STAR TREK

FROM THE DEPTHS

BY

VICTOR MILAN

POCKET BOOKS Now York London

Toronto Sydney bkyo Singapore

The sale of this book without Its cover Is

unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a

cover, you should be aware that It was reported to the

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author nor the publisher has received payment for the

sale of this "stripped book."

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

places and incidents are either products of the

author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events or

locales or persons, living or dead, is

entirely coincidental.

An Original Publication of POCKET

BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon and

Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas,

New York, NY 10020

Copyright C 1993 by Paramount Pictures.

All Rights Reserved.

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of

a Paramount Pictures.

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division of Simon and Schuster Inc., under

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to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form

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ISBN 0-671-86911-6

First Pocket Books printing August 1993

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trademarks of Simon and Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.s.a.

For Joan-Marie

Prologue

Blinking iNT-O molten silver sunlight,

Aileea dinAthos emerged from the ranch house to find

her father sitting on the afterdeck, clad only in

khaki shorts. A cup of black chai steamed in his

hand. A white eyeshade shielded his face from the

glare of tiny Eris, burning a hole in the

blue-white sky to the east, not far above the ocean that

was their world. She stood on tiptoe, stretched arms

high above her head, hand locked on wrist, back

arching. She wore just a white thong swimsuit

bottom and a sidearm belt. Eris light fell on

her bare brown skin like a rain of needles. The sky

was clear but for a bloated gray worm of smoke

sprawled across the southern horizon and a bank of

slate-colored clouds to the northeast. That would

probably not last past noon, but like any true

Vare she was prepared to enjoy the moment to the fullest.

She came up behind her father then, making no

more noise than she customarily did, which was none,

despite the light fall of volcanic ash that dusted

the deck. Before she reached the edge of his peripheral

vision, he said, "You're up late. A body comes

by slovenly habits in the city." She laughed

and sat down on the arm of his chair. A mild sea

was washing over the white flotation cylinders that

supported the deck. The float rocked gently.

A soft breeze ruffled her shag-cut hair.

"If that's the worst habit I've picked up in the

city," she said, "we're all luckier than I

thought we were." Aagard dinAthos saluted his

daughter with his mug, which was white porcelain and

chipped at the brim. Much as it exasperated her,

he refused to throw it away. It had history, he

claimed. "It's never too late to come home.

Ranch life is hard, but-it's honest and clean."

"My work's honest, too," she said. She stood up

quickly and instantly regretted her comsharpness of tone.

Her father just grinned at her through his short grizzled

beard and nodded. She sighed. She knew her father

both loved and respected her. And she had been a

full adult for years, since her fourth birthday,

self-owning and self-reliant. She was seven and a

quarter now, but he had never let go of testing her.

It was A major reason she could never come home

to stay. When Mom was alive, it was different.

Aagard and Aileea dinAthos were made of the same

stuff. Sanabar comgentle, resilient, and utterly

unlike her husband or her daughter-had

been the safety rod that prevented them achieving

critical mass. One of the sudden ,terrible storms

that wracked the planet had washed

her from their lives, leaving a void that could not be

filled. There were many reasons they called the world

Discord. Aileea wandered near the rail, shaded her

eyes to gaze away to the smoke bank in the south.

Nearer to hand a pair of Hinds floated above a

raft, each on six red win , seeking the

life-forms crawling in and on gs the matted seaweed.

"New volcano?" she asked. "We never wandered out

this way when I was a kid." "Just sticking her head

above water," her father said, nodding. "That's why I'm

keeping the float ever so slightly under power, so that

we can steer clear of the plume. May even have to lay

on more thrust, bear a hair north"-he brushed at

the gray grit film that had accreted on the arm of his

chair- "so we don't have to go around wearing

respirators."

She nodded. "Maybe FlIscoot down that way

and have a look at our new arrival."

"Best take a flyer. She's an active

baby." As if to emphasize his words a rumble,

almost subliminally low-pitched, rolled in from the south

to vibrate in their bones and teeth. Before her

the surface of the Ocean of Discord bowed upward and

then broke with a quiet, insistent rushing, not twenty

meters from the ranch house. Water cascaded from the

mottled dark blue back of a prawn. The

Waverider crest had been laser-burned a

centimeter deep and a meter wide in the beast's

carapace, which was thick as battleship plate and

nearly as hard. Like most of Discord's native

lifeforms, the giant crustaceans metabolized and

made use of the, metals superabundant in the

planet's crust.

