk had broken the Vulcan's silence and a Starfleet Command order -- to save Spock's life.3 But the phrase had since become true of some of Spock's own command decisions.
"Captain Spock," Kirk said, "you also broke a direct Starfleet order -- and violated the planet Gideon's strict 'keep out' order to search for me.4 You gambled the Galileo Seven on a 'hunch' about my behavior.5 Correctly. You risked galactic war with the Tholians rather than abandon one man who was considered dead -- me
when I was trapped in the spatial interphase in the Tholian sector.6 It was not 'logical.' "
"You will cease," Spock thundered. After a moment he said icily, "You are relieved of status. You will not be seen or heard. You are confined to quarters, under guard."
Kirk felt his jaw set. Relieved of duty, authority -- now not trusted even to confine himself to quarters.
"Sir," he said. "Request triple bridge or engineering duty in any capacity in lieu of inactive confinement as punishment."
"Denied. Confinement is not your punishment. You will be confined while I consider your punishment -- according to the applicable Vulcan code."
Kirk stared at him. Indefinite suspension and confinement was bad enough. Full Starfleet trial would cost him his career, or worse. But everything he had seen of the planet Vulcan, from the Headsman in the Vulcan arena of marriage-and-challenge who punished cowardice to the casual disposal of the fate of Speck's betrothed wife, T'Pring -- whom he gave as property to Stonn7 -- to a few other things Kirk had learned over the years, suggested that a Vulcan's idea of a punishment to fit this crime would be intolerable.
It came home to Kirk now that in full Vulcan mode Spock would not find a way to let him off the hook.
"I ask pardon," Kirk said in what he hoped was a Vulcan manner.
Spock merely lifted an eyebrow. "Denied. Dismissed." He raised his voice. "Guard!"
The security guards came in.
After a moment Kirk turned with military precision and moved out of the pulsing red hell, not looking back at the Vulcans who had become his particular demons.
Chapter Twelve
Spock sat down in the command seat and consulted the instruments on its arm controls, punched in the circuits that would give him remote access to most of his own science station's capabilities.
Savaj was working there now, playing it almost as Spock would have himself. The person who was missing from the bridge Spock did not consider. 
Suddenly high voltage crackled around Spock's hands and froze them to the seat arm controls, convulsing his body so that he could not let go. Smoke rose from his hands.
He set his teeth against the agony and reached for the mental disciplines that might possibly override the body's overload. Break free -- The effort was not working.
Dimly Spock saw Uhura and Sulu moving. "Cutting power," Chekov shouted, but the power did not cut.
Suddenly Savaj was there with a crushing double-handed smash to the seat controls, striking and pulling back with such power and speed that he did not become caught. Still the electricity crackled, spraying sparks now. Then Savaj's hand caught Spock and the sputtering voltage locked them together. But the power of Savaj's move hauled Spock out of the seat and they crashed together to the floor, breaking the connection.
"McCoy to bridge," Uhura called. "Mr. Spock has had an accident. I think -- he's dead."
"It was no accident," Savaj said through his teeth.
Spock blanked out on the image of Savaj's face announcing Spock's murder.

McCoy saw Kirk burst into Sick Bay. Medical priority alert had sounded. The intercom had announced Spock's death, and Kirk's guard must either have yielded to his urgency or been tapped out by a Kirk who would not be stopped. Savaj had met McCoy at the turbolift, carrying Spock on the run. Spock was unconscious on the table, his hands a mass of burns. Readouts showed a flat graph on the heart line -- complete heart failure caused by severe electrical shock.
McCoy was bending over Spock's abdomen with the paddles that might shock the Vulcan heart to revival. "Clear!" he snapped, and convulsed the Vulcan's body with the shock.
Nothing.
"Clear!" Again.
A faint bleep. A wavering climb of a display line, erratic, feeble. A beat. Then a sudden series of rapid beats. Finally the fast Vulcan heart rate caught in an irregular rhythm -- faint, erratic, but there. 
McCoy nodded fractionally, cautiously, to Kirk and continued to work on stabilizing Spock.
Kirk moved in with a hand on Spock's shoulder, impaled Savaj with a look, and snapped in the command tone, "What happened? Report."
"Murder," Savaj said.
McCoy's head jerked up from checking the heartbeat. Christine Chapel faltered in spray-dressing the hands.
"Electrical short?" McCoy growled. "How does that make it murder?"
"The command seat -- " Savaj began.
" -- has every electrical cutout in the book," Kirk finished.
"Precisely," Savaj said, "To divert sufficient power and to computer-suppress vital cutouts would have required extremely sophisticated programming by an expert. Someone high in your crew, Doctor, is a murderer." 
"Not if I can help it," McCoy swore. The Vulcan was still hanging on the edge, but it wasn't the first time they had pulled him back.
"Murder was intended," Savaj said. "All normal attempts to cut power failed. Human strength would not have sufficed to break the contact by main force. Had I not been on the bridge, murder would have been done."
"Thank you, Admiral," Kirk said.
Savaj did not answer him.
"That much power should have caught you, too, Admiral," McCoy said. "Wasn't that, by your standards, an illogical risk, too?"
"No, Doctor, a calculated risk and for commensurate gain. Nor was I caught. However -- someone was."
He looked at Kirk.
"What?" McCoy said.
"The level of computer tampering would be possible only to Mr. Scott, Spock, myself -- or Mr. Kirk."
"There is no one on that list," McCoy said carefully, "who has not loved Spock for years." He did not say, "Except -- "
"Except myself," Savaj completed. "For all you do or can know. I believe you have established for the record that a Vulcan can kill for sufficiently logical reason."1
"Your scientific reputation is for saving lives," McCoy granted. "But we've believed reputations before. They are no guarantees against imposters, aliens -- or even changed men. V'Kreeth Savaj, what says it couldn't be you?"
"Nothing, Doctor. Quite correct."
Kirk stepped forward. "Bones, I ran an identity check from the transporter pattern. He is Savaj of Vulcan." Then, remembering the power they must be up against, he added, "So far as our instruments can tell us." 
McCoy sighed. "Well, I can't say I really doubted it. But you damn sure didn't try to kill Spock, Jim. Scott didn't."
"None of us could have, Bones. But someone tried."
Spock was breathing normally now, the heart pattern almost stable. That tough Vulcan psychosoma was fighting back.
McCoy nodded to Kirk. "Someone failed."
"Let him rest," Kirk said. "Admiral Savaj, I am assuming command of this ship. I do not doubt you, but you are the stranger here, under conditions of alien assault involving capabilities we do not know. Murder is loose on my ship. It is still my ship. If you wish to bring charges against me under the discipline of the service, that is your privilege -- later. Meanwhile command succession reverts to me in the absence of proven unfitness. You will now divulge all you know about this mission."
"No," Savaj said. "I will not. I do have the authority to replace you. My immediate concern, however, is that your status as chief suspect has now approached a probability of one. Certainty."
"Certainty?" Kirk said. "Hardly. There is, as the Doctor has pointed out, at least one alternative. Yourself. I do not suggest that. But some alien effect -- "
" -- could be operating through you, Mr. Kirk. Mr. Scott was not
exposed to the aliens. Nor was I. Mr. Scott has been in full public view at critical times, while you have not. Mr. Spock has twice been a victim of attacks of unquestionably lethal potential. As have I, once. That leaves you. You have twice been exposed to alien mind-altering. More -- you have been severely dealt with by your former First Officer and can expect much worse, if he lives."
"Admiral," Kirk said tightly. "I will consider some possibility of alien mind effect, even in myself, because I must. If you suggest that I myself have motive to murder Spock, I will cease to listen to illogic, sir."
"That part of your mind that could have motive would not be logical. Nor conscious. Nor under your control. I can suggest two unconscious motives of sufficient strength. It is a matter of record that your deepest fear is of losing command."2
Kirk looked at him sharply. "You know that record extremely well, sir." He shook his head. "I have lost command -- once for nearly three years. I didn't go berserk."
"Didn't you?" Savaj said. "What do you consider the performance by which you got the Enterprise back?" 3
Kirk met his eyes. "Necessary. And -- not murder. Name the other 'motive.' "
"It is related. You were part of a command team and a friendship that had become a legend in the service and on both your worlds. It was broken, not by your choice, when Spock brought his divided self home to Vulcan."4
Kirk looked at Savaj bleakly. "I will not deny what even a full Vulcan would suspect a Human might feel about that. But it would not make me a murderer."
"Not even when I came to put you under his command?" Savaj
said. He stepped to the computer console, played in a program question.
"I have specified parameters of computer alteration skill, time, logistics, motive, opportunity, alien effect," Savaj spoke to the computer. "Computer, given those parameters, who on board Enterprise could be responsible for the attempts on Mr. Spock's life -- and possibly also my own?"
"Working," the computer said. "Considering all parameters specified, only one suspect aboard -- James T. Kirk."
Savaj turned to Kirk. "By that account, the Enterprise is commanded by a murderer."
Chapter Thirteen
Kirk said, "Computer off." It hesitated an instant, consulting its basic programming against its recent conclusion. Finally it switched off.
Kirk faced Savaj. "Admiral, I do not know what is happening on this ship, but I will stop it. I no longer know whether you are part of the solution -- or of the problem. I can conceive, even, that some alien mindcontrol technique might force me, or you, to murder. I will give such a technique no further opportunity."
"And if I order you as the ranking Starfleet Admiral to yield command?" 
Kirk shook his head deliberately. "I yielded when it was not a matter of Spock's life or the ship's. Now it is -- and I will not. I am and have been since you came aboard a commander in the field facing possible alien attack through imposture or mind alteration. Such a commander is not obliged to yield to what appears to be legitimate authority. I could yield to Spock. Alien effect or not, he is a part of that rapport which is unique to this command crew. In the end, I realize now, I will trust that rapport beyond anything else in the galaxy. Including, with all respect, you, sir."
"Fascinating," Savaj said. "However, it arrives at an impasse. I also cannot permit alien influence -- or murder -- to command."
"That will not be necessary."
It was Spock's voice, and Kirk whirled to see Spock still immersed in that Vulcan healing state from which he could nonetheless follow what was happening.
Savaj stepped over and slapped Spock, making Kirk wonder how mere Human slaps had ever managed to rouse Spock all these years. It was the only known way to bring a Vulcan out of the healing trance, but it usually took a Human a few hard slaps to make a Vulcan take any notice.
The full Vulcan needed only one. Spock's eyes snapped into focus, shaken. "That will do," he said, and moved to sit up.
"You stay put, Spock," McCoy snapped. "Even you can't walk away from the fact that five minutes ago you were a dead man."
Spock stood up. He moved with great care to the computer. "Computer, specify alternative suspect."
"No viable alternative," the computer said.
"Spock," McCoy protested, "the computer has been wrong before, including about Jim. You can't believe that?"
Spock looked at McCoy levelly. "Suppose, Doctor, that you wished through mind alteration to make a man capable of murder. How would you do it?"
McCoy shrugged. "Hypnosis and other standard techniques, as a general rule, can't make a person violate a deep moral code. However, they might change a person's perception -- make the subject believe the victim was an attacker, an animal, a tree, a Jack the Ripper. Or they might play on deep unconscious fears, hates, loves -- buried levels of emotion where the subject might believe the victim deserved death."
"That was what S'haile Savaj described, Doctor. About Kirk."
For a moment McCoy looked stopped, then he shook his head. "Jim said he would stand on our rapport against anything in the galaxy
galaxy." McCoy stepped to Kirk's side. "That goes for me, too."
After a moment he added, "Spock?"
Spock turned to Kirk. "What I believe has no logical bearing on the question of whether your mind has been affected."
"And if it has?"
"Then, Mr. Kirk," Spock said, "it is quite possible that you are attempting to murder me."
Kirk stood very straight. After a moment Spock turned without a word and left Sick Bay.
Chapter Fourteen
Kirk came onto the bridge. Everyone except Captain Spock turned to look at him. Mr. Dobius escorted him, on orders from Spock not to let Kirk out of his sight.
Word had run through the ship like fire. Kirk knew it. They all knew it. Savaj had accused him of murder. And Spock, if he did not believe it, had at least not defended him.
Or -- did Spock believe it? And was it, in some vestibule of hell, even true?
Kirk had gone round and round with that one. He was morally certain that he was not guilty of attempting murder -- not on any level or for any reason. Certainly not of Spock. However, he had to face the fact that if he were guilty, he would be equally certain of his innocence. If the alien effect could force him to attempt murder, it could make him forget that he had done it.
"Commander Kirk reporting as ordered, Captain," he said. He saw looks of sympathy around the bridge, worry. Uhura, Sulu, Chekov. Were there any doubts? 
Spock turned briefly in acknowledgment. "You may assume your post, Mr. Kirk. You remain under close arrest, subject to further punishment. Mr. Dobius, you will remain close at hand."
Spock turned back and Dobius stood stolidly as Kirk slipped into the science seat. At least, whatever Spock believed, he had brought
Kirk out of quarters. To keep an eye on him? The better to consider what punishment was suitable -- not only for saving Spock's life, but for killing him?
Kirk wanted to brood. But he wanted even more to figure out what had happened, stop it before it happened again. He ran every kind of computer search he could think of. It kept coming up with his name.
Kirk himself kept coming up with it. He alone knew just how badly he had been turned inside out and upside down at some deep level by the two encounters with the aliens. The guilt, the shame, the rage were still there, multiplied a hundredfold now, sitting just beneath the surface and threatening to engulf what was left of his sanity.
Savaj might be absolutely right. It was given to few men, perhaps to no man, to have a friendship such as he had had with Spock. He had never dealt with Spock's return to Vulcan except by some agreement with himself not to deal with it to its root.
Now, what if some skilled alien psychologist had gotten to that root? 
Or what if the drive to command went even deeper than he knew? Or some combination, possibly even something much more simple and elemental -- some unalterable programming to kill having little to do with him, but driving him? 
If any of that were true, how would he prevent himself from killing Spock?
Kirk stood up. "Permission to leave the bridge, sir?"
"For what purpose?"
"Personal."
"Granted. Mr. Dobius, he will not be out of your sight."
"Yes, Captain."
Kirk considered the problem of Mr. Dobius. The Tanian was over seven feet tall, nearly half again as broad at the shoulders as Kirk, and in excellent training -- all of which Spock had doubtless considered. With the Vulcan asumi training, even at his green sash level, a determined Kirk would not have had much trouble with almost any other non-Vulcan on the ship.
Kirk stopped outside security Sick Bay. "Mr. Dobius, you brought that prisoner back for me on my order. I consider that makes it our baby. You were present when Spock and Admiral Savaj tried to interrogate it?"
"Yes sir."
"What did they learn?"
"Forgive me, sir," Dobius said quietly. "I am not certain of the ethics of this situation."
Kirk grinned. "That makes two of us, Mr. Dobius. However, if Admiral Savaj is right and I have been turned into a murderer -- or a murder weapon aimed at Captain Spock, and perhaps Savaj or others also -- then my basic alternative is to go jump over a cliff -- or else to crack the problem. You presumably would attempt to stop me from the first. I submit the best way is to help me with the second."
Dobius looked at him carefully. "By letting you interrogate the prisoner?"
"An excellent suggestion, Mr. Dobius."
Dobius finally inclined his bifurcated head. "Sir, this ship has never recognized any division between you and Mr. -- Captain Spock. I have had no orders not to discuss anything with you, nor to prevent you from acting as First Officer and Science Officer. But I must be with you."
"Thank you, Mr. Dobius." Kirk was through the force door before the words died.
The thing was still ugly and unnerving, and he hated it on sight. But now it was the prisoner, and it was alone. It stood near the far corner and looked at them with no expression they could read.
"Captain Spock and Admiral Savaj learned almost nothing," Dobius said. "It is alive, not a mechanism, probably communicates by some nonverbal means, but appears to have no telepathy and no empathy. It has effective mental shields and will not permit itself to be read. It may understand what we say via universal translator, but has not responded."
Kirk switched on the main security cell universal translator.
"I have been your prisoner. Now you are mine."
The no-mouth looked at him and backed a fraction nearer to the corner, away from the diagnostic couch. Perhaps it read the rage in Kirk which would have liked to turn the tables on it -- or to strap it to the tables. Perhaps it judged Kirk by itself and suddenly feared that he would do it.
Kirk nodded. "Yes. If I were you, I would have you strapped down there now, screaming -- or whatever you do when you have to scream." He moved toward it menacingly. "Let's see what you do -- "
There was some involuntary flicker and Kirk caught a glimpse of red behind a nictitating membrane on the nomouth's domed forehead.
The universal translator read the visual pattern and emitted almost a cry.
"So you do scream," Kirk said. "So does a rose, you know. Or don't you know? Is it possible you don't know the pain you cause?"
The membrane flickered to show blue turning to coruscations of green. "Small lives" -- the translator felt its way -- "needed."
The membrane flashed up and this time it was a picture. The no-mouth with other no-mouths, two of them small, and some other life form, which the no-mouth held in its claw-arms with every appearance of affection. The picture dissolved to abstract color. "It is my task. . . . I serve. . . . I take no pleasure in rose scream. . . . I care for small lives of my own."
"Every concentration camp guard could say the same," Kirk said coldly, "and did. Everybody who ever carved up a living being had some pet dog or small life of his own. Whom do you serve?"
"We serve. We do task. We report. We are not to know how each task serves. It would spoil the study."
"Who is making the study?"
The no-mouth almost shrugged, despite lacking the anatomy for it. "They study. We serve. You -- perform. At need, you die."
"Not anymore," Kirk said. "You will tell me how to reach these studies. Or I will do the serving, and you can try the dying."
The picture of no-mouths at home flashed again.
"Not interested," Kirk said. "Your small lives are needed for my purposes, now."
The no-mouth backed away hard against the corner. Kirk motioned Dobius forward.
The no-mouth flashed a star map, identifiable after a moment as the Helvan system -- then Helvan, a planet map, main city, the alien installation, then a tortuous trail through energy field canyons to the lone mountain that rose above the city.
For a moment Kirk caught a glimpse of a great ship descending down into the crater of the ancient volcano, then a shimmering glimpse as of alien forms indistinctly seen -- perhaps humanoid. Perhaps the no-mouths did not care to look at them too closely.
"Show me again," Kirk said. "The path."
This time he cut in a Vulcan trick of concentration Spock had once tried to teach him and engraved the trail on his memory. But he still could get no clearer picture of the enemy at trail's end.
At least he knew that there was someone beyond these no-mouths. He felt no consuming hate for them now -- merely contempt and a dull loathing. Now it was the ones beyond, the planners, whom he wanted to wipe off the face of the galaxy.
"Do not -- serve -- me?" the no-mouth flickered.
Kirk resisted the impulse to tell it that he had never intended to. They might need to question it again. And it could suffer at least the anticipation, for what it and its kind had done to him and his.
"Not just this minute," he told it. "If you continue to cooperate perhaps I will choose you for some service you would survive." He looked at it for a moment, picturing it and its kind in all their millions or billions, and all their work, perhaps for centuries or millennia.
What they had done to him, multiplied and compounded, was all represented by this small civil servant of evil.
He went out and made it to his quarters before he was violently sick.
Chapter Fifteen
There was a knock at the door, peremptory and summoning, ignoring the usual signal.
Kirk pulled himself together, flashed a look at Mr. Dobius, and went to face the music.
"Come."
The music was Vulcan, a duet for two thunderclouds -- Spock, Savaj. Somehow McCoy had managed to turn up too. They came into Kirk's quarters.
"Mr. Kirk," Spock said, "you have left your post on personal privilege and used that excuse to interrogate the prisoner without consent or consultation with your commanding officer."
Kirk drew himself up. "I said my reason was personal. It was. I take what the prisoner's kind did to me very personally. And it is I, personally, if Admiral Savaj is right, who will kill you, unless we solve this problem. Before that, I would do a great deal more than interrogate without consultation -- which is my right since you returned me to duty."
Spock shook his head. "We established that for any dangerous procedure involving alien effects you would have me present for protection. I will add this to my consideration in weighing consequences."
"I had Mr. Dobius," Kirk said.
Spock flashed Dobius a look that should have withered him like grass. "So I see."
"Those were my only orders, sir," Dobius said.
Spock nodded. "In future I will specify." He dismissed it and turned back to Kirk. "Report."
"The prisoner is -- only what we would call a lab technician. A junior league experimenter who injects the experimental animal with cancer. It . . . loves its little no-mouths and its pet puppy and is quite willing to use our small lives for its higher purposes. It only follows orders. It does not care what pain it causes. It 'has its task.' It merely 'serves -- ' " Kirk stopped himself. The arguments had been made before -- by members of his own species. The arguments did not make the no-mouth, or Kirk's own species, less guilty, but the worst guilt was elsewhere. "This alien is not who, or what, we have to find."
"The Designers," Savaj said.
They turned to him. "There has always, necessarily, been someone or something beyond these experimenters," Savaj said. "The essence of the double-blind experimental design is that neither the subjects nor the experimenters shall know who is in the experimental group and who are the controls. It is the only scientific design that defeats the illogical susceptibility of intelligent beings to placebo effects and terminal self-delusion."
"Even Vulcans?" McCoy asked.
Savaj did not look pleased. "Logic protects. It does not obliterate the design of the mechanism. Humans attempted to eliminate placebo effects. Vulcans made them the basis of medicine. Both solutions still require the double-blind. The necessity, however, is not of much consolation to the control subject who dies while the experimental group receives the real cure for cancer. Nor to those killed by
false cures. The price of knowledge has always come high."
"Then . . . we are the subjects," Kirk said.
"Or the controls," McCoy added.
"Both," Savaj said. "And such experimenters as we have reached are as blind as we about which worlds serve what purpose. The grand design is elsewhere and the Designers -- yet unknown."
"Perhaps not," Spock said. "Mr. Kirk, how were you able to obtain this knowledge from the 'experimenter'?"
Kirk smiled fractionally. "I'm afraid I conveyed to him the impression that the rat was about to turn the tables on him."
"Bluff," Spock said.
Kirk nodded. "It worked -- because he would have done it."
Spock looked at him with interest. "I believe you have said something, Mr. Kirk. The Designers also must have some blind spot. Callousness is always blind. There must be something we could use. A third blind . . . "
"Spock!" Kirk said. "You've hit it! Gentlemen, do you remember the story of the rats who trained the psychologists . . . ?"
In the end it was settled. Spock would never know that Kirk had given some thought to going off and tackling it alone, as Spock had against Vejur. Apart from serving the Vulcan right, it would at least have removed Spock from the threat of being murdered by Kirk.
However, he had possibly pushed his luck with Spock once too often. Nor was there much of a snowball's chance on Helvan that he would even get through alone to learn something, let alone get back to report it.
"Suppose," he said finally, "that we try to attract enough attention to get picked up out of the maze?"
"To do what?" McCoy said. "Argue? Get dissected? Animals who
attract too much attention in my laboratory experience don't fare too well." 
"I know, Bones. I'm asking us to use ourselves as bait for beings about whom we know nothing, except that they are incredibly powerful and that they are willing to pay the price for knowledge -- in other living beings' lives." 
For a long moment they stood silent, perhaps even the Vulcans contemplating that that was the heart of terror.
Finally Spock said, "We will go. Savaj and I."
Kirk shook his head. "I am the one who knows the route. It is a visual impression that I tried to capture by Vulcan mnemonics, but which I will have to feel out as I go. I'm not certain that I could communicate it, even by mind-link. But even if I could, I am not willing, and you would not force it. I'm going."
"Mr. Dobius was also present and is better equipped for planetary hazards."
"With all due respect, sir," Dobius said, "I do volunteer, but we cannot be certain that what I saw is the same as what Mr. Kirk saw -- nor that I can reconstruct it."
"Spock," Kirk said, "we must go. I have a hunch that whoever is staging this may have some interest in one or more of us, or our particular combination. Something has been at pains either to make me attempt to murder you or to make it appear that I have done so. The only possible alternative is Admiral Savaj -- or direct action by some method unknown. I can't let you go alone with Savaj. And if someone has gone to the trouble to test us against suspicion, doubt, murder -- maybe they'll want to continue the test, pick us up -- "
"Jim's right," McCoy said. "The test is us. I'll get my medical kit."
"You do not imagine that you are going, Doctor?"
"Spock, no hazard party will now leave this ship without its
Chief Medical Officer while I hold that position."
For a moment Kirk had seen the look in Spock's eyes of the Vulcan command mode, considering and discarding options. The mode was harsh, but ruthlessly logical even against the Vulcan's own strong resistance.
"You are saying: The Designers may be studying, among other things, our rapport." He nodded. "I yield to that point. Landing party will consist of myself, Savaj, Kirk, and Dr. McCoy."