As always, Aileea was awed watching the beast's

back, ten meters wide at its broadest, rolling

like the top of a great wheel turning, to vanish again beneath

the waters. The house rocked to the swell of its

passing. The fifty-meter-long prawn was a sea

grazer, utterly nonaggressive, relying on

size and armor sufficient to deter even the

rapacious predators of the world called Discord. A

constant tone emitted by the household sonics,

inaudible to the ears of Aileea and her father, kept the

beast from approaching dangerously close. The

breeze blew the rank salty smell of sea

life to her, and something else, at once sweet and

pungent. "That's Old Lucy, isn't

it?" she asked.

"The matriarch herself."

"She's ready to be scraped."

"True enough. But she's just done spawning.

Didn't want to gripe her."

Out on the water the wavelets danced white-bright

like broken porcelain shaken on a table. A

scooter skimmed the surface, snaking a line of

froth across the shards. A ranch hand, riding herd on

the pod of giant crustaceans or inspecting the

pod-shaped robot 66 wranglers" that contained and

guided the huge sea beasts. The figure raised

an arm and waved. 6'Who is that?" Aileea

asked, waving back. "I can't make out."

"It's Gita, of course," her father said

gruffly. "You can tell by the reckless way she

careens around."

He eyed his daughter critically. "Your

childhood playmate, and you don't recognize the

way she rides?" Aileea felt her mouth

tighten. She was all too aware of the gap that now

yawned between her and the woman who had been a virtual

sister to her. Not that

she didn't get along with Gita. It was just that

they had ... grown apart, and she felt an

aching hollowness within. "It's been a long time since

I've seen her ride, Father." "You're losing touch

with where you came from, girl." She glared at him.

He regarded her with eyes sharp and black as

obsidian. "Come home, Aileea," he said in a

quiet voice. "You know the sea as well as any

Vare-you're a very part of her. And you'll soon pick

the ranching life back up, right enough."

He showed her a sardonic grin. "And I don't

think you'd need worry about growing bored. We see

action aplenty." A grimace flickered across her

face. like a cloud transiting the sun. "I've

seen all the action I everwant to, Father. And then

some."

She paced the slow-rolling deck, hugging herself.

"The Stilters come frequently?"

"Very much so, these days."

She turned. "But you're handling them?"

It was a foolish question, she realized at once.

Evidently. Or we wouldn't be here.

"Well enough," her father said. "But it's starting

to cut close- his

A shrill beeping sounded. He reached down,

picked up a palmreader, and frowned at the screen.

Aileea felt a chill run down her

spine. "The perimeter wranglers are picking up

something on sonar." It was not a question.

Her father nodded, murmuring quick commands into the

handheld unit. Cable of lightweight

hightensile-strength alloy played out of a housing

atop the

ranch house, allowing the radar eye slung beneath the

captive polymerized aluminum balloon to ride

higher, to see farther past the horizon. , "Speak

of Leviathan," Aagard dinAthos muttered when

he saw what it showed him. "Speak of the Devil in

the Sea. . .

"Get below," Aileea said sharply. "You can

control the wrangle rs from the command center."

"I can control them from here, too, daughter," he

said, rising to his full height, which was impressive

for a man of their Gens. He spoke without heat, but

firmly.

Her eyes fell away from his. It was a

measure of the strangeness of her chosen profession that

for a moment she had been unaware of the incongruity of

casually giving orders to not just her father, but any

Vare.

She didn't have a lot of time to stand around being

abashed; at once she was in motion, across the

deck in a flash of long slender legs burned dark

by the relentless sun, into the cockpit of her own

scooter, moored at the stem of the float. It

retracted its fragmentproof canopy to her word of

command. Despite her state of undress she slid

into the formfitting black seat without hesitation and

slipped on the lightweight headset. She had no

need of an emergency flotation vest or a breather,

but she might have reason to miss the envir onment suit

she was accustomed to wear to work, if only for its

armor. She cast off, started the electric

impellers cycling water through tubes that ran the

length of the tiny craft. As it picked up speed she

allowed herself the luxury of a glance back at the

float where she had been bom and raised. Her father still

stood on the after- 6

deck, arms crossed over his wiry-muscled

chest, staring off at the horizon over which the intruders

would soon appear. She caught a glimpse of

giant Mansur hulking in the doorway with his

cleaver in his hand, and then she turned her eyes forward

and gave the scooter full acceleration.

Head-up holos sprang into existence between dark

jade eyes and the windscreen, feeding her

simultaneous streams of information. Still

several minutes until contact; she left the

canopy back. She would feel the wind in her face

and her hair as long as she could.

"Waveriders," she said to the communicator.

"Who's out there this morning?"

"'Sleep late enough, MET" Gita came

back. "Almost too late. Who else?"

The others sounded off crisply Krysztof,

Lev, Haidar, Jasmine. Not just employees,

they were all stockholders in the ranch. It was their

home and their property they would be defending.

She would give instructions and they would follow them,

though they were Vares and fiercely protective of their

liberties. Not simply because she was the senior

stockholder's daughter, nor even because they were all

friends and Krysztof and Haidar had, like Gita, been

her childhood playmates. Hers was not the most

respectable profession, perhaps, but her expertise

at it was unquestioned.

"We have three bogies inbound on bearing two

ninety, speed one hundred fifty klicks per

hour," she said, reading the data relayed from the

wranglers and the household sensors. "Look like

hydrofoils, sixtytonners. Cossack

class."

The Stilters were getting smarter. In the past they

had favored conventional surface craft, larger and

full

of firepower but slower. That made them potent

foes-but also inviting targets for Vare missiles and

torpedoes. Their advisers from the stars were teaching them

well, it seemed.

comKofirlar, was snarled Lev. None of them knew

it had once meant "religious infidels"; to them it

signified "intruders, interlopers." It was the name

they gave their ancient enemies' new friends.

"They'll be there," Haidar agreed, "but just a

few. The crews will be Stilters."

Holding her lower lip between her teeth, Aileea

nodded. Haidar had the knack of looking at the

brightest available side of things, but he was most

likely right.

"Moment," Krysztof said in his slow, heavy

way. "I'm getting a return from Seventeen.

Vessel in the thousand-tonne range, same bearing,

fifty kilometers farther out."

"That'll be the carrier, the mother ship," she said.

"Keeping out of our range," Lev said.

"Do you blame them?" Haidar asked with a laugh.

"There are still seventy and more of them to the six of

us," Jasmine warned.

Gita's laugh pealed in Aileea's ears.

"Unfair odds," she said. "Perhaps half of us should

stay behind."

As they spoke the six were riding an intercept

course, spread out in an arc covering three

kilometers of ocean. The scooters were tiny

craft, without armor to speak of, relying mainly on

speed for defense. But like so many of Discord's

smaller life-forms, each carried a deadly sting.

She called for the data from Wrangler 17, quickly

skimmed it, brought up the feed from the robot's

camera. "That's a tender, all right. Looks like

a Goebbels. was She used the Vare codename for the

craft. She knew the Stilter name for it,

too-Vare electronic surveillance was good, much

better than Stilter countermeasures, and after almost

forty years of constant warfare Vare and Stilter could

translate one another's language. But the Vare

names were easier on the mouth comspeaking Stilter was like

trying to tie a half hitch with your lips.

She frowned. "The Goebbels is built to carry

four Cossacks. Stay alert, everybody-there

might be another one out there." "Should some of us hang

back and keep an eye out for him?"

Krysztof asked.

"We're too few as it is," Jasmine said.

"She's right," Aileea said. "Now be.

careful. We'll be in range of their rockets

soon."

Up ahead she saw them now, three notches of

white cut from the blue horizon, the bow waves of the

speeding hydrofoils. She brought up a magnified

display. Cossacks, all right, stubby wedge-shaped

hulls painted in jagged patterns of blue and

black and white to break up their silhouettes,

bristling with weaponry like a seaspine on a reef.

And clumped much too close together, in approved

Stilter fashion. She wondered if the Kofirlar were

trying to break them of that. She punched up a

private sideband. "Dad, did you catch that? There

may be a bogey unaccounted for."

"I'll be fine, child. I've been fighting

Stilters longer than you've been alive."

"That's Stilters, not these new friends of theirs, with

their alien technology and their energy weapons."

"Fah. They aren't superhuman."

"At least go below, please, Father? You'll be

safer below the waterline, and you can read your displays as

easily in the command center as on deck."

"I have no desire to be safe while my people

fight. Including my own flesh and blood."

She bared her teeth in a grimace of defeat.

It was an expression she'd had little use for in her

life-except for her dealings with her father.

"It's a free planet," she said wearily.

"That it is," her father said. "That's why we fight."

His image vanished.

There was a ripple of flashes as the starboard

hydrofoil launched rockets. Surges of water

foamed over Aileea's bare legs, left and right,

as she zigzagged her craft. Up here in the forties

of latitude the water was blood warm, but it felt

chill after Eris's hot caress. Its coolness

exhilarated her. The spray in her face and the moist

salty air and the nearness of danger filled her with

searing wild pleasure.