They gathered equipment and beamed down to the camouflaged opening of the force-shielded canyon that, according to the no-mouth, led to the only opening it knew to the Designer complex under the great mountain.
Kirk closed his eyes and tried to recall the appropriate visual. He opened them and walked to the concealed opening, found it.
Spock led the way through into a staggering interlocking series of canyons, the sheer mirrored cliffs a thousand feet high and looking the same in all directions.
"I wish," McCoy said plaintively, "that you hadn't called it a maze."

Spock moved off in silence, as if he barely tolerated Kirk's presence, not speaking unless to give a curt order. Now and then McCoy attempted some normal grouse or grumble, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Once Kirk followed up with some normal rejoinder. It was met with such glacial silence by the two Vulcans, especially Spock, that Kirk subsided and for once was quiet and very thoughtful.
There was no getting around the fact that he had really done it this time. With some attempt at fairness he tried to put himself in
Captain Spock's position. What if Kirk's First Officer had gone against his direct and binding orders, barging in on his carefully laid plan -- even if that plan included a high probability of his death, risking ship and mission in plain mutiny, and, after being placed under threat of full punishment, possibly making an attempt on his life? Possibly worse than that -- pulling an unauthorized and dangerous breach of authority again in questioning the alien.
If Spock had released him now for essential duty, the Vulcan was still making it plain that Kirk would yet have to answer to him.
Chapter Sixteen
Sunset painted the glittering thousand-foot crystal cliffs with flame. It would have been one of the most spectacular tourist attractions of the galaxy, hell on Helvan, mirroring itself in incandescent sheets of flame, skyscraper-high and reflecting each other like the endless corridors of a hall of mirrors.
It was breathtaking, also blinding -- and hotter than the hinges of Hades, as McCoy was heard to complain.
It was also totally confusing. Kirk's mental pictures made no sense in that flame-on-flame inferno. He believed he had picked the right central canyon when they started. He hoped they had not come to the first crucial turning. Beyond that he could not say. The bottom of the canyon was filled with shattered crystal, like a fall of diamonds, through which great black and silver trees grew. Now and then one grew on some ledge on a cliff face, looking like a Japanese painting done on a flaming mirror.
Kirk and McCoy were laboring in the heat, the heavy gravity. The gravity difference had been merely a background nuisance -- until they started to climb in it. Now it was a slow drain on the two Humans. For the Vulcans it was a refreshing gambol. Did Vulcans gambol? Actually they climbed with that ease by which they did not even notice the effort, now and then giving a hand or a boost to a Human.
Then, almost as if a switch had been turned off, the sun dropped with finality behind the thousand-foot cliffs and darkness fell. In the last rays of the light horned demons jumped out at them and heaved deadly six-foot shards of crystal at them.
Spock and Savaj closed in front of Kirk and McCoy and blocked some of the mirror-spear barrage with field packs, knocked some of it aside with asumi moves. The attackers, Kirk saw, must be back-of-beyond Helvans, still in the Stone Age.
"Back," Spock ordered, and the party retreated up a cliff path. Spock would be reluctant to use phasers, although the planet was already heavily contaminated with interference from the experimenters and the Designers.
They reached a turn where a large crystal overhang reached out over the path. Spock and Savaj traded a look and put their shoulders to the massive overhang. They heaved together and the overhang sheared off at its top and went careening down the sloping path, scattering attackers, who leaped out of its way.
When the crystal dust settled, the attackers appeared to have lost nerve. They huddled at the bottom of the path, then moved off.
That was virtually the last thing the Humans of the Enterprise party could see. The night became black as a pocket.
Kirk sensed rather than saw Spock move off up the cliff path, surefooted as some cross between mountain goat and cat. Kirk felt a hand on his elbow. Savaj steered him up the path, stopped to collect McCoy.
They found Spock exploring a large crystal cave. The interior was faintly luminescent. Great sheets of mirroring crystal stood at angles here too, turning their foursome into serried ranks of Vulcans and Humans.
"I assume your mental pictures will not function in darkness, Mr.
Kirk. Nor is it prudent to move in the dark while under attack -- or with Humans who lack night vision. We will stay here." Spock and all his myriad mirror images moved off into the back of the cave.
They broke out camping gear, put up the force field equivalent of a thorn-boma in the mouth of the cave -- it would also block light from their fire and dissipate smoke. Savaj hauled in a dead silver tree from somewhere before they closed it. He carried it like a branch on his shoulder. It had looked like a ming tree from a distance, but the size suggested it had aspirations to be a redwood. Savaj carried it easily and snapped off some branches with his hands to start the fire. Spock finally returned with an armload of something that looked rather like blue mushrooms. Kirk saw him analyze them to the last alkaloid with the tricorder, nod satisfaction, and toast them on sticks over Savaj's fire. Kirk sensed that some primordial sense of battles shared and safely won around a warriors' campfire had even reached the Vulcans. The offenses were not forgotten, but the glacial atmosphere had thawed slightly. Kirk broke out coffee and McCoy fussed over a couple of cuts Kirk had caught on an arm in the brief encounter with the natives.
Presently they were sitting down to what proved to be surprisingly delicious roasted blue mushrooms, hot coffee, and a momentary, if false, sense of safety. Kirk remained acutely aware of the literal and figurative maze they were in -- the trapped, helpless sense of the rat whose bold move to master his fate would lead him, at best, into the heart of hell. Still, there were worse ways to arrive at that destination than to have a moment over this fire, with friends.
"You know," McCoy said, "I could get used to having a couple of Vulcans around the camp."
Kirk chuckled. "I second the motion, Bones. You and I would be having canned rations, canned heat, and cold comfort -- assuming
our bones weren't stretched out somewhere down the path."
Savaj looked mildly surprised, as if he could not for a moment place what the Humans were talking about. "Nothing unusual has happened," the full Vulcan said.
Kirk chuckled. "No, of course not, Admiral. Nothing unusual. But unless I miss my guess, sir, you also have enjoyed that 'nothing unusual.' We Humans are something of a trial for you, but we call forth your natural capacities in ways that must be satisfying. You have enjoyed it, V'Kreeth Savaj?"
Savaj appeared to consult some inner calculator. "I would not designate the state as an emotion, but there is a certain pleasurable release of capacity." He lowered a frown on Kirk's smile. "As well as severe and frequent irritation."
Kirk stretched out on an elbow on one of the forcedown sleeping bags. "I don't doubt it. You know, the gulf between Vulcan and Human is very narrow, but  . . . it is very deep." He looked at Spock. "I know you, Spock, as I know no one else in the galaxy, and half of you is flesh of my flesh, kind of my kind, as Human as I am. And yet somewhere at the bottom of that gulf remains a mystery. The Designers." He looked at Savaj. "What if the gulf between us and them really is the gulf between rat and man?"
"That is the question I have lived with, Mr. Kirk -- for ten years," Savaj said.
"When the psychologists were studying the rats, sir," Kirk said, "on my planet, or yours -- was there anything they could have learned by interrogating the rat?"
Savaj looked at Kirk carefully. "It has been my whole aim and focus for those ten years, Commander, to communicate to the Designers that there is." 
Kirk studied the Vulcan. "You have been trying to get picked up
out of the cage from long before I suggested it, haven't you?"
"Much longer. Since I began to suspect what the Designers are studying." 
"Which is?"
"The Promethean fault, Commander. The flaw in the design of intelligent life that may ultimately annihilate it, and us."
"You said," McCoy interposed, "that they were studying aggression."
Savaj nodded. "That is the flaw in the machine, Doctor. All intelligent corporeal life appears to retain aggression as an integral part of its makeup. Yet at some point intelligence necessarily develops the power to destroy itself and all it touches -- without ever losing the aggression that once belonged to the unarmed animal."
McCoy nodded. "Nobody ever quite licked that one -- not even Sargon's people.1 They survived their early atomic crisis and maybe a million years beyond, seeded the galaxy with their offspring -- maybe including us -- and still destroyed each other by war. We've met . . . I don't know how many others. The five-hundred-year computer war -- But maybe the answer is just the one Jim gave those people. Yes, we have the killer instincts, but 'we're not going to kill today.' "
Savaj nodded. "Admirable, Doctor. Vulcan gave that answer a thousand years ago. It has virtually ended the killing. It has not ended the problem. I translate it for you as the Promethean problem. Vulcan has a similar legend -- as do most species. Mr. Spock would understand it in your terms." 
Spock's face had an abstracted expression -- not quite any look Kirk had ever seen -- as if he were attuned to something not heard.
"Prometheus brought fire to man," Spock said, "and for his reward was chained to a rock to be eaten by vultures. What is disquieting
disquieting is that intelligent life forms all over the galaxy understand that legend -- both the fire-bringing and the vultures."
Spock stirred the fire with a stick, looked into the coals and up at Kirk. "There is both the god in man, which reaches for fire and stars, and that black-dark streak, which steals the fire to make chains, extracts a price from the fire-bringer, and lets loose the dogs of war and the vultures of destruction. There is the greatness -- and the callousness."
His eyes examined Kirk as if he would read some riddle there. "Nor are we alone in that duality -- your species or mine. Every solution to the Promethean flaw that intelligent corporeal life in the known galaxy has found is, at best, partial -- It is also . . . temporary."
Spock looked up through the mouth of the crystal cave in the direction where the unseen alien mountain stood waiting for them.
"Nevertheless," Spock said, "it is our solution."
Kirk followed Spock's eyes up to where the silent mountain and the Designers' own final solution brooded over them. He found himself shivering. It was the chill of the night, he told himself, or the physical shocks of the day. But the weight of shame and terror closed down on him again, now with crushing force. The Promethean question was older than man. But if the Designers were still studying it at world's end, when they stood to him as man to rat, then what hope was there?
And what complaint would they want to hear from the rat?
He had put himself, his closest friends, and perhaps the last hope of intelligent life in this galaxy into the hands of Zeus. And the chains and the vultures were at hand.
Savaj of Vulcan reached over and programmed Kirk's force-down sleeping bag to close around him. "I will stand watch," Savaj said.
"Whatever they have done to you, you need not fear what you will do tonight."
Chapter Seventeen
Spock woke from first-level sleep to see Kirk moving through shadow. He had a long, lethal crystal shard in his hand and a look on his face that was a death struggle. He was moving toward Spock -- or toward the unguarded back of Savaj of Vulcan who stood near Spock, looking out of the cave mouth. Or perhaps some part of the Human was merely moving toward the cave mouth -- and the cliff edge.
Spock gathered himself, but Savaj was fully aware -- and already moving. In a moment he had Kirk pinned, the shard snapped out of his hand. Kirk struggled with the fury of a mad thing, the strength of madness threatening to break itself against Vulcan strength.
Spock moved and put his hands on Kirk's temples. Further mental contact was dangerous. It was not as dangerous as this. Spock made it momentary -- the identity signal, wordless -- merely saying, I am here.
Kirk reached for Spock's throat.
Then, slowly, he subsided. Finally he was quiet. His eyes opened. "Spock?"
"Here."
Kirk opened his hand, cut by the force of his grip on what was left of the shard. It dropped to shatter on the floor. McCoy was suddenly there, taking possession of the hurt hand.
"I -- tried to kill you, Spock?" Kirk said.
"No," Spock said firmly. "Something that was done to you aimed you at me -- and might merely have succeeded in making you go over the cliff. It is a test. We should have known that it was always a test."
He turned toward the mountain, barely visible in cold dawn light above the cliffs. "It has failed," he said, as if he spoke to someone not present. "I do not suspect him, and he is not yours to use. That which you do not understand is stronger than any wedge you have tried to drive between us. We, both and all, stand on that rapport against you."
He put a hand on Kirk's arm and on McCoy's and nodded to Savaj, who still retained a light hold on Kirk's shoulder. "Will you study that -- to our faces?" Spock asked the mountain.
Kirk felt as if something flowed from the two Vulcans' touch to surround them with a protection, a unity. A line from a very old poem came to him. "And we, all we are against thee, oh God most high. . . .
It was not God they challenged, but the temerity was of the same order of magnitude. "It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. . . ." Or of the ultimate evil at world's end.
The crystal cliffs shimmered. Then Kirk knew that it was they who were dissolving in some unknown effect. Well, they had asked to be picked up. . . .
They emerged into a mirrored hall that would have accommodated God -- or giants in the Earth. No, it was not mirrored, exactly. The walls were some form of in-depth hologram, where their images were projected in three dimensions and in an endlessly reflected, diminishing series that disappeared at infinity. The corridor itself stretched to some vanishing point of perspective.
It was compellingly beautiful -- requiring a technology that could not have been matched in the known galaxy -- and Kirk had the feeling that it was nothing more than an undecorated holding cage to the Designers.
Where were those Designers? And were they built on a scale to match these hundred-foot-high walls? Or would a hand reach down on a hundred-foot arm to lift him?
"Whose bright idea was this?" McCoy muttered, trying to take the edge off awe -- or terror.
"Ours, Doctor," Spock said, leading off in a direction that seemed as good as any other. "It seems to have been adopted with some alacrity."
"Where are we?" McCoy asked. "In that mountain?"
"Possibly," Savaj said. "If we are on Helvan or in any ordinary dimension at all."
Kirk looked a question at him.
Savaj shrugged. "From the days of your planet's UFO phenomena their ships have not seemed to follow ordinary laws of physics. It is my hypothesis that they travel alternate dimensions of reality as easily as we travel to stars. We may be in an outpost on Helvan -- or somewhere else entirely."
And, Kirk thought, in any case quite beyond the reach of the Enterprise, or any help at all.
"What concept would a rat have of being taken to a laboratory?" McCoy said.
Kirk turned to see that Leonard McCoy's face was gray. It finally came home to Kirk that he had not fully thought how this would look from a doctor's eye view. Much had been done toward the humane treatment of animals in medicine. And yet it was still sometimes McCoy's task to find out what made some small alien organism
organism tick -- perhaps to save the life of a man or of the ship. The doctor knew only too well that they were presenting themselves to be put under the microscope on slides.
Kirk moved closer to McCoy. There wasn't the hell of a lot more he could do. He could feel that his own face would be white around the eyes. "Cheer up, Bones. Maybe it's only psychologists."
McCoy nodded sourly. "Sure. That's why they had you strapped to that table."
Spock, investigating the hologram surfaces with his hands, found one where his hand went through. They gathered in front of a section that looked no different from the others, reflecting their solid images to infinity. But Spock gathered them behind him and stepped squarely into the Spock solid that came to meet him. It was as if both solid Spocks dissolved at some expanding surface line where they met. The line shimmered like a ripple of quicksilver.
"Come on!" Kirk said, and suddenly bolted forward into his own image beside the Vulcan, afraid that the thing would prove to be some dimension gate to elsewhere entirely and they would be separated. He still had a grip on McCoy's arm and he sensed that Savaj suddenly caught hold of McCoy from behind. It required an effort of logic to run smack into his own solid image, but he felt no impact, only an odd dissolving sensation that passed through him. He was into the plane of dissolution before Spock had quite disappeared.
Then Spock caught him and pulled them all through like beads on a string. But Kirk had the sinking feeling that if he had not moved before the mirror membrane closed, they would have been cut off.
He saw the same suspicion in Spock's eyes. "In future at any such juncture, maintain physical contact," Spock ordered.
Now they were in some Chamber that seemed to be made of hammered gold -- including the space they had just stepped through, which now tested as solid wall. The chamber was small. The gold ceiling was well over three times their height.
They investigated every reachable inch of wall. Nothing. Kirk turned to find Savaj offering the stirrup of his hand. Kirk stepped into it, started to go to Savaj's shoulders -- but the gold ceiling was much higher than that. Savaj lifted Kirk to the full stretch of his arms and he was still several feet short. Savaj lowered him a little, then heaved to give him a good toss as Kirk jumped. He was prepared to bounce off the ceiling, but he jumped as if his hands would go through it to catch the top of the wall. They did.
He pulled himself up to sit on the top of the wall, being careful not to go through the ceiling entirely. From the top it felt solid, but he could still lean down through it. Above there was a broad expanse of crystal gardens, apparently open air, and lavender sky -- and the black and silver trees.
He bent down through the ceiling. "Come on up. Eden has arrived."
"I don't care if it's heaven," McCoy said. "I'm a doctor, not a gymnast."
In point of fact, it did not look easy. McCoy was pretty active, but he was not in that kind of training. And somebody was going to have to be last man. Kirk doubted that even a Vulcan could catch a hand from a standing leap.
"Go on," McCoy said. "I can at least give a leg up. Leave me."
Kirk started to swing a leg back over.
Savaj paid no attention to either of them. He merely nodded to Spock. Spock did a running mount to the full Vulcan's hands, then was heaved up as he put his own momentum into a leap. Spock
arrived beside Kirk, caught hold, and pulled himself up. Then he was managing some maneuver by which he braced with one leg and leaned down almost the full stretch of his body. From there he could catch McCoy's wrist from Savaj's lift. Spock pulled McCoy up as easily as he had caught Kirk with one hand at the top of his jump and lifted him up out of the dungeon where aliens from another galaxy had appeared to them as Sylvia and Korob. Spock lifted McCoy from a still greater height until Kirk caught him at the last and parked him on the wall. And Kirk still didn't think Savaj could make it.
He was wrong. He saw Savaj back off, gather full Vulcan mental focus, then make a deliberate running leap for Spock's hand. Kirk had read that some famous dancers of past or present -- Nijinski, T'Vreel -- seemed to leap higher and stay up longer than physics allowed. He had not seen it. Until now. Savaj seemed to reach the last inches more by levitation than anything else.
Spock caught him by fingertips. This time it was no joke for Spock to lift the full Vulcan's weight. Spock's muscles rippled and knotted and Kirk leaned down to try to brace him. Then Savaj was pulling himself up and gaining the wall, helping Spock back up after him.
Finally the ceiling closed behind them and they were catching their breath on a carpet of crystal with diamonds in their hair.
Kirk heard the sound of silvery laughter behind him. "Gentlemen," he said. "You may proceed. I, personally, have gone right off the deep end."
Chapter Eighteen
"You have," Spock said, looking over Kirk's shoulder, "company."
But whether he meant himself in the company of madness or the company of some presence approaching, Kirk was not certain. He turned, coming up on his knees, ready to make it to his feet and face anything.
Well, almost anything. He realized that he had been prepared for monsters, monstrosities, giants, gods, demons, the local equivalent of Organians, any of the life forms he had faced or not faced -- or their million-year-later descendants.
He was not prepared for one perfectly ordinary humanoid female.
He came to his feet slowly. No, not ordinary. Not Human, either. But close enough that his old standards of beauty still applied, and any biochemistry he owned. She was tall, lithe, and exotic, smooth muscles shaping curves he could appreciate. She seemed to be wearing mainly an illusion that might have been silver feathers shimmering in a force field. But her ears also swept up to tips, which appeared almost winged -- not Vulcan, but with an equal grace, and blending into spun silver that might have been hair, feathers, the actual metal -- or all three.
Kirk could not make out what was her and what was artifice -- nor did he care. He caught Spock's eye, the Vulcan's resigned look of observing a predictable reaction -- a string of names stretching back
nearly ten years -- Sylvia, Deela, Kalinda, and all the others -- and read Captain Spock's implied consent to go try the predictable gambit. Kirk moved toward her, tried his best smile, trusting to that common language, at least, and hoping for the best with his implant translator.
"Hello. Are you brought here as we are?"
She looked him over. "I am here."
Kirk chuckled. "I never doubted it for a moment." He sobered. "We are strangers here. Who belongs in this place?"
"You, henceforth."
He shook his head. "Not unless we are prisoners. We wish only to communicate with those who trouble our worlds. Do you know them?"
She made a slight movement of long-fingered hands. "So far as they are to be known."
He reached out to capture one of the hands and she allowed it. There was a faint sculpture of feathery silver at her wrist, but whether it was adornment or a vestige of nightingale, he could not tell. "I hope . . . you are not alone here," he said.
She withdrew the hand. "No, I am not."
"Do you have a name?"
"You may designate me Belen."
"Belen. It has the sound of silver bells."
He heard the silvery laughter again. "No. It does not."
"Are you a captive here?" he asked.
She stood contained now and merely looked at him. "No, little one, I am not."
He felt his eyes widen, but he knew that he had felt the shock creeping up on him for some time now. It made his legs not want to take his weight. He was seeing the no-mouths and their strap-down
tables and this silver vision standing over them with her quicksilver laughter.
"You are the captor," he said.
"Why, no," she said from her cool containment. "You were never free."
"What are you, then?" he said harshly.
"I project the forthcoming," she said blandly. "At need I select limited-purpose subjects, or perhaps gentle them for handling."
"And is that what you are doing now? Gentling?"
She made the hand gesture he now read as "Beyond your ken." "So far as it can be put in terms you would believe you understood."
"I understand," Kirk said, "that I and my people have been manipulated, mind-controlled, subjected to physical pain and mental abuse, pushed to the point of murder or suicide. Our worlds have been pushed to revolution, war, chaos, and impending destruction. We have been put in a maze and made to perform for your amusement or edification. And now you want to gentle us?"
"No, little one. I have. Your performance on the elementary problems was satisfactory. You show substantial communication and cohesiveness. You did not, quite, kill, although severely bound to do so. There was always some small margin for escape, if in nothing but the resistant physiology and known rescue proclivities of the two V subjects. In the end, your own resistance was . . . interesting. There appears to be a capacity for personal affinity bonds of rather surprising resistance to tampering, stress, and suspicion." She looked at him and there was some attentive expression in her silver-black eyes that seemed to read him on some level he had not intended to write. "Such a capacity might also be interesting."
Kirk gave her the counterpart of that look, with interest.
"Remind me to show you some time -- if I can get past the fact
that you set me to kill my friend. And -- my Captain. Not to mention Admiral Savaj, whose record and person I would honor if I had to pick three names out of a galaxy."
The silver-black eyes darkened to black. "You will subside. Small life does not speak in a tone of reprimand."
Kirk stood his ground. "I wish no quarrel with you. I have come to tell you that my life is precious to me, as yours is to you. I feel pain as vividly. If a rose can scream, how much more a living, feeling, breathing, loving, intelligent being? I love. I choose my affinities and cherish them. I defend what is mine, my life, my friends, my worlds. Whatever you are, if you are able to do all of this, you are able to know my pain. I come to ask you to let me and mine go -- all worlds of this galaxy where you touch and twist our lives."
The eyes flecked with silver again. "Little one, do you really suppose it would be so simple?"
"Do you suppose I could fail to ask?"
She spread her hands, acknowledging, shrugging. "When the pleading eyes have looked up at you from some cage, small one, begging you for their still smaller lives, have you stayed your hand?"
Kirk set his teeth. It was a sore point that had been rubbing something raw at the back of his mind since they had been plunged into the nightmare of being caged themselves. Their hands were not clean. His weren't. "No," he said. "Not always. But we try not to cause needless suffering. And we do not use the lives of intelligent life forms."
She looked at him with mild surprise. "Neither do we."
He found himself staring at her. "You don't believe we are intelligent? You studied us on a starship."
"The beavers of your world, small one, engineer lodges and dams. Your chimpanzees learn to use symbols as speech. Vulcan snarth and
Terran dolphins have speech of their own. They feel. They love. They have been hunted, domesticated, trained, experimented on. And eaten. Do you never eat flesh, small one?"
"Most of that," Kirk said tightly, "has been centuries ago."
She crossed her hands. It looked like a gesture of negation. "A moment in time. Nor have you ended it entirely. We take no pleasure in your pain. We are quite familiar with your capacities. That they bear some marginal resemblance to our own is what makes you useful to us. But there is less distance between you and the analogy you have used -- the rat -- than between you and us. And, as was always your argument, and as it still is -- our own lives are at stake."
"How?" Kirk said, but she was turning.
"Follow me, small one."
He hung back for a moment. "And if I don't?"
She turned back, the eyes as black as space, then glittering with some cold spark. He suddenly felt fire run along every nerve. He swayed, fighting it, trying not to cry out. Then he was on the ground. It stopped, but he sensed something behind him. He turned to see McCoy collapsing, the two Vulcans locked into iron resistance and still not shaking it off.
"Stop it!" he snapped.
"Rephrase. Alter tone."
He took a breath. "Stop it, please."
She stopped and Spock moved to lift McCoy from the ground, held him while he tried to stand. Kirk made it to his feet under his own power. Just.
"Follow me." She did not say please. Nor did they argue.
Chapter Nineteen
Kirk fell back to where Spock and Savaj were helping McCoy, hopefully out of earshot or translator range of the Designer, Belen.
She was still shockingly beautiful, a sculpture in flesh and silver, now moving like a goddess ahead of them, and he felt nothing but a kind of cold horror. Nor did it help that some of that horror was at himself. This was the heritage of his species, too -- the using of lives. And if they were better about it now than Neanderthal man or Genghis Khan or Colonel Green, they still had a ways to go. Nor did he have an answer that he would apply to all cases. But he knew his answer would not be the Designers' answer.
"Bones?" he said.
McCoy gritted his teeth. "I have a few left. I'm okay, Jim."
Kirk nodded, looked ruefully at Spock, indicating his failure with Belen. "It's known as striking out, Captain Spock. Sorry." Spock merely nodded.
It was Savaj who answered.
"I believe the proper expression, Mr. Kirk, concerns the impossibility of emerging victorious in a totality of cases."
"You can't win 'em all," McCoy translated. "Of course, you've been known to try."
Kirk shot him a look that said, "Later for you," but he dropped his voice to say to Spock, "You or Savaj better take the next one,
Spock. At least you are vegetarians." His voice sounded sour, even to him.
"One could wish the same could be said of the Designers," Spock said.
Kirk looked at him sharply. "You don't think that they -- "
"Unknown. I think not. However, certain distinctions among different kinds of small lives may not be as clear to the Designers as we would prefer. Ethically, however, I do not suppose that it makes much difference to a small life for what purpose its life is used."
Kirk grimaced. "I suppose not." But the thought of what they might be used for stayed with him. Maybe it would make a difference?
Belen turned and stopped at a grove of silver trees. Kirk moved ahead, fast, not wanting McCoy to suffer for his sins. She was waiting, not patiently.
The silver tree grove picked itself up on its roots and divided to form an aisle, which ended in an impressive entrance. The entrance was quite plain and functional. It merely appeared to have been poured out of a rainbow.
"Everything here," Kirk said to Belen, "appears to serve a purpose, while being exquisitely beautiful." He looked at her, still trying a little, he supposed, just to keep his hand in.
Her silver-feathery eye-winglines lifted. "How else would it be?" She gestured him through the door. He gave it up and moved past her. "You are permitted without alteration," she said behind him.
He turned quickly, but caught no look on her face but bland contemplation. He didn't think he wanted to answer for the look on his own face. Had she called him beautiful?
Then a thought struck a chill into him and he almost asked if she meant also the others could enter without -- alteration. He bit it off,
not to give her any ideas, and started to move on again, assuming it. But she stopped him and turned to look at the others. Was she reading his thoughts? He tried to stop thinking.
She raked her eyes over the others as if inspecting them properly for the first time. Savaj, Spock. But Kirk was not in much doubt how either of those would strike a female of almost any species. She moved to McCoy and tipped his chin up. McCoy met her eyes steadily, but he did not look well. "It needs care," she said.
"I will care for him," Spock said quickly.
She shrugged her hands. "See that it does not suffer, or I must attend to it."
She turned back to Kirk. "My friend," he said carefully, "is a skilled physician -- a learned man and a natural healer. He is essential to me. To all of us."
"Let him heal himself," she said. "Sickness communicates. I cannot have sick small life. Apart from that, each will do, in his fashion. Come."
She led them through the door.