She looked across the sea, which was beginning to chop as

the wind freshened. There was Gita, canopy back,

her nebula of heavy dark hair flying free behind.

She seemed to sense her old friend looking at her and

raised a fist in joyous defiance. Aileea

grinned and waved back, but she was already forcing down the

sense of exaltation. It didn't do to get too

giddy. She wondered if Gita could control

her own exuberance in action. The rockets struck,

creating a brief flurry of geysers far astern of

Aileea's scooter. The outriders quickly called

in. She already knew the volley had fallen wide.

"Uh-oh," Haidar said from her right. "Someones

locked onto me."

"Go deep!" Aileea yelled.

Her old friend was already sealing his canopy as he

threw his craft into violent lurches Gita might

envy. He extended his dive planes and began

nosing under even before it closed. The scooter

vanished.

A second later water fountained from the roil of

water left by the submerging craft.

"Haidar!" No answer. She had come almost

abeam of the starboard "foil, swinging wide and then

curving toward the craft at full throttle. The

three bigger craft sped on toward the float. They

were after bigger game than the scooters. Aileea

raked the 'foil with her twin machine guns. They were

light weapons, too light for the work. The

hydrofoil showed no sign of damage.

Haidar's scooter burst from the sea like a

broaching volk, clearing the water in an upward

avalanche of spray. Aileea watched with

her heart in her throat, fearful that Haidar had

pushed his luck too far and was about to smear himself all

over the uneasy plane of the sea.

He struck down amid a splash like another

missile going off. Aileea saw his scooter begin

to drift counterclockwise. Then it straightened and

streaked away. A line of lesser spouts from a

Stilter automatic canon stitched across its

wake. Haidar's triumphant shout burst in

Aileea's ears.

An indicator in Aileea's head-up display

flashed, showing she had a lock-on. She quickly

triggered a missile of her own toward the nearest

'foil. An orange box surrounded it in her

display, allowing her to follow its flight. It

guided true, curving slightly to intercept the

craft.

At the last instant the hydrofoil banked hard

into its

port foil, throwing up a crescent ridge of

water. The missile blasted through the top of this bow

wave, skipped twice on the surface of the sea,

and exploded harmlessly half a kilometer beyond its

target.

"Damn!" Aileea cried, frustrated.

One thing the Stilters were good at was dodging. And,

unlike their bigger ships, the hulls of their new

hydrofoils were largely nonmetallic

composites, giving Vare targeting radars little

to bite on. So far she had had to give few

instructions-and now her comrades were doing something she

wouldn't dream of asking them to do. They had begun

darting back and forth in front of the 'foils,

dangerously close to the dazzle-painted hulls.

The 'foils were not notoriously stable beasts. Though

they dwarfed the scooters, a collision with one at

speed would tumble a 'foil if not tear it to pieces.

The bigger craft were slowing down and beginning to swerve

themselves to avoid their tormentors. Aileea turned

her scooter and raced to join their dangerous game.

Stilter gunners blazed enthusiastically away

at the scooters. Their targets were small, fast, and

agile, and the Stilters were outstandingly bad shots. As

they lost way, though, the 'foils" hulls settled

back into the water. It slowed them down, but it also

rendered them less vulnerable to impact. The vessel

she had shot at was headed away in a wide arc

west, possibly running, possibly circling to come

in again. For the moment it was out of the fight. Aileea

overtook what had been the central craft,

turned to cross its bow. Ahead of her she saw

Gita , actually steering toward the "foil, guns

firing. The hydrofoil lunged forward at full

power, trying to catch the outrider before its foils bit

and lifted it

out of the water again. Aileea shouted wordlessly as she

watched the big craft run her friend down. She

hurled herself at the 'foil, which was continuing

to accelerate, hoping to surprise the outrider@. and

break past them to the ranch float. Aileea streaked

down the vessel's flank, raking it fore to aft with a

shuddering burst of her guns, fighting to hold the

scooter steady against the recoil, The water seemed

to boil around her as the 'foil gunners opened up on

her with everything they had.

Then she was past, circling the hydrofoil's

stem, cursing that she was now too close for her

remaining missile to arm itself. She prepared for

another run along the central 'foil's other

side. It would expose her to the point-blank fire

of two enemy craft. She didn't care.

As she lined up for her pass something flashed through the

corner of her peripheral vision. The hydrofoil's

stem exploded into two pulses of yelloworange

flame.

Victory cries rang from'her

communicator. She at heered to port and let her

scooter