Spock had no difficulty as a scientist in discerning the pattern of a laboratory. Holocube displays were tuned in on experiments in progress on what appeared to be an indefinitely large number of worlds. The holocubes diminished into the distance to the vanishing point. Nearby ones showed some scenes Spock could place as to world. Helvan. Andor with its blue skin and white horn-antennae. Several pig-faced Tellarite worlds. The tiny winged dragons of Kar-lee. Rigel IV. Earth. Vulcan. The Romulan heartworlds. The interior of a Klingon ship. A Gorn colony. Some forty-three other species he could identify at a quick glance.
There were seven views of the interior of the Enterprise, including
a massively worried Scott in command on the bridge. 
The holocubes were monitored by automatic equipment. Beyond them were habitats where many species perched, swam, flew, crawled, or disconsolately drew creature warmth from one another in the manner of the caged. A fight was in progress in one cage. A sound-damping screen came down around it, discreetly cutting off the annoyance of mayhem.
Spock turned his focus inward for a long moment and performed the mastery-of-the-unavoidable. He discerned that the full Vulcan had done so earlier and with more thoroughness. Nonetheless, there remained a residue of psychic contamination escaping even from Savaj.
Belen emitted a high, musical call, some part of which would be outside Human hearing range.
Two male Designers appeared from the back of the laboratory, and another crossed on some other errand. They appeared to be the male counterparts of Belen, humanoid, splendidly formed, with classic male definition of muscle, the vestigial featherlike hair black on one and pale gold on the other. They wore, if possible, less than Belen, chiefly a low illusion field that seemed also to serve as belt for tools, weapons, or other accoutrements. But of the usual humanoid or indeed mammalian accoutrements of maleness, Spock could see no definite sign -- possibly concealed by the illusion belt or possibly some protective internal storage arrangement.
The two males glanced up, but paid little attention to Belen's subjects. They gave her some casual sign-of-greeting and started to pass on. "You are quite certain as to the time scale?" the slightly smaller fair one said.
"There's no doubt. The rate of increase of hazard is augmented -- geometric."
"The Others . . . . ?"
"Their studies have arrived at no more definitive conclusion than ours. Their projection of outcome remains the same: annihilation of Nome."
Spock's Vulcan brain translated the questioned concept possibilities offered by his translator to the single concept: Nome. The All. Whether it was a correct rendition or what the Designers might mean by the Oneness of All, he did not know.
Belen said, "See these. The V-One and -Two subjects, and the link-H's." At least, that was how Spock rendered it.
The two males turned with mild interest. "Which is the V-One?" the dark one said.
Belen indicated. "Its call sound is Savaj, Trath."
Trath moved over to inspect Savaj. They were almost of a size and indeed might very nearly have been cast from the same mold -- perhaps not merely physically. They inspected each other with that look of males who command their respective domains, from jungle to starfleet to laboratory.
Trath's look was perhaps that of inspecting a prime bull or a superb fighting animal. No, it was rather more than that, Spock saw.
"This is the one who observed the observers?" Trath queried.
Belen affirmed hands.
"Question it as discussed -- under brainstrip, if necessary. Then the others." Trath made a note on a belt recorder.
"Can you afford that?" Savaj said. "A waste of the lives of the only ones who detected your design?"
Trath looked up, surprised. "Once I know, what more could you tell me?" He looked at the little group of subjects more carefully for a moment. "Do not waste my time. You have attracted brief attention
attention over a period of some of your years and decades for certain unusual behavior or representation of certain planetary partial solutions. You, in particular, climbed out of a box and appeared in inappropriate but astutely chosen locations rather too often. It is quite an admirable feat for a subject. But it is a ripple on the pond of forever. I am concerned with the fate of a totality you cannot conceive. You will contribute what you have to give. Do not speak to me of your lives."
He turned, dismissing them with no further word or thought, a scientist bent on a war with a runaway epidemic of a cancer that would end his species. What were rats and rabbits, or even snarth, to him?
"Why do the subjects choose to return to the danger-aggression zones?" Savaj asked very clearly.
Trath stopped in midstride and turned to look at Savaj.
"Is it possible," Savaj asked, "that the greatness cannot exist without the violence?"
"Who has raised with you such questions?" Trath said dangerously.
"I have," Savaj said. "We have." He indicated Kirk. "They are implied in the oldest fire myth of these Humans' world." He nodded then toward Spock. "This one, bred to their world and born to mine, went out to the stars to investigate the duality of his heritage, and his soul, in the zone of danger -- and greatness. This one" -- he indicated McCoy -- "is a born healer who chooses to fight death in the battle zone. The three together may be a lesson that neither I nor my world has yet learned fully. If so -- neither have you. You did not understand their rapport. You found it worth study. And it might even be the lead toward the solution of the Promethean dilemma."
"The Final Question?" the fair Designer translated.
Trath looked very carefully at Savaj, at Kirk, Spock, McCoy. Spock understood that he would now send them either to the brainstrip process or to some test and interrogation intended to solve the riddle the rat had unexpectedly propounded.
"Brainstrippers," Spock remarked, "as a rule, are unsubtle and largely ineffectual against my species." He carefully did not say which species.
Trath turned to look at him, perhaps noting that. "Ours are effectual. I grant, in this case, some possibility of insufficient subtlety." He turned to Belen. "Have them prepared. Bring them when I summon."
He turned and left with the fair one.
"Prepared for what?" McCoy asked under his breath. 
Kirk took his arm. "I don't think you want to know."
Belen deposited them without ceremony in a keeping cage and left.
Chapter Twenty
Kirk turned on Savaj. "Just what did you pull? Sir."
Fortunately the Vulcan did not pretend to misunderstand him. "I believe you have a saying, Commander. 'First you have to get his attention.' "
Kirk sat down on a perch, a little weakly. It was a while before the Vulcans realized that he was laughing.
They exchanged commiserating looks.
"Yes, sir!" Kirk said when he could. "You did that. Now what the hell did you say?"
Savaj regarded him gravely. "I asked him the question for which the psychologists needed to interrogate the rat. It is, in fact, the most important question raised by the actual early rat studies of your own world, and it has never been truly solved. Nor have we succeeded in asking the rat."
"You mean," McCoy said, "why do the rats run back into Hell's Kitchen?"
Savaj turned to the doctor. "I am unfamiliar with the term, Doctor. But I believe you have understood me."
Kirk looked a question at McCoy. "The old studies," McCoy said tiredly. "Experimenters found increased aggression in rats living under conditions of crowding -- the rat equivalent of Human cities, slums, crime areas, tough districts: Hell's Kitchen. Normal, decent,
orderly rat behavior broke down. There were rapes, murders, gang fights, a high level of excitement, increased sexual behavior, much more danger and a shocking death rate."
Kirk nodded. "It's been used as an argument for decentralization, even for space-to-person ratios on a starship. But -- Hell's Kitchen?"
"The clincher was," McCoy said, "once given a taste of the high life, and high death, when given a choice the rats would run back, to live -- or die -- in Hell's Kitchen. They did not choose peace, safety, life."
Kirk remembered then; it was a passing scientific oddity that had struck him too, although he had never heard it put in the vivid metaphor of Hell's Kitchen, the toughest slum district of nineteenth- and twentieth-century New York.
"The studies have since been replicated," Spock added, "with many life forms on most worlds. Including, apparently, most otherwise intelligent beings."
Kirk turned to the two Vulcans. "You are saying, sir, that we will all run to the excitement -- even to the aggression and the death?"
"Commander," Savaj said, "in your spare time you are a starship Captain."
Kirk winced. "I wouldn't have put it quite that way."
"It was a species of compliment."
Kirk regarded him warily. "Correct me if I'm wrong, sir. Am I hearing a Vulcan say that there may be a use -- or even a need -- for the aggression syndrome? And that it could even be essential to greatness?"
Savaj looked out from the cage for a long moment, then turned back to Kirk. "You are hearing a Vulcan, reluctantly and at the end of more than ten decades of personal and ten centuries of racial belief to the contrary, consider that possibility. In logic I must consider
consider it, even though my own resistance is strong and my life has been spent attempting to keep Vulcan from relearning the attractions and the dangers of what the doctor has called Hell's Kitchen. We Vulcans are much too dangerous a species, if unleashed."
"My God," McCoy said.
Savaj shook his head. "If it is true that the greatness cannot be separated from the aggression, then there is certainly no benevolent design in the universe, Doctor. Nor will it long survive, For if that is truly the case, then every intelligent corporeal species must choose, ultimately, mediocrity -- or destruction."
"You think," Kirk said, "that the Designers have arrived at that choice."
"I think," Savaj said, "that they have foreseen its arrival. And for the first time an intelligent species has conceived the Promethean design of trying to steal the fire of that answer from the gods or from the vultures of destruction."
"And if they don't succeed?" Kirk asked softly.
"Then they, and some other all-dimension species which has also reached that point, will pull the universe down on all our heads."
They sat for a long moment in silence, Kirk visualizing the vast and intricate mosaic of an experiment intended to solve that question -- a general field theory for intelligent life on a galactic, perhaps a universal scale. And poised somewhere was sufficient power to destroy the totality of the all.
More than once when Earth was still the All for all of Kirk's kind, the species had arrived at the capacity to destroy that All: the early atomic crisis, neutron bombs and doomsday weapons, biological vectors, chemical planet killers. At each critical juncture, two or more superrats dressed in suits or tunics or synth-fields would bare teeth and brandish spears that could now kill a world. And somewhere
off in the back-of-beyond was a bushman who had never heard of either superrat and wanted only to make the bush safe for his little democracy -- his wife, kids, friends, pets, and starship. If the superrats had come to experiment on the bushman, saying that it might save the world, the bushman would have objected. Yet if the superrats had blown up the world, he would have gone with it -- never having heard of the superrats or the problem.
"Admirable analysis, little subject," a voice said behind him.
Kirk turned, not sure whether it was a comment on Savaj's words or his own thoughts.
Belen was there, but it was not she who had spoken. There was another female Designer with her.
And if Belen had struck him as beautiful, this one struck him as dangerous. If fire had been transmuted into woman, this was that woman. There was a sweep of spun-fire, of burnished copper-bronze feather-hair on her head, and she wore body illusion-ornaments or plumage to match. Her eyes were dark shadows opening to bronze-gold flame. But the real fire was inner. He could have warmed his hands at it -- or burned them.
He felt his face flush, suspecting that she could read exactly the stirring of an old interest, for which he had not had much time lately. Worse, Belen could probably read it, too -- and that struck him as not merely dangerous, but possibly fatal.
The flame-woman laughed low in her throat. "You see? The subject is quite prepared to sell soul, or body, for his friends or his ship. I might even note, he seems recurrently eager to do so."
Belen shrugged hands. "It is a known factor of this one's record, Flaem. It seems unnecessary for you to compel him to demonstrate it yet again."
Flaem -- at least the sound was close to that -- but Kirk's mind
inevitably and persistently translated it as Flame. She turned the burning eyes on him and the eyes laughed. "A good scientist always takes the opportunity to observe at first hand the possibly subtle nuances of behavior. Even Trath has decreed a period of subtlety for these subjects."
"You consider your behavior subtle?" Belen said in her most silver voice.
Flaem laughed. "It is up to the subject to show subtlety." Then she looked at Kirk in cool appraisal. "You have had the temerity to come to us and the gall to condemn us for using lives -- and now do you have the nerve to consider making our case for us?"
Kirk felt substantially deflated and more than a little demoralized, but he hoped not to let the flame-one see it. "I'm not very subtle," he said disarmingly. "I'm the bushman with my little bush family and my pet Koala and my primitive starship. But what I have is mine. You may blow it up. But I won't see you play with it. If you want any cooperation from me, you will ask for it -- nicely."
The flame-one lifted a brow-feather. "It speaks with some spirit. Interesting."
"It always does," Belen said.
"Have you taught it no manners?"
"It has learned shame. You know that."
Flaem hand-signed affirmation. "Rather more than shame is required." She looked beyond Kirk to McCoy. "Your cagemate is not well. I had better examine him."
"No!" Kirk said quickly. "My other cagemates are attending him. He merely needs a little rest." He looked at Flaem directly. "Perhaps we could continue this conversation elsewhere for a time."
Her eyes laughed. "We could continue." She pointed her wrist-feather at something and the force field at the front of the cage
snapped off. "You see," she remarked to Belen, "the subject's response is almost a reflex."
Belen looked at him and past him to McCoy with silver eyes that seemed to hold something of a common decency. "What would you expect?" she said quietly. "He defends his own."
"I expect him to come -- " Flaem said.
Kirk resisted an impulse that had little to do with chivalry or sanity and much to do with aggression. But he followed her out. He didn't look back at Spock or Savaj, not wanting to see anything Vulcan faces had to say about it. McCoy started to say, "Jim!" but seemed to be cut off.
Kirk shrugged mentally. There could be worse fates. If he could get past being mad as hell. He let himself be marched between the two women and kept his eye out for the main chance -- layout of the place, possible escape route, weapons, whatever. Now that they were here, he devoutly wanted at least some conceivable way out. If nothing else, at least for McCoy. He kept remembering the doctor's gray face, still trying to wisecrack the edge off fear for the rest of them. But McCoy had been through some similar alien hell the first time Kirk had and had had no moment's peace since. Kirk had to give McCoy at least an hour or two and Spock and Savaj some chance to pull him together. Or else the Designers, with an infallible instinct for a weak animal or even with Belen's misplaced attempt at Human decency, might get some idea about putting him out of his misery. And the Designing woman beside him had known that, too well. She had unhesitatingly used it to force him to do what she wanted.
He found Flaem looking at him speculatively, and he now had no interest. They reached what appeared to be some living space area. He could make no sense of the furniture -- that thing that he
took for a bed was probably a table and possibly an energy fish tank.
Flaem said, "Very well, I see no need to delay the demonstration of capacity further."
Belen stood by and appeared to be rooted more firmly than a silver tree.
"It doesn't," Kirk began, "quite work that way."
Flaem looked at him with some amusement. "Of course it does. Come, little one. You needn't be embarrassed. You have no secrets from me."
Kirk remembered the holograms showing views into the Enterprise, including his cabin and including back records of their log. He tried to suppress the thought. Then it occurred to him that it was much worse than that. Those blanked-out periods when the no-mouths had taken him -- she could have been, would have been, observing that, reviewing the tapes, or even watching at the time, on the spot, directing the no-mouths' actions, perhaps bringing him here, then sending him back with additional cause for rage that he could not remember.
She stepped closer to him now, reading his consternation, and was amused. He was not amused. He was as close as he ever wanted to come to wanting to kill a woman.
And still her eyes mocked him, taunted him, challenged him. Hell's Kitchen, he thought, without context or logic. And then he smiled at her. "Let's talk this over," he said.
Chapter Twenty-one
Savaj focused within to summon the healing mode for the need of the Human healer. In a Vulcan lifetime there was room for the learning of many disciplines, although not so many as Savaj would have preferred. For one whose life path led to the stars, the discipline of healing wounded and weakened life forms was an early necessity.
Spock, while yet young, already had a certain gift for the healing, Savaj perceived. Spock's touch soothed his old friend McCoy and Savaj perceived that on this rest place Spock made for him they maintained no barbed pretense that it had ever been otherwise.
"Jim!" McCoy said. "Spock -- that female four-alarm fire would as soon throw him to the mindstripper as look at him."
"I know, Leonard. I believe he relies, for the moment, on a preference to look at him."
McCoy smiled feebly. "Well, he's gotten us out of more than one kettle of hot water -- or jail cell for that matter -- by throwing somebody a few curves. I wish I didn't think those two are so advanced that they might just pat him on the head."
"Irrespective of advancement," Savaj remarked objectively, "that did not appear to be the anatomy they would pat." He looked at Spock. "Nor do you appear concerned with the means your friend would use or what he would sell to buy time."
Spock merely looked at him. "That is true, S'haile. No more than he would be, given what he buys it for." He put a hand on McCoy's forehead. "Now, Leonard, you must focus on that."
McCoy's blue eyes became grave. "I know, Spock. He thinks I've had it, short of miracles or some pretty spectacular diversion of attention." The eyes closed for a moment. "He may be right, Spock. I'm thinking of all the millions and billions of lives."
"We will yet stop the Designers, Doctor," Spock said. "I do not offer logical evidence for that position. But we are committed to that course."
"Spock, I don't mean them. I mean us. Billions of little lives. For research alone. When the antivivisectionists tried to stop research on live animals in the nineteenth century, it was maybe a thousand animals in the world. I remember some figure from twenty years before the year two thousand. One hundred million laboratory animals per year in the then United States alone -- driven insane, suffocated, poisoned, battered, scalded, blinded, radiated, crushed -- to death. And eighty-five percent of it was done without any anesthetic. Much of it was for research that was crude, repetitive, the answers already known in school. And it didn't shop there. Food. Furs. And the incalculable cruelty to our own kind. Spock, maybe there really is a flaw in the mechanism in us, all of us -- a fatal flaw. The inhumanity . . . . I've done it too, Spock. With my own hands."
McCoy held up his surgeon's hands and they were shaking. Spock covered them with one of his own. "There is nothing in those hands, Doctor, but the antidote for whatever flaw we fight here. I am not certain what answer we will find, but I know it requires your survival." Spock paused a moment, then added quietly, "As do I."
McCoy looked up in surprise. "That's some bedside manner you have, Captain Spock."
Savaj also looked sharply at Spock. "Indeed, your recent behavior is virtually a catalog of Human influence on a Vulcan -- down to a certain release of aggression and other emotions. Perhaps you had better let me attend the Doctor." Spock made no comment, but permitted himself to be displaced. "In all logic, Doctor," Savaj said, "your predecessors were dealing at that period with a rate of cancer that had gone in decades from negligible to one out of four. It was to go to one out of two -- in places nearly to one out of one -- before environmental and medical research -- sometimes on animals -- reversed the trend. The increase of other diseases was also epidemic. Certain environmental trends, if not detected through animal and other research, would swiftly have rendered the planet uninhabitable for your life form and all others -- and all of the little lives would have died with you in their hundreds of trillions. The same is true of most worlds at some point. That is the Designers' position now. And if they go, we go. We must, in logic, offer them some other argument than the pain of mice -- when their children are dying."
"Admiral Savaj," McCoy said, "the strictest prohibition of Vulcan is against causing suffering and death, even to the least animal form, even to complex plants."
Savaj nodded. "It is a recent luxury, Doctor, won at great expense. The first right of a species is survival. And that is your priority now." Savaj put his hands on McCoy's face. "If you permit," he murmured, and without disturbing the upper levels of consciousness slipped in to the lower brain consciousness to activate the brain's own chemical painkillers. The Humans had discovered such chemicals at the root of placebo effects and called them endorphins. Vulcans had also identified the similar internal endochemicals against shock, stress -- against certain aspects of the body's specific
death chemical itself. Hence the two-hundred-fifty-year life span, perhaps still to be extended.
There was a severe limit to what one consciousness could do for another in that way. Chiefly it was a self-healing process, learned at some cost. But what Vulcan could do for Human, Savaj did now for this healer whose courage drove him beyond his capacity.
The Human was a frail vessel. Neither he nor the other one, Kirk, seemed large enough to Savaj, nor sturdy enough, to carry the weight of what he had seen them do or endure. It was an illogical form of stubbornness they possessed. Their species had many failings, such as willful disobedience. It was unduly trusting in its willingness to put itself into strange hands. It could disturb even the settled logic of a more developed species -- and it trusted bumptiously that it would disturb even Vulcans, perhaps even Designers. It was quite willing to leap out of the cage and into the fire.
Savaj saw the lines in this Human's face smooth out into sleep under his hands. Then he got up and joined Spock in testing for the fourteenth time the force field that held them prisoner.
Chapter Twenty-two
Kirk watched Flaem switch off the holo screen which showed Spock, Savaj and McCoy. She stretched languorously. "Your cagemates also have interesting attributes."
"Yes." He let himself say it somewhat absently, as if concentrating on discovering again that feathers could tickle. They could. But chiefly he was still worried sick. McCoy was not out of the woods as far as the Designers were concerned. Kirk expected Trath to send for Spock, Savaj, or himself at any moment for the mindstripper or otherwise.
And he wasn't certain that he had made any points here -- certainly nothing that would protect him and his little bush family. He felt a little foolish.
She was amused, she was pleased with him. And she was about a thousand years old. Maybe ten times that. Maybe no age he could conceive. The flame-feathered body, the magnificent sculptured face were ageless. They might have been thirty in his terms. But they had seen everything, known everything, a thousand thousand times. She had been right. He had no secrets from her. He never had had.
"Say it aloud, little one. Your thoughts are rather fragile."
He caught himself feeling too warm again. And he knew that it was useless, worse than dangerous, to lie to her. "I'm embarrassed."
"Why?"
"You have known perhaps a thousand dimensions, sailed them as I sail stars. How many ports have you known and how many life forms, great and small? I have, on occasion, known someone to whom it was all new, but to you it must be all old."
She stood up and drew him after her to what was perhaps a window. Or perhaps it was merely a hologram. Perhaps something else entirely. It seemed to open on a sky that was not lavender, but the color of her featherhair. The clouds were gold. The spires of what might have been a world-city were rising into the fire-sky as spirals of rainbow and crystal. Bright wings lifted tiny figures into the sky. They were not the feathered wings with which her remotest bird-mammal ancestors might have been born, but wings born of mind, which could carry their Designers to heights yet unreached, and beyond that to dimensions still unknown, and to the problem standing unsolved at the world's end.
"Home," he said, not as a question.
She nodded. "By now the All is our home. But this begins."
"And it is threatened. By whom?"
"You would not know, nor does it matter. The Others who threaten are . . . sufficient unto the ending of the beginning and of all things. If they are no worse than we, they are no better. They, too, share that fault, which the outbox V-One specimen has defined as Promethean." She turned to him rather coldly. "He is quite right, you know, specimen or not. The first right of a species is survival."
"It troubles you to do this to the small lives," Kirk divined.
The flame-eyes hardened. "No. It does not trouble me. Throughout the universe are the lives I defend, of my own kind and kinds that will become great. Perhaps even including your own. And under our feet, as under yours, are the tiny lives we are not equipped to notice and the small lives on which we would smile, if
we could. Sometimes we do, even as we speed up a natural process here, apply a catalyst there, weed a garden somewhere else. And if some are hurt and some die, we still defend even their lives against the ending that would be forever."
She touched his temple. "You have thought of the bushman. Would you wish us to leave your bush family alone until that day when it vanishes in the flame of forces you have never conceived?"
He considered it for a long moment. "I do not accept that that is the only alternative. As what I am, I would wish for the chance to know the problem, study, learn, grow -- until perhaps together we could take your finger off the doomsday button."
She looked at him in amusement. "You do not lack for temerity, little one. It is that which is your youth."
He nodded. "Callow. Obstreperous. Unmannered. Unconvinced. Youth has its price -- and its uses."
"Yes," she said. "It can make everything that was old new again."
She leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers.
"I would not have believed you could do that," she said, "and it changes nothing."
She turned her back on him to look at the homeworld. "You may report outside to Belen, who will take you to Trath."
"Flaem," he said. But she did not turn to him.
"Could you see me put under the mindstripper? Now?"
Then she did turn, but there was nothing in her for him. "That which I do, I can do. If I make a pet of a laboratory animal, I pay the price, but I do not exempt it, or myself, from reality."
"You mean," he said, "it pays the price." He started to turn on his heel, but she caught his arm and turned him to face the screen. The bright-winged fliers in the sky of the homeworld shriveled in
flames, one by one, and the rainbow city began to burn. Then the whole homeworld dissolved in fire.
He looked at Flaem in horror. "It's not happening," he said tightly. "Thought projection? Illustration? Vision? Not -- history?"
She looked now like some figure set with flaming sword at the east of Eden. "Future history," she said. "The precognon varies only in detail, unless the nature of being is changed at its root. Do you ask me to set your one life against that?"
He looked at the roiling emptiness that would be the end of her beginning. "If it were only my life and that would stop it -- I have sometimes offered it, not happily, for less. But it is not only my life, and you have not asked, but taken."
The fire-eyes flared with anger. "Leave my presence." He turned and left.

Kirk found Belen waiting for him in the outer chamber. He realized suddenly that she could, of course, read his shock and his anger -- and knew the cause of it. Worse, perhaps she could read everything he had done or said. And for how long?
"Do your people not have the concept of privacy?" he said, then realized that he was taking his shock and his anger out on her, when she had showed him chiefly decency.
"They have the concept of benign neglect of the warning space of equals. Do small life consider that they have warning space?"
He sighed. "We try. Among my people that which is between male and female would most often be within a private warning space."
She looked surprised. "That would eliminate many options and much esthetic appreciation."
He looked at her feathery coolness and finally smiled at her. "You
know, you're right. I'm sorry I snapped at you. Something I could not stop has shaken me. Could we walk, talk?"
"I have a time frame," she said."
"To take me to Trath?"
She made hands of affirmation.
"Until then?" he said very quietly.
She turned and led him into a vast indoor garden, its private nooks sheltered by the exotic plants of a galaxy. "Belen," he said, "I begin to see that your species feels its own desperation. But is there no one among the Designers who is troubled by the use of the small lives? Is there no one who argues some other option?"
She stood with him under a slow fall of floating flowers. Tiny, exotic bits of living petal-jeweled life drifted down onto their hair, their feathers. "There is perhaps almost no one who is not troubled at some level. Even the meat eaters of your own world shun the slaughterhouse. Many would not with their own hands do what must be done if they are to have flesh, fur, feathers, knowledge. Some would not do it even for knowledge that would mean life to their species. We . . . have chosen to do so."
There was some faint stress of hesitation on the "we," which Kirk caught. "Have you yourself chosen?"
She lifted her head. "I have not chosen otherwise. Not irrevocably." 
"Then there is an option."
Something seemed to fall away from her and he saw suddenly the steel behind the silver. "I have argued one. Some have accepted, but it is a reluctant option and of little use unless all agree."
"Who stands against you?"
"At their head? You have known her."
"'Flaem. Is that part of some reason that made her come for me?"
"You are not slow, are you?" She reached out and brushed a drift of flowers off his forearm. "She wished perhaps to remind me with some vividness that we are corporeal life -- flesh and blood."
Kirk smiled. "I never doubted it." Then he saw the look in her eyes. "Is there some question?"
"That is the question, small one. For us. Ultimately perhaps even for you. Do you know of any life form you have encountered that seemed to you to have solved the Promethean problem?"
Kirk thought about it carefully. Vulcans -- if you did not count fights to the death in the arena of marriage or challenge and that always present level of underlying dangerousness that must be mastered lest it master them. And was anybody counting the level of pain that had sent Spock off to Vulcan for three years to try to cut off half his life? No. Not Vulcans. It was a magnificent and terrible effort at a solution, and still it was partial. Humans? Still less. Although it was his gut feeling, doubtless illogical and indefensible, that the sheer cussedness of his own species, despite its record of atrocity, would ultimately allow it to muddle through. The Human species would, in defiance of all logic, climb out of water onto land, climb from sky to stars to dimension-sailing, and on some million-year day even solve -- with the strange alien brothers it would have picked up on the way -- the Promethean problem.
But he did not know how. Nor did he know any species that had. Then he amended that. "I know of no solution I would want to copy." He caught her wrist from his arm suddenly and held it hard. "The Organians," he said. "You are not thinking of the Organian solution? Energy beings, no bodies, no passion -- " 
He broke off.
"Is it so terrible, then?" she said, but he saw in her eyes that she knew the full meaning of that choice. "Those whom you call
Organians, and some like them, have had thousands of years of unchanging peace, a species of life -- at the expense of no living being and at the mercy of none." She looked at him levelly. "Unless we solve the Promethean problem within a time span that we measure in moments, that ceases to be merely an ethical option and becomes our only chance of survival. More, it will be the only chance of survival of all your little lives and of the universe. Although even our choice may not save you from the Others."
He looked down at her hand in his, the fine feathered wrist, the delicate strength, the decency almost written in the hand that would stay itself from taking life even at the cost of dissolution.
He knew that he should encourage her, throw whatever weight he had behind her lone fight for a moral solution. He should do it for the survival of his own kind. If the Designers went the Organian route, they presumably would practice a similar benign neglect. And it might be a million years before some other conflict between species that retained the body became powerful enough to destroy the All.
And nonetheless his whole body and soul rebelled at that solution, and he saw that hers did too.
He lifted the wrist to his lips and kissed it. She would perhaps distrust what he had brought to Flaem, or for what reason. But there had to be some acknowledgment of her fight and of how much she would lose if she won. 
Finally he no longer cared what she might distrust. He tipped her face back until flowers fell on it from his hair and kissed her.
For a moment she stiffened with the resolution of her commitment. But she was a house divided against itself, and she knew it as well as he. Her lips softened and some light, feathery touch of her mind reached for his. It is still the only way. The words were not
words but a sadness, a bird mourning flight, mourning the death of flight in fire.
It is not a way for us. He tried to put into it not only male and female, but the climbing onto land and to stars, the unlimited striving. It was a passion he knew she must share if her species would tackle the Promethean question.
It was some time before he sensed a presence behind him.

Kirk remained transfixed for a moment. He could only assume that Belen would have known of someone's approach. The Designers seemed to know almost everything -- even the future. Was there some way in which Belen had wanted this to be seen?
He detached himself with as much aplomb as he could muster under the circumstances and turned to face the new presence.
It was Flaem. And Trath. Kirk could not offhand think which one he would less like to have seen there. He suspected that the combination was fatal, perhaps literally and immediately.
Something in Flaem's coppery eyes suggested a touch of green. That, however, could not be right. Jealous of a subject? Even a pet?
Kirk inclined his head gravely, a token of acknowledgment. "Flaem. S'haile Trath."
Trath's lowering frown developed a touch of interest. "The accompanying title designation does not translate. I sense its intent is . . . respect." 
"An ancient Vulcan title of respect, S'haile, which is all I know of it except the stature of the man who bears it. It strikes me you bear a similar stature and weight of command here."
"You mean the V-One subject. Interesting. Do you arrogate to yourself the right to call me by a title of respect that compares me to a laboratory animal? Or are you merely trying to distract me from
the fact that an animal has touched a female of my species?"
"I was rather hoping to distract you," Kirk said.
For a moment there was some flicker in Trath's black eyes. Amusement? No. He was, pointedly, not amused.
"Is it forbidden?" Kirk tried innocently.
"It is not contemplated." Trath turned to Belen. "You will explain to me the research that requires the advocate of dissolution of body to embrace a small life?"
Belen stood her ground. "It was not research."
"Then it was madness," Trath said. "A scientist may fondle a rabbit. One does not take it to one's bower."
Belen looked at Flaem. "Nor to one's bed. No. That is quite true."
"The habitual reflexes of a long-studied specimen are a proper subject of study," Flaem said flatly.
"That was what you started," Belen said. "Not what you finished. You were not responding to him as a small life. You were responding to him as a man -- as male of kindred stature, even across a million-year gulf."
"Perhaps that is what you were doing, Belen," Flaem said, but Kirk saw something in the flame-eyes that had been hit by the argument.
"Yes," Belen said firmly, "it was."
Flaem laughed. "All will see how prepared you are to give up the body." 
"Which was, perhaps, your aim, Flaem. I have never claimed to be prepared -- merely compelled. That has not changed. We consume lives. Even these small ones with their own frailties find us guilty. But they do not now use lives of moral stature and ethical sensibility. This small life made his case against my position with his body knowing fully that it was against his own interest."
The others were silent for a moment, turning to Kirk as if inspecting him with some care.
Flaem made sign of negation. "He made a similar argument to me quite in his own interest. Do not confuse the reflex of a rabbit with moral stature." 
"That is more than sufficient," Trath said. "Reflexes are not in question. Neither his nor yours." He looked at Belen and Flaem without pleasure. "The subject will be examined properly."
He turned to Kirk. "Come."
Chapter Twenty-three
Kirk followed Trath. 
The controlling Designer reminded him in some peculiar way of someone he knew well. He had thought that it was Savaj, and perhaps it still was, or perhaps both shared some essential quality of someone else. Sarek? Nogura? Something of all of those, perhaps, but also others out of a lifetime against the unknown. Not all who shared that quality had been friends. One, perhaps the greatest one, he had marooned forever on an unreachable planet. Now -- he could have wished for Omne's mind against this riddle.1
"There are minds in this galaxy," Kirk said as they moved, "that are superior to mine. Older. Wiser. Tougher. More controlled. There are some that have mastered what I could not attempt. There are some that could master me -- and perhaps even challenge you on some level. I have known one or two. I have known at least one who would attempt a problem of Promethean scope. I could not reach him now, but you could. Have you consulted no one in this galaxy?" 
Trath looked at him as if he read beyond the words. "Do not be deceived by appearance, subject. We retain the body, the size, the form by choice, after some aeons of experimentation, for some of the reasons, among others, that you argued with Belen -- and elsewhere -- in your elementary way. But we are as far beyond your most
advanced contemporary as he is beyond an unborn kitten." 
"I would not be quite certain of that, S'haile," Kirk said. "I have known enemies whom I considered to be of moral stature. I am not certain it is a mark of stature or advancement to discount the possibility of learning from the enemy -- or even from the kitten. I have on occasion learned something from one or the other -- even the newborn kitten. New life has not yet learned what is impossible." 
Trath stopped before a door and looked at him. "That is its fault, not its virtue." 
"Then why pick it up out of the box?" 
The black eyes scored him a point. "When one exhausts the possible, one begins on the impossible." 
"What remains impossible to your advancement?" Kirk said. "Even Vulcans who are still young to your kind have given up the using of feeling lives -- and they control aggression. Why not you?" 
"Vulcans," Trath said, "stay out of Hell's Kitchen. Do you not suppose that we tried that long ago? It was a Vulcan who posed to you the question of greatness -- and a half-Vulcan who has followed you all over Hell's Kitchen." He signaled the door and gestured Kirk through it. 
Kirk saw a sophisticated private laboratory in which Trath looked shockingly at home. Holodisplays monitored uncounted experiments. And there was sophisticated equipment, including, doubtless, the mindstripper. Civil argument left Kirk and he knew what Trath called forth in him: the desire to kill. 

Spock regarded the woman with some care. It would perhaps have been more prudent to attempt to thought-summon the silver bird. 
Belen was, at least, a vibration of some sympathy.
In some curious manner Spock felt more personal affinity with the living flame. Perhaps he felt kinship as a scientist himself, or perhaps as a latter-day and somewhat reluctant warrior who nevertheless had chosen to defend what he did defend. Or possibly he saw in her also one who had developed a taste for the fire of Hell's Kitchen. It was Spock's flaw, which had divided him to his soul; and in the end even the three-year attempt to give it up had proved futile. 
"Flaem," Spock said, "the scientist who intends to sacrifice a laboratory animal does not take it home and handfeed it, talk to it, see to it if it is disconsolate. At the least you have done that. It would be my conjecture that, as others before you, you have also seen a particular being's worth, across whatever gulf, and stretched out your hand to it. To him. He will die now unless your hand is raised to shelter him." 
She regarded him with the flame eyes and did not speak. 
"Then . . . let me go to him," Spock said. 
"Do you imagine that you are able here to shelter him yourself?" 
"No," Spock said. "But I am able to join him." 
"In death?" 
"You hold the alternative. I have none." 
"You consider him your responsibility?" 
"I am responsible. I consider him my friend." He used the Vulcan word, which meant more. T'hyla. Brother. Her translator or her thought would render all the connotations. Savaj would hear the Vulcan. 
She merely looked at him with the eyes that were the color of the Humans' hellfire. Then she opened the cage. 

Kirk fought his way up through sheeted layers of fire -- the rage,
the shame, the helplessness again, the wish to annihilate all Trath's kind. He cursed himself for a fool. Had he supposed because he could speak some kind of language to a Designer that he would not be used for their purpose? 
Even the poor damn chimpanzees who first learned to talk sign language had spoken of their feelings, their pain, of mourning for a dead infant. They had been heard. Nobody had canceled the experiment. 
He fought to come up out of the flames. Did he have any mind left? Did anyone care? 
How had his species survived the loathing that must have been broadcast at them by their billions of helpless victims, their own kind and all others? 
He jerked himself up out of it by some savage effort of will. A hatred of that magnitude would corrode the soul. It would curdle the psychic atmosphere. And if it reached the Vulcans when they were powerless to reach him  . . . Kirk cut it off and opened his eyes. Trath was releasing him from the light restraint field and the electrodes at his temples. He sagged and would have fallen, but the Designer lowered him to some pallet. Kirk shook off the touch and fought to be able to rise. 
He had made it to his knees when Spock and Savaj came in. He fought not to betray their entrance with his eyes. Trath's back was to them and the Vulcans moved with the silence and stealth of the desert snarth. 
"You observe," Trath remarked to Kirk, "how easily the aggression threshold can be lowered. You wish to kill me, do you not?" 
"Devoutly," Kirk said, holding his eyes and trying to hold his full attention. "Would you expect otherwise?"
"I expect exactly what I get," Trath said. "I so arrange it. V-subjects, you are on time." 
Spock jumped for him, but Trath smashed the Vulcan back casually. Then he turned with the light stasis field in hand. Spock and Savaj were stopped, held. 
Flaem came in with McCoy and Kirk saw that Spock looked at her in a way that should have dropped her where she stood. 
"As ordered," she said to Trath. Belen entered behind her without comment. 
McCoy came to Kirk and was not stopped, as if they considered him not necessary to notice. "Jim!" he murmured. 
Kirk motioned him to silence. "Don't give them anything, Bones." He got to his feet. 
Trath turned to him. "There is only one thing we require." 
"What?" Kirk said. 
"You." 
Kirk looked at him bitterly. "You have me." 
"That is true. I wish to keep you for a purpose that is not served by mere possession. You have proved to be an exceptional specimen. Your command record in the terms of your own kind is singular. You are also the focus of that rapport which did not break with the test-to-destruction. You are the first subject to achieve being picked up by choice. Your mind recording is interesting, and you have had an unexpected, if modest, effect on certain persons here. You will do as a sample of this galaxy -- a small but select sample." 
"Do you mean," Kirk said, "that you will let the others go? My friends? My ship?" 
"Subject," Trath said, "I mean your galaxy." 
Kirk straightened slowly. "Forever?" he said. "Free and clear? No experiments, no experimenters? No gardens weeded? Just go?"
"We have elsewhere. Your particular bush family can be safe for as long as the All endures -- until we die or prevail." 
"Or perhaps," Flaem said, "if your friends return to give warning, it will be your kind that will solve the Last Question." 
Kirk turned to Trath. "How can I know they would be safe?" 
"You are in no position to bargain or inquire. I offer the flat option. Once." 
Kirk knew the tone of finality. And he had no option. He opened his mouth to answer. 
"Mr. Kirk, you will not speak," Spock ordered flatly. 
Kirk looked at him, torn. In truth there was, for once, nothing he wanted more than to obey. Except --  
"Spock," he said, "I can't not." 
"You will not speak." Spock turned very slowly in the stasis field to face Trath. "You command; you must recognize command responsibility. His life is not his to give. It is mine. His policy has always been lives for defense, but not one life for tribute. Nor do I buy freedom with his life." 
"Not even the freedom of the galaxy, Captain Spock?" Trath said. 
"Not of the universe," Spock said. "It has been tried -- the appeasement of evil. The line is drawn at one life or it is not drawn." 
Kirk heard his own argument coming back at him. "Spock," he said, "it is a small price even for lives in this room, let alone a galaxy. No one can offer another's life as hostage. But he can offer his own." 
"Not when it is under my command," Spock said flatly. "Trath, I will go with you." 
"You will not serve." 
"It was I," Savaj cut in, "who ordered the Enterprise into your hands to draw you out with that unique rapport, which I knew you would have to study. The responsibility is mine."
Kirk locked eyes with the full Vulcan for a long moment. So it had always been his plan. He had coolly used a rapport that by his standards as V'Kreeth should never have existed. And now they would all pay for his decision. 
"If a life is forfeit, it is mine," Savaj said. "I offer it." 
"Unacceptable," Trath said. 
"It was I who saw your purpose." 
Trath shrugged. "Interesting, but unavailing. Your choice for Vulcan, if not for yourself, has been to avoid the very temptation of evil. You have made a separate peace. It is proper. It is moral. And your species is saved from sterility only by a splendid and terrible stubbornness that at times fortunately overcomes your logic. Unfortunately, it also ultimately breaks down your suppression of aggression, explosively, when you are confronted with confrontation over the essential. No, V'Kreeth, not you." 
"Then," Savaj said, "I will have to require Captain Spock to permit Mr. Kirk's offer of himself as hostage for this galaxy."
Chapter Twenty-four
Kirk saw Spock turn in the stasis field to Savaj with an effort that looked as if it would snap something.
"I am the commander in the field," Spock said. "That is unacceptable to me."
"There is no other logical alternative," Savaj said. "We are powerless to fight, resist, escape -- or report. We leave the Federation we have sworn to defend, and the galaxy, defenseless and unwarned, to their destruction. If the experiment proceeds, this galaxy will die long before the destruction of the All. Much of it within days, weeks, months. Billions and trillions of lives of our own kind and all others will die. We have not that right. Mr. Kirk has not the right to defy you, nor we to order his sacrifice. But you must permit his offer."
"S'haile," Spock said. "I am in command mode. In my estimation your logic is correct, but your premise is wrong. I declare unalterable opposition."
It had the sound of a Vulcan formula and appeared to have that effect on Savaj. "Ka-vi-fe," he said in a tone Kirk had not heard since the arena on Vulcan.
"Ka-vi-fe," Spock answered in the same tone. Trath turned up a control on the stasis projector. The two Vulcans froze in a pose of challenge.
It was then that Kirk understood that the stasis field itself must also include some effect that stripped down the veneer of civilization, lowered some threshold of aggression.
The two Vulcans were unalterably opposed on the issue. But would they, on their own, have arrived at a point of physical confrontation? No. Something Trath had done had released in them that reversion to the ancient code, which could still be used on Vulcan to deal with the instincts that came down from the time of the Beginning.
"Release them," Kirk said. "I have made my position clear. Beam them to the Enterprise and let me see them clear. I will stay with you."
Trath shook his head. "It is not that simple, subject. I wish you to see that even the Vulcan solution breaks down when the stakes are essentials."
"Under your mind control," Kirk snapped. "It proves nothing."
Trath gestured with the stasis transmitter. "Merely a modest inhibition release and impulse accelerator. It does not create the effect, merely brings it to the surface."
"If we are able to keep it off the surface," Kirk said, "that's all we need. A sober alcoholic is still an alcoholic. He just doesn't drink -- or kill -- today. You can't say the cure failed if you trigger him by forcing a drink down his throat."
"Subject Kirk," Trath said, "the universe is designed to force the drink of aggression down our most sober throats. The stimulation, the excitement, the vividness, the danger, the heightened sensuality, the risk -- haven't you known it all along? Hell's Kitchen is an addiction."

Trath pushed a button on the transmitter and he, the Vulcans, the
two Designer women, and McCoy vanished from the laboratory.
Kirk looked around, shaken. Was this the beginning of his solitary captivity? The acceptance of his offer? Had Trath beamed the other captives to the Enterprise and himself and the women to other tasks, leaving Kirk to take up again at his leisure? Or had he merely disposed of the Vulcans and McCoy? It would be easy enough to show Kirk an illusion or nothing at all.
Kirk felt desolation setting in. It was one thing to make the decision you had to make and another to live with it for a lifetime.
He cut himself off and got moving. There was still supposed to be a way out of any box.
He inspected the various hologram displays, looking for anything useful. The Enterprise views remained unchanged. The holograms had no controls he could see. But at the end of an aisle was a windowlike display that looked like the precognition display in Flaem's quarters.
He went to it. It had no obvious controls either. He tried to focus his thoughts, search for Spock, Savaj, McCoy. Focus ahead. Would they survive? Was there a way to get them out? How?
Suddenly he was seeing the mirror-canyon with its thousand-foot cliffs and its fall of diamonds, its tracery of silver trees. It looked like the lower end of the canyon, near the entrance where they had come in from the ordinary hell of Helvan.
He saw himself. He was supporting Spock, all but carrying him, and it looked as if he had been doing it for a long time. Savaj was behind them, but Kirk couldn't tell why he wasn't helping Spock. McCoy moved with a glazed look, but moved. Kirk could sense his own exhausted elation. A few more feet --  
Then the picture on the screen clouded, wavered, snapped. Nothing he could do would bring it back. But it had showed a chance.
Despite all their sophistication, the Designers must have some blind spot.
The laboratory began to shimmer in front of him and he recognized the dissolution feeling of the Designer transporter. Where was Trath taking him?
Chapter Twenty-five
Kirk found himself beside Trath in a group of Designers who were looking down into a tank-arena that held -- what?
The two Vulcans stood in the tank, immobile, stripped down to asumi loincloths -- but both of them half again their normal size.
"What have you done to them?" Kirk asked.
Trath turned to him blandly. "You would think of it as a kind of enlarging pantograph. The primitive version can enlarge or reduce a drawing. Ours can enlarge a body, while making significant modifications in it, such as a species of armoring. It is not true armoring. It is merely protection of the vital. The body still feels the blow, it can be damaged, but all bones and tissues are strengthened so that damage is usually repairable."
Kirk realized that he was looking at Trath in horror.
"It is a game, subject Kirk -- the ultimate game for which all of your species' aggression and territorial games are a poor substitute. They are believed to provide some releases for pent-up aggression, although they may also stimulate the taste for it. This is Battle to the Death -- usually without actual death or prolonged disability."
"Get them out of there," Kirk said.
"No."
"I will not be the cause of this. Get them out or I withdraw my offer."
"Your offer was gallant," Trath said, "but necessary only for their ears. I require no consent. Possession suffices."
"Then you would not have kept your bargain?"
"Oddly enough, I would have, and will, but for my own reason."
"Then my offer stands, if you let them go now."
Trath made sign of negation. "I wish to see this. I wish you to see it." 
"Why?" Kirk said bitterly. "You can see everything, know everything in advance anyway. I do not know now why you even need experimentation. You must know how it will all come out."
"No," Trath said. "That is not the nature of precognition. It can predict with high accuracy what is within the concept of the possible of the one who foresees. But every living being has a stake in its own pattern of belief, thought, reflex, expectation. If its pattern of belief is not right, it cannot live."
"You are saying we all have blind spots -- even you?"
Trath looked at him with a peculiar expression, as if discovering something new. He made a sign of affirmation. "We have contrived the blind-upon-blind experimental design, subject, precisely in the effort to defeat our own blind spots. As a rule, a man -- or a species -- would rather die than be proved wrong. We seek to defeat that process."
Kirk tried to put down the rage he could not shake, to focus on a certain grudging respect for the intellect he sensed here. "With that I can agree, in principle at least. Let them go and I will join you in that effort. Not the using of lives, but the attempt to break out of the box."
"You must see the whole of the box." Trath flicked a switch and the two Vulcans were freed of the stasis immobility. They seemed to pick up from the moment of challenge where they had left off.
They made the asumi sign of encounter to death.
"Spock!" Kirk called. "Savaj! It is a test. Don't give them this!"
But he saw that they were beyond hearing or speech. The two Vulcans went for each other like two berserkers from the beginning of time -- or its end. 
McCoy shook off Belen's supporting hand and made a fast move through the Designers to the edge of the tank beside Jim. He caught Kirk's arm and narrowly restrained the move he had divined. Kirk had started to jump down into the tank between the two Vulcan behemoths. He would have shaken off anyone else, McCoy knew, but he stopped for McCoy.
"If it'd do any good, I'd jump myself," McCoy said. "They wouldn't even know you."
"Spock might."
"They'd break you in half."
Then they could not talk. The Vulcans had closed with each other and it was not the asumi practice with pulled punches and illustration of skill. It was what Kirk had called K'asumi -- the deadliest fighting discipline in the known galaxy. Its highest form could only be summoned against a trained equal. By any name it was lethal. And given Vulcan strength, even against Vulcan durability, any single blow could have been fatal. Under natural conditions one would have been, probably within seconds. A hand edge to the throat, a sword hand to the solar plexus, a heel of hand that would have driven the nasal bone into the brain. As a doctor, McCoy knew the actual consequences of even Human unarmed combat skills -- better than he wanted to.
He never wanted to see Vulcans fight. But this was some terrible apotheosis of all combat. There was nothing of starships here. This was the original, primordial clash of prime males over territory,
dominance, whatever. Maybe the need was in the clash itself. This was Hell's Kitchen on wheels. And it had not even the mercy of the body's eventual inability to endure.
"Stop it!" McCoy snarled at Trath. "They'll kill each other. Don't you know those two won't quit?"
"Yes."
McCoy saw Savaj's size and heft telling against Spock's more slender strength. A hundred years of training the older, full Vulcan Savaj would have. He was driving Spock back against this edge of the tank. Spock's back was against the wall.
Then Spock made his stand. McCoy did not know what he used for muscle, but he used it. It was the stand of a man who could not possibly win, but could not, at any cost, lose.
It was killing both of the Vulcans. They were ten feet tall. They shook the tank. They came together with bone-jarring force. Even the armoring of the pantograph effect was not enough protection now.
Suddenly Kirk slipped out of McCoy's grasp and went over the edge into the tank. It was too swift even for Trath to stop him. McCoy yelled, "Jim!" But he saw Kirk quite deliberately throw himself between the two behemoth Vulcans. 
The two were aware only of some unexpected presence, and Savaj started to brush it aside -- with a swipe that was the cuff of a Kodiak bear. It caught Kirk a glancing blow in the ribs and McCoy thought it cracked bone. He rolled in the diamond sand, then somehow got up and got between them.
McCoy saw it then. Kirk's only chance between the two armored crushers was to communicate his living presence, his vulnerability. If instinct could work against life, it could work for it. If there was real kinship of kind here, across whatever gulf, even great fighting
bulls might stop for a moment to protect the small one. And if they did, even for a moment, then perhaps the great Vulcan brains could override the blood-haze of instinct to remember a starship and a thousand years' peace.
McCoy saw the Vulcans stop, transfixed. The alien mind effect was profound. They were deep into the kill mode. And with whatever mind they had left, the issue between them was one neither could yield.
McCoy saw Savaj's eyes finally focus on Kirk. They were the eyes of the Starfleet Admiral committed to defend a galaxy. And somewhere behind the eyes was a hundred-years pattern of the warning to stay out of the kitchen, a thousand years of peace bought at that price. Somewhere was the V'Kreeth with his private hundred-years war for that peace, against this very threat to it. And drawn to the surface now was the Promethean fault in the man who had detected it.
But this was a Vulcan. And this was the mind that had detected the Prometheus Design.
McCoy saw an effort at mastery that he thought snapped every psychic mooring the full Vulcan had ever had. Those things that they had seen Spock learn over a decade and try to unlearn at Gol came to Savaj now. His hand was on Spock's shoulder, forgotten, and it closed until even the armored bones threatened to snap. But the Vulcan's other hand, now on Kirk's shoulder, did not close to break Human bones.
McCoy saw Spock also fight for mastery, but this time it was not the fight for Kolinahr, but the fight to span two worlds. Whatever Spock had learned in ten years came to him now, not only from Vulcan. Spock stood quiet, barely on his feet, but unyielding.
Savaj's eyes finally looked at Kirk with full sanity. Then he looked up out of the tank at Trath.
"No. What is done to the least is done to all. What is done to the best is not to be allowed. We do not yield him."
Trath looked down at him. "Nor do I."
He tapped a control and Savaj crumpled slowly to his knees in the diamond sand of the tank. Spock dropped as if poleaxed.
Then McCoy felt the dissolution effect and found himself back in a cage -- a separate cage.

Eventually Kirk was thrown into a cage like a used animal. There was some figure lying crumpled in a dark corner of it.
He crawled over to it, trying not to pull ribs loose, not even sure if it was one of his party. If it was Spock, alive and in any kind of shape, Kirk had music to face for his last couple of stunts too. He had made his offer when ordered not to. And he didn't even know what you called jumping into that tank. Worse, he didn't know what Spock would call it. He was piling up quite a record for mutiny. He wouldn't have taken it and he didn't expect Spock to. But he wasn't up to any music just now. He had faced Trath. It was enough.
But the cold chill in him was that he would find Spock or Savaj dead. He touched a shoulder in the dark and felt the power and heft of Savaj. Alive. Returned to his normal size. Kirk shook him. He was not unconscious, but he seemed to Kirk in some state of shock. It was, perhaps, the aftereffect of Trath's reply to Savaj's defiance. Or was some part of it the psychic shock of that very effort -- in defiance not merely of Trath but of his own pattern? 
He was aware of Kirk but he did not respond. Kirk started to put a hand on a shoulder, drew it back. The full Vulcan would not want
it. Kirk had imposed his needs enough.
"You are hurt," Savaj said.
"I'm alive." He tried for a tone he did not feel, but the strain crept through. He tried again. "I am well enough, sir. Better than could be expected."
Savaj's voice was tired. "Mr. Kirk, you have a gift for understatement." He made a place for Kirk beside him, propped himself up against the wall.

Kirk heard a sound in the cage. Before he could place it or move, something was bending over him in the darkness. He started up. A hand closed over his mouth -- and it was strong but soft. Some hint of dim light caught a gleam of silver as he caught also a faint perfume of skin he knew.
It was Belen.
The Vulcan had started to move and Kirk stopped him with a hand. Belen signaled Kirk's mouth to silence, released it, and for one moment found it with her lips. Then she was up and pulling him to his feet. He signaled the Vulcan to follow and allowed her to lead them out of dark into dark.
He thought of the look on Spock's face in Trath's laboratory when he learned that Flaem had seemed to help them only to deliver the two Vulcans to Trath. This could be another trick, trap, test. He was so infernally tired of tests!
But he would take the chance for the same reason that Spock would: it was the only game in town. For himself there was the lingering hope that the hope was real, that the decency that he had sensed and tried to stir in Belen had really come to their aid. Even if it was only the gesture of a child running away to hide a pet lamb from its fate . . .
She opened the force field of another cell. Kirk felt his way into it, finally found and silenced McCoy. Then he found what was under McCoy's hands: Spock. He didn't need McCoy's almost soundless whisper, "He's in bad shape, Jim." He could sense the Vulcan's injuries; Spock's lighter frame had taken much more in the tank before he and Savaj had mastered the effect. Spock appeared to be in shock, and Savaj was barely on his own feet.
Kirk knelt down and lifted the unconscious Vulcan. His own ribs seemed to give way and he felt the veins pop out on his forehead. Spock was heavier than a Human of the same build would have been and Kirk supposed that in his own present shape he shouldn't have been able to get that weight off the ground. That, however, had nothing to do with the fact that he did it.
Then they were moving with Belen through the darkened laboratory and into some kind of tunnel. It was dark, too, and they communicated to each other mainly by touch. Kirk was to remember every step of the way as nightmare. McCoy tried to help him, but it was really a one-man job and McCoy was not up to it. Savaj was silent and seemed withdrawn.
Finally Belen triggered some door and they spilled out into light under a lavender sky. Kirk half fell into a mound of shattered crystal and took the moment to rest Spock's weight. The door closed with Belen still inside and he saw that they were under the overhang of some great ship -- perhaps the one they had met in space near the planet. It filled the vast crater of the volcano. And everywhere canyons of thousand-foot crystal cliffs opened off the central core.
Kirk sank down for a moment, stopped. There was no way he could thread the maze from the other end to find the one opening they had come in from. They had no way to reach the Enterprise.
And if they could somehow find the way, the Designers would
be after them at any moment, with all knowledge, all power. He could not move everything by his single will. Maybe the Vulcans had been right and there was some moment at which you had simply been overreached and should have the wit to know it. He did not feel as if he could get to his feet. Certainly not with the living weight he carried.
Then he did. He was prepared to strike out for whatever canyon until he dropped or they were caught.
He found Savaj indicating a direction. Kirk accepted it. What Vulcans could calculate from astronomical positions or by some obscure orientation to the fields of a planet, he didn't want to know. They plunged into a canyon and moved.

"Jim," McCoy said. "You can't keep this up."
Kirk just shook his head.
Something gave way under his feet and he found himself sliding in an avalanche of crystal down a long slope toward a cliff edge. He couldn't get out of it.
Suddenly something caught both him and Spock and he realized that it was Savaj. The Vulcan was moving them somehow across and to the edge of the slide. Finally he caught a silver tree and stopped them on a ledge. McCoy had caught only the edge of the slide and it carried him near them.
Kirk saw Spock's eyes open. He didn't even try to explain what they were doing there. Nor did Spock ask. He gathered himself and attempted to stand. Kirk got a shoulder under him and helped him down to the floor of the canyon. He was helping Spock and he recognized the crystal canyon just inside the opening where they had come in from the ordinary hell of Helvan.
Kirk suddenly recognized the sense of déjà vu. It was the scene
he had seen on the precognon in Trath's laboratory. 
He caught Spock's eye. "We're home free, Spock!" Spock was able to stand now and Kirk slipped away for a moment to climb up on a rock by the cliff. "It's the entrance!"
He moved to slide the counterbalanced crystal sheet that closed it from the inside.
"Mr. Kirk, stop!"
It was Spock. Something in the tone cut through Kirk like a knife. He paused, but at his back was the knowledge that at any moment the Designers could be after them. Outside that sheet, feet away, the Enterprise would be keeping watch for their body signals and would beam them up home, where they could at least report.
And if Trath came for them then, perhaps it would only be for Kirk. There might even be some slim hope that Belen would have managed something that would let them all go free -- if they moved now.
Spock couldn't know all the factors. Nor could he know Kirk's intent to go back, if he had to, to hold Trath to his bargain.
Kirk's hand was on the counterweight and he started to move it down. 
"You will cease!" Spock said, and Kirk heard all of Vulcan behind it. If they got away, he would have to face that. He saw that also in Savaj's face behind Spock -- all of Starfleet and all of Vulcan in one package. And still Kirk had to do what he had to do.
His hand froze on the counterweight and he had the sense of a rift in time in which he had time and eternity to recognize his own pattern, his own stake in it, his own blind spot.
Not once in all of this had he truly acceded to Spock's command. Nor did he yet see how he could have or could. The Vulcan would have been dead, would almost certainly die now -- when one more
defiance might keep him, and perhaps even the galaxy, safe. He saw the years when Spock had come out of his Vulcan box to yield to Kirk's command, even with that great Vulcan brain, even in moments when Kirk remained behind and ordered him off a disintegrating ship -- or went to face a cloud-creature. Not once, even in what was essential to the Vulcan, had Kirk really laid down that weight of command and yielded, right or wrong, to the Vulcan's judgment. Had it been the knowledge that Kirk was in that box that was part of what had sent Spock off to Vulcan? Sooner or later some bullheadedness would get one or both of them killed. And if Kirk could not get out of his box, how could he expect Spock to get out of his, or Savaj -- or even the Designers?
Yet Spock had managed it. And Savaj.
Kirk let the crystal sheet settle back into place. He jumped down from the rock to face Spock. "Yes, Captain," he said.

Spock saw the air begin to shimmer and knew what it was to which his decision had condemned them. They might have done better to take their chances in hell. He was yet surprised that Kirk had not.
Spock stepped forward to face Trath. He was in augmented command mode now, and the vibrations of Kirk's resistance no longer hampered him. He drew strength from within and without.
The Designers shimmered into solidity: Trath, flanked by Flaem, Belen, and his fair colleague -- and a small group behind them.
"The issue," Spock said to Trath, "has been resolved. Mr. Kirk is under my command. I do not yield him."
Trath turned to Kirk. "You were born to command, as I was, and you are responsible for the fate of a galaxy, as I for a universe. You are attempting to break a pattern that is born in your bones. It will
not work. He does not command you. You are to keep your word, and I will keep mine."
Kirk stepped beside Spock. "It's true that the pattern is in my bones -- as the Prometheus fault is, in me, and you. Our bones do not command us, nor our instincts, nor some unalterable doom. We command. We break patterns. We see through our blind spots. We steal the fire of the gods -- only to find that we are gods. And if we are the vultures, too, that is our crime, our addiction, our misfortune -- but it is not inalterable."
Trath shook his head. "We all live in Hell's Kitchen, subject Kirk, and we like it there -- and it is indivisible from our greatness. There is no way out of that dilemma but surrender -- the slow death of the spirit."
"Or of the body," Belen said very quietly.
Flaem lifted her head. "Better the fire."
"If that were the choice, perhaps," Spock said. "I speak as one who has attempted both the fire and the foreswearing of fire." He shook his head. "The design of the mechanism is also not built for retreat. There is no way out but forward."
Trath said, "I concur, subject V-Two. I do not deal in metaphysics or mercy. I am engaged in a war against a cancer that will consume the universe. And while I find your little lives attractive in some way, it is the lives of our children that concern me. I will use what I must. There is no practical answer to that. If I must bear a moral weight for the necessary, I will bear it."
"But," Kirk said suddenly, "the flaw in your design is a practical flaw." Kirk's face wore that look of arriving at a discovery. "Admiral Savaj," he said, "why does Vulcan not use animal life? Is it morality?"
"Vulcan does not distinguish the moral from the practical, Commander
Commander," Savaj said. "But the reason we do not use life is not morality but necessity. There is no great virtue in that necessity. When we had mastered some of our own aggression we were able to notice that the pain, rage, suffering of animals being used contaminated the psychic atmosphere and reinfected us with the passions of Hell's Kitchen. We cannot live in Hell's Kitchen. Not as what Vulcans have, at some cost, become."
"If you can't stand the heat, stay out of Hell's Kitchen," McCoy murmured. "That's why you didn't want Vulcans to serve on Human ships, isn't it? Not because of superiority or morality -- "
"Most astute, Doctor," Savaj said. "It was, however, all three. Plus a certain concern for other species' fragility. Vulcans stand the heat extremely well. They merely become part of the hell."
McCoy nodded. "And the immediate galaxy cannot afford that luxury."
"Nor can the universe," Kirk said to Trath. "Don't you see? That is the flaw in your design. The practical flaw. Callousness breeds callousness. When you put other life in categories -- self and Others, Designers and small life -- we used to do it with black and white, this or that religion, Vulcan or Human, intelligent being or animal -- that's when you can kill. If you can ever get the feeling that the other is you -- a part of the self, the necessary-to-you, a sense of the oneness of All -- then you can't. But the oneness exists, whether you know it or not, and the pain you cause returns to widen the breach of callousness in yourselves. You cannot heal the Prometheus fault by widening it in yourselves with the use of other lives." 
Trath frowned. "You are saying we turn up the fire in Hell's Kitchen to our own destruction."
"I don't think you have the million years or whatever you think you have on your time scale. Unless you stop."
"Even if it were true, subject, we cannot give up the quest for greatness."
"No," Kirk said. He turned to Savaj. "That was your worry for Vulcan." 
Savaj nodded. "We have counted the price well paid, or at least necessary to our survival. And yet there was a grandeur, a passion, perhaps a poetry to some of the ancient ways. The way of warrior brothers. The music of the far-rovers. The tragedies and the ecstasies. There is something that Spock did not find on Vulcan that he did find in the stars."
"What I found," Spock said, "is not merely Hell's Kitchen. Nor is it lost to Vulcan. You also have followed the path to the stars -- so has my father in his way and others in theirs. And each of us has found some quest or some rapport that in the end we would choose above peace or freedom from pain." 
"S'haile Savaj," Kirk said, "today you broke with the pattern of a lifetime. Vulcan does not lack for greatness."
Savaj returned the look, bowed his head fractionally. "Nor does Earth." 
Kirk turned to Trath. "That has to be the answer. The quest, the striving, the personal bonds, the rapport you came to study -- all those instincts that are for life, not against it. We can set those against the Promethean fault -- and even use the fault itself to drive us to the stars, the dimensions. It can drive us to command and mastery and the power to smash through obstacles -- but not flesh. Maybe it is even at the root of friendship. Animals who do not have individual clashes of aggressiveness do not form individual bonds. But also they know when to yield, and as a rule they do not kill."
Kirk took a step toward Trath. "There can be excitement enough in the universe without Hell's Kitchen. And greatness. And it may
be that any small step to damp down the level of violence that feeds upon itself is finally the answer even to the dogs of war and the vultures of destruction." Kirk held out his hand to Trath.
Trath looked at him as if a puppy had offered to make peace. "Let us suppose that it were true, subject. I do not think that the breach of callousness would be much widened by the study of one little life. One that can conceive such an argument is worth further study. Will you give your little life to damp down the violence in your immediate galaxy?"
Kirk looked to Spock. "It is still a question. Do I have your permission, sir?"
"No, Mr. Kirk, you do not."
Kirk turned back to Trath. "My word was never mine to give. I am under his command."
For the first time Trath smiled. It was rather bitter as if he mocked not himself but some whole pattern that suddenly crumbled around him.
"Subject Kirk," he said, "there is an innocence that can make all things new. New life does not know what is impossible -- and that may even be its virtue. It was one of the objects of this immediate study to determine whether your ship and your diverse selves, as a kind of microcosm of this galaxy, had or could develop a unique rapport and a capacity for breaking patterns. We recognize that the ultimate blind spot is the incapacity to break patterns in which one has a life invested -- or perhaps even the lives of billions." 
"You arranged for us to come, didn't you?" Kirk said. "Even down to Savaj?"
"The one mind that was able to detect our design? Of course. How could we fail to study that? We allowed him to select that
which in his own mind was the best test of the Promethean question -- yourselves."
"And the change of command?" Kirk asked.
"Essential, subject Kirk. That was your pattern."
"And if I had not broken it?"
"Then you would have been of little interest. I would have taken you, lest you escape the consequences of your actions, and closed down the experiment of this galaxy."
"In this galaxy?" McCoy asked.
"No. Of," Trath answered.
"That's what I thought you said," McCoy said uneasily.
"But we did change," Kirk said. "Spock, Savaj, McCoy. Even Belen. Perhaps even Flaem -- if it is true that for some moment you saw me as more than small life. And if even small lives can change and even Designers, then what remains impossible?" He stepped closer to Flaem and Belen, and for a moment Speck could sense him thinking his goodbyes across the gulf of what did remain impossible. Yet the impossible had existed for them and would not be forgotten. "In any case," Kirk said softly, "we have broken patterns together." 
Spock stepped forward to meet Trath's eyes. "Blindness is not a condition of one man or one species. One can see farther, at times, through the eyes of others. One can learn from those who are struggling to be born. Change your pattern. Give an end to callousness a chance -- before it hastens your doom."
"Subject Spock," Trath said. "We are very old and you are very young. You have raised a practical flaw that we had not sufficiently considered. It remains to be seen whether that is, in truth, an insuperable flaw in our design. But your friend has correctly guessed why we have accelerated the experiment. Our recent evidence shows
that we do not have the million years. Indeed there is more oneness between you and us than you could know. On our present course, the end of the All would have been reckoned within your lifetimes. Belen's solution -- or the fire -- was at hand. Or else a new experimental design. I do not promise an end to experiment. But I will give you this. For a time we will try the experiment on ourselves of healing the breach of callousness. And for suggesting that experiment, I will spare your friend -- and your galaxy."

"Would you care to observe consequences?" Trath asked after a moment in which silent thought-farewells seemed to break down certain categories.
Trath turned and pointed his hand at the entrance to the canyon. The crystal sheet started to lift. The thousand-foot cliff above it started to shatter, falling down in lethal shards. The canyon started to shatter from that center. Trath touched a control and the Designers shimmered and disappeared. 
Kirk looked at Spock, stricken. If he had disobeyed, he would have triggered their destruction.
Spock shrugged. "It was always their pattern, Mr. Kirk, to have maze within maze, trap within trap -- and a certain finality to their tests." 
The Designer shimmer started to form around them as the crystal cliffs of the whole valley crumbled in cataclysm. The Designer ship rose above them, departing.
Spock felt his consciousness dissolve -- and reform on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Chapter Twenty-six
Kirk saw the shocked faces of the bridge crew and realized that the landing party was a pretty motley collection. Spock and Savaj were half naked and considerably the worse for wear, and Kirk and McCoy bore no resemblance to daisies either. 
"Well," Kirk said. "Captain Spock, I have seen worse jobs of commanding a mission. On several occasions." 
"So," Spock said, "have I. Including a certain usurpation of command in this one." He turned to survey Kirk. "Mr. Kirk, there remains a matter between us." 
"I have never lost sight of that, sir." Kirk straightened to face the Vulcans. He had in fact done the unforgivable, and Vulcans were not noted for forgiveness. He had no concept at all of what the Vulcan penalty might be. And the fact that he had -- belatedly -- behaved himself would still not get him very far. Spock would say, properly, that he had several times risked his life, theirs, and the mission against Spock's orders. 
"It is bound under Vulcan command code," Spock said, "and it is in other respects also beyond my recall. It is a matter of record with Starfleet and with Vulcan authorities -- either or both of which can act on their own initiative." 
Starfleet could, at a minimum, court-martial and ground him. What Vulcan authorities or Vulcans present could do he did not
like to contemplate. And none of them were going to recognize pattern as a defense, or the ultimate breaking of pattern as extenuation. 
"Of course," Savaj remarked thoughtfully, "the attempt to murder one's commanding officer and commanding admiral is, in some respects, even more serious than mutiny." 
Kirk blinked. "But I was under the influence" -- He stopped. "As a matter of fact," he said, looking at Savaj, "alien influences have been known to have a profound effect on starship personnel, up to and including many forms of aberrant behavior. Murder. Perhaps even mutiny." 
"There is some precedent," Savaj said, "even in the record of this ship, for nonprosecution of aberrant behavior caused by alien influence -- spores, viruses, and the like." He held Kirk's eyes. "If I am not mistaken, that has even included mutiny and the striking of a commanding officer before this trip." 
Kirk rubbed his jaw absently. It had been some years and his jaw still remembered a Vulcan slap that had knocked him over a table,1 and another occasion -- when Kirk had baited Spock to drive out the spores and the Vulcan put a fist aimed at Kirk through a wall.2 
"Yes," Spock said, "it has." He did not add that Kirk had taken it, and taken no action against him. 
Spock looked at Kirk and Kirk saw that the anger had not dissipated. But it was becoming somewhat more personal. 
Spock leaned over and pressed a button on the command seat. "Captain's Log. Judicial. Note is made of the fact that some members of the command crew have been under alien mind influence that made them act in manners impossible to their normal personalities and patterns. That demonstrably includes influence to attempt murder, and one could logically suppose that it could also include insubordination and mutiny. No official action is contemplated
contemplated for such lapses, provided that they are not repeated." 
He switched off and turned to Kirk. "Is that understood, Mr. Kirk?" 
"Perfectly, Captain." He stood straight and let the relief and the gratitude show. It was not something Spock had to do, and they both knew that it was not wholly true. But it would serve. 
"As for the matter between us," Spock said in the tone of not letting him off the hook. "I believe that can be resolved privately." 
"Yes, sir." 
"When you are quite recovered, you will conform to double fitness schedule and meet me for asumi -- and chess." 
"Yes, Captain Spock." 
Spock did not smile. "That being the case, Mr. Kirk, and the Designers having departed, I am returning command of the Enterprise to you." 
"What?" Kirk said. 
"I believe you heard me, Captain Kirk." 
"Yes, Mr. Spock." Kirk looked at Savaj. 
"I have no objection, Captain. I believe the experience was salutary. But I have also perceived the beyond-level of which Mr. Spock spoke by which you do and can command him." 
Kirk looked a question at Spock. 
"I also have my pattern, Captain," Spock said, "and while I have occasionally despaired of you, you do have your moments. I will remember the one in which you broke your pattern. But I prefer, on the bridge, the one we set long ago." He gestured Kirk toward the center seat. 
Kirk found himself smiling, also a little shaky, and he sat down in it. 
Bones McCoy bounced on his heels at Kirk's left shoulder. "Now
that feels right. You figure the Designers will keep their promise, Jim?" 
"I figure," Kirk said, "that one of these million-year days we'll get the results of that experiment -- if we haven't solved the problem ourselves first." He sat back in the chair. "And maybe we already have, on a day-to-day basis, one day at a time." 
He looked at Savaj. All of them here belonged to difficult and dangerous species. Their solutions were partial and temporary and not always as careful of lives great and small as they might be. But he thought they were slowly wearing down the callousness and the categories that divided them. 
He would not soon forget serving under Spock -- and Savaj of Vulcan. 
"Ahead Warp Factor Two," he said. Something seemed to settle back into place when he heard Sulu's, "Aye, Captain."
Epilogue
"Do you observe them in the precognon?" the fire-presence said. 
"Dimly," the cool one answered. "It is difficult to predict those who are capable of reversing patterns." 
"It is, however, fascinating," the flame one said. "I do not believe the promise said anything about visitation rights. . . ."
Glossary of Vulcan Terms
Asumi -- Vulcan combat sport/dance. 
K'asumi -- The lethal all-out form of asumi. Never practiced except to the death. 
K'vath -- Enter, come, proceed. 
Kavife -- Challenge. Alternate grammatical form pertaining to the form and subject of the challenge. 
Kolinahr -- Advanced Vulcan discipline intended to achieve total logic by eliminating all emotions. 
Le matya -- Giant reptilian desert cat -- roughly the Tyrannosaurus rex of Vulcan, but faster and smarter -- and with poisonous claws and fangs. 
S'haile -- Title of profound respect pertaining to acknowledgment of a high level of personal accomplishment and commanding presence to which one would properly pay homage. The closest Terran translation would be the concept of a royalty that is not born but made -- in fact, self-made. In that sense it might be rendered "Lord" by one who speaks as equal and as "My Lord" by one who does not. 
Snarth -- Quasi-intelligent mammalian predator of Vulcan. 
T'hy'la[1] -- friend, brother, lover. 
T'hyvaj -- Asumi empathic mirroring exercise first developed by ancient warrior-brothers on Vulcan.
T'Vareth -- undisciplined cub, disobedient and subnormal whelp of an undesirable species. Not a term of endearment. 
Tzaled -- The ultimate Vulcan level of loyalty in which one takes responsibility for the well-being of the other even over his protests. 
V'Kreeth -- Name of a Vulcan ship and title given to its commander by Humans. 
V'asumi -- The sport/practice form of asumi in which strength may be restrained against a weaker opponent, but speed and skill must be used to train the other's full potential.
Look for STAR TREK fiction from Pocket Books 

Star Trek®: The Original Series 

Enterprise: The First Adventure · Vonda N. McIntyre
Final Frontier · Diane Carey
Strangers From the Sky · Margaret Wander Bonanno
Spock's World · Diane Duane
The Lost Years · J.M. Dillard
Probe · Margaret Wander Bonanno
Prime Directive · Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Best Destiny · Diane Carey
Shadows on the Sun · Michael Jan Friedman
Sarek · A.C. Crispin
Federation · Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Vulcan's Forge · Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz
Mission to Horatius · Mack Reynolds
Vulcan's Heart · Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz
Novelizations
Star Trek: The Motion Picture · Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan · Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock · Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home · Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier · J.M. Dillard
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country · J.M. Dillard
Star Trek Generations · J.M. Dillard
Starfleet Academy · Diane Carey
Star Trek books by William Shatner with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
The Ashes of Eden 
The Return 
Avenger 
Star Trek: Odyssey (contains The Ashes of Eden, The Return, and Avenger)
Spectre
Dark Victory 

#1 · Star Trek: The Motion Picture · Gene Roddenberry
#2 · The Entropy Effect · Vonda N. McIntyre
#3 · The Klingon Gambit · Robert E. Vardeman
#4 · The Covenant of the Crown · Howard Weinstein
#5 · The Prometheus Design · Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath
#6 · The Abode of Life · Lee Correy
#7 · Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan · Vonda N. McIntyre
#8 · Black Fire · Sonni Cooper
#9 · Triangle · Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath
#10 · Web of the Romulans · M.S. Murdock
#11 · Yesterday's Son · A.C. Crispin
#12 · Mutiny on the Enterprise · Robert E. Vardeman
#13 · The Wounded Sky · Diane Duane
#14 · The Trellisane Confrontation · David Dvorkin
#15 · Corona · Greg Bear
#16 · The Final Reflection · John M. Ford
#17 · Star Trek III: The Search For Spock · Vonda N. McIntyre
#18 · My Enemy, My Ally · Diane Duane
#19 · The Tears of the Singers · Melinda Snodgrass
#20 · The Vulcan Academy Murders · Jean Lorrah
#21 · Uhura's Song · Janet Kagan
#22 · Shadow Land · Laurence Yep
#23 · Ishmael · Barbara Hambly
#24 · Killing Time · Della Van Hise
#25 · Dwellers in the Crucible · Margaret Wander Bonanno
#26 · Pawns and Symbols · Majliss Larson
#27 · Mindshadow · J.M. Dillard
#28 · Crisis on Centaurus · Brad Ferguson
#29 · Dreadnought! · Diane Carey
#30 · Demons · J.M. Dillard
#31 · Battlestations! · Diane Carey
#32 · Chain of Attack · Gene DeWeese
#33 · Deep Domain · Howard Weinstein
#34 · Dreams of the Raven · Carmen Carter
#35 · The Romulan Way · Diane Duane & Peter Morwood
#36 · How Much For Just the Planet? · John M. Ford
#37 · Bloodthirst · J.M. Dillard
#38 · The IDIC Epidemic · Jean Lorrah
#39 · Time For Yesterday · A.C. Crispin
#40 · Timetrap · David Dvorkin
#41 · The Three-Minute Universe · Barbara Paul
#42 · Memory Prime · Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens
#43 · The Final Nexus · Gene DeWeese
#44 · Vulcan's Glory · D.C. Fontana
#45 · Double, Double · Michael Jan Friedman
#46 · The Cry of the Onlies · Judy Klass
#47 · The Kobayashi Maru · Julia Ecklar
#48 · Rules of Engagement · Peter Morwood
#49 · The Pandora Principle · Carolyn Clowes
#50 · Doctor's Orders · Diane Duane
#51 · Unseen Enemy · V.E. Mitchell
#52 · Home is the Hunter · Dana Kramer Rolls
#53 · Ghost-Walker · Barbara Hambly
#54 · A Flag Full of Stars · Brad Ferguson
#55 · Renegade · Gene DeWeese
#56 · Legacy · Michael Jan Friedman
#57 · The Rift · Peter David
#58 · Faces of Fire · Michael Jan Friedman
#59 · The Disinherited · Peter David
#60 · Ice Trap · L.A. Graf
#61 · Sanctuary · John Vornholt
#62 · Death Count · L.A. Graf
#63 · Shell Game · Melissa Crandall
#64 · The Starship Trap · Mel Gilden
#65 · Windows on a Lost World · V.E. Mitchell
#66 · From the Depths · Victor Milan
#67 · The Great Starship Race · Diane Carey
#68 · Firestorm · L.A. Graf
#69 · The Patrian Transgression · Simon Hawke
#70 · Traitor Winds · L.A. Graf
#71 · Crossroad · Barbara Hambly
#72 · The Better Man · Howard Weinstein
#73 · Recovery · J.M. Dillard
#74 · The Fearful Summons · Denny Martin Flynn
#75 · First Frontier · Diane Carey & Dr. James I. Kirkland
#76 · The Captain's Daughter · Peter David
#77 · Twilight's End · Jerry Oltion
#78 · The Rings of Tautee · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#79 · Invasion! #1: First Strike · Diane Carey
#80 · The Joy Machine · James Gunn
#81 · Mudd in Your Eye · Jerry Oltion
#82 · Mind Meld · John Vornholt
#83 · Heart of the Sun · Pamela Sargent & George Zebrowski
#84 · Assignment: Eternity · Greg Cox
#85-87 · My Brother's Keeper · Michael Jan Friedman
#85 · Republic
#86 · Constitution
#87 · Enterprise
#88 · Across the Universe · Pamela Sargent & George Zebrowski
#89-94 · New Earth
#89 · Wagon Train to the Stars · Diane Carey
#90 · Belle Terre · Dean Wesley Smith with Diane Carey

Star Trek: The Next Generation® 

Metamorphosis · Jean Lorrah
Vendetta · Peter David
Reunion · Michael Jan Friedman
Imzadi · Peter David
The Devil's Heart · Carmen Carter
Dark Mirror · Diane Duane
Q-Squared · Peter David
Crossover · Michael Jan Friedman
Kahless · Michael Jan Friedman
Ship of the Line · Diane Carey
The Best and the Brightest · Susan Wright
Planet X · Michael Jan Friedman
Imzadi II: Triangle · Peter David
I, Q · John de Lancie & Peter David
The Valiant · Michael Jan Friedman
Novelizations
Encounter at Farpoint · David Gerrold
Unification · Jeri Taylor
Relics · Michael Jan Friedman
Descent · Diane Carey
All Good Things... · Michael Jan Friedman
Star Trek: Klingon · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Star Trek Generations · J.M. Dillard
Star Trek: First Contact · J.M. Dillard
Star Trek: Insurrection · J.M. Dillard

#1 · Ghost Ship · Diane Carey
#2 · The Peacekeepers · Gene DeWeese
#3 · The Children of Hamlin · Carmen Carter
#4 · Survivors · Jean Lorrah
#5 · Strike Zone · Peter David
#6 · Power Hungry · Howard Weinstein
#7 · Masks · John Vornholt
#8 · The Captain's Honor · David and Daniel Dvorkin
#9 · A Call to Darkness · Michael Jan Friedman
#10 · A Rock and a Hard Place · Peter David
#11 · Gulliver's Fugitives · Keith Sharee
#12 · Doomsday World · David, Carter, Friedman & Greenberger
#13 · The Eyes of the Beholders · A.C. Crispin
#14 · Exiles · Howard Weinstein
#15 · Fortune's Light · Michael Jan Friedman
#16 · Contamination · John Vornholt
#17 · Boogeymen · Mel Gilden
#18 · Q-In-Law · Peter David
#19 · Perchance to Dream · Howard Weinstein
#20 · Spartacus · T.L. Mancour
#21 · Chains of Command · W.A. McCay & E.L. Flood
#22 · Imbalance · V.E. Mitchell
#23 · War Drums · John Vornholt
#24 · Nightshade · Laurell K. Hamilton
#25 · Grounded · David Bischoff
#26 · The Romulan Prize · Simon Hawke
#27 · Guises of the Mind · Rebecca Neason
#28 · Here There Be Dragons · John Peel
#29 · Sins of Commission · Susan Wright
#30 · Debtor's Planet · W.R. Thompson
#31 · Foreign Foes · Dave Galanter & Greg Brodeur
#32 · Requiem · Michael Jan Friedman & Kevin Ryan
#33 · Balance of Power · Dafydd ab Hugh
#34 · Blaze of Glory · Simon Hawke
#35 · The Romulan Stratagem · Robert Greenberger
#36 · Into the Nebula · Gene DeWeese
#37 · The Last Stand · Brad Ferguson
#38 · Dragon's Honor · Kij Johnson & Greg Cox
#39 · Rogue Saucer · John Vornholt
#40 · Possession · J.M. Dillard & Kathleen O'Malley
#41 · Invasion! #2: The Soldiers of Fear · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#42 · Infiltrator · W.R. Thompson
#43 · A Fury Scorned · Pamela Sargent & George Zebrowski
#44 · The Death of Princes · John Peel
#45 · Intellivore · Diane Duane
#46 · To Storm Heaven · Esther Friesner
#47-49 · The Q Continuum · Greg Cox
#47 · Q-Space
#48 · Q-Zone
#49 · Q-Strike
#50 · Dyson Sphere · Charles Pellegrino & George Zebrowski
#51-56 · Double Helix
#51 · Infection · John Gregory Betancourt
#52 · Vectors · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#53 · Red Sector · Diane Carey
#54 · Quarantine · John Vornholt
#55 · Double or Nothing · Peter David
#56 · The First Virtue · Michael Jan Friedman & Christie Golden
#57 · The Forgotten War · William R. Forstchen
#58-59 · Gemworld · John Vornholt
#58 · Gemworld #1
#59 · Gemworld #2

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine® 

Warped · K.W. Jeter
Legends of the Ferengi · Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
The Lives of Dax · Marco Palmieri, ed.
Millennium · Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
#1 · The Fall of Terok Nor
#2 · The War of the Prophets
#3 · Inferno
Novelizations
Emissary · J.M. Dillard
The Search · Diane Carey
The Way of the Warrior · Diane Carey
Star Trek: Klingon · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Trials and Tribble-ations · Diane Carey
Far Beyond the Stars · Steve Barnes
What You Leave Behind · Diane Carey

#1 · Emissary · J.M. Dillard
#2 · The Siege · Peter David
#3 · Bloodletter · K.W. Jeter
#4 · The Big Game · Sandy Schofield
#5 · Fallen Heroes · Dafydd ab Hugh
#6 · Betrayal · Lois Tilton
#7 · Warchild · Esther Friesner
#8 · Antimatter · John Vornholt
#9 · Proud Helios · Melissa Scott
#10 · Valhalla · Nathan Archer
#11 · Devil in the Sky · Greg Cox & John Gregory Betancourt
#12 · The Laertian Gamble · Robert Sheckley
#13 · Station Rage · Diane Carey
#14 · The Long Night · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#15 · Objective: Bajor · John Peel
#16 · Invasion! #3: Time's Enemy · L.A. Graf
#17 · The Heart of the Warrior · John Gregory Betancourt
#18 · Saratoga · Michael Jan Friedman
#19 · The Tempest · Susan Wright
#20 · Wrath of the Prophets · David, Friedman & Greenberger
#21 · Trial by Error · Mark Garland
#22 · Vengeance · Dafydd ab Hugh
#23 · The 34th Rule · Armin Shimerman & David R. George III
#24-26 · Rebels · Dafydd ab Hugh
#24 · The Conquered
#25 · The Courageous
#26 · The Liberated
#27 · A Stitch in Time · Andrew J. Robinson

Star Trek: Voyager® 

Mosaic · Jeri Taylor
Pathways · Jeri Taylor
Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth · D.W. "Prof" Smith
Novelizations
Caretaker · L.A. Graf
Flashback · Diane Carey
Day of Honor · Michael Jan Friedman
Equinox · Diane Carey

#1 · Caretaker · L.A. Graf
#2 · The Escape · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#3 · Ragnarok · Nathan Archer
#4 · Violations · Susan Wright
#5 · Incident at Arbuk · John Gregory Betancourt
#6 · The Murdered Sun · Christie Golden
#7 · Ghost of a Chance · Mark A. Garland & Charles G. McGraw
#8 · Cybersong · S.N. Lewitt
#9 · Invasion! #4: The Final Fury · Dafydd ab Hugh
#10 · Bless the Beasts · Karen Haber
#11 · The Garden · Melissa Scott
#12 · Chrysalis · David Niall Wilson
#13 · The Black Shore · Greg Cox
#14 · Marooned · Christie Golden
#15 · Echoes · Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Nina Kiriki Hoffman
#16 · Seven of Nine · Christie Golden
#17 · Death of a Neutron Star · Eric Kotani
#18 · Battle Lines · Dave Galanter & Greg Brodeur

Star Trek®: New Frontier 

New Frontier #1-4 Collector's Edition · Peter David

#1 · House of Cards · Peter David
#2 · Into the Void · Peter David
#3 · The Two-Front War · Peter David
#4 · End Game · Peter David
#5 · Martyr · Peter David
#6 · Fire on High · Peter David
The Captain's Table #5 · Once Burned · Peter David
Double Helix #5 · Double or Nothing · Peter David
#7 · The Quiet Place · Peter David
#8 · Dark Allies · Peter David

Star Trek®: Invasion! 

#1 · First Strike · Diane Carey
#2 · The Soldiers of Fear · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#3 · Time's Enemy · L.A. Graf
#4 · The Final Fury · Dafydd ab Hugh
Invasion! Omnibus · various

Star Trek®: Day of Honor
#1 · Ancient Blood · Diane Carey
#2 · Armageddon Sky · L.A. Graf
#3 · Her Klingon Soul · Michael Jan Friedman
#4 · Treaty's Law · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Television Episode · Michael Jan Friedman
Day of Honor Omnibus · various

Star Trek®: The Captain's Table 

#1 · War Dragons · L.A. Graf
#2 · Dujonian's Hoard · Michael Jan Friedman
#3 · The Mist · Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#4 · Fire Ship · Diane Carey
#5 · Once Burned · Peter David
#6 · Where Sea Meets Sky · Jerry Oltion
The Captain's Table Omnibus · various

Star Trek®: The Dominion War 

#1 · Behind Enemy Lines · John Vornholt
#2 · Call to Arms... · Diane Carey
#3 · Tunnel Through the Stars · John Vornholt
#4 · ...Sacrifice of Angels · Diane Carey

Star Trek®: The Badlands 

#1 · Susan Wright
#2 · Susan Wright 

Star Trek® Books available in Trade Paperback
Omnibus Editions
Invasion! Omnibus · various
Day of Honor Omnibus · various
The Captain's Table Omnibus · various
Star Trek: Odyssey · William Shatner with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Other Books
Legends of the Ferengi · Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Strange New Worlds, vol. I, II, and III · Dean Wesley Smith, ed.
Adventures in Time and Space · Mary P. Taylor
Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth · D.W. "Prof" Smith
The Lives of Dax · Marco Palmieri, ed.
The Klingon Hamlet · Wil'yam Shex'pir
New Worlds, New Civilizations · Michael Jan Friedman
Enterprise Logs · Carol Greenburg, ed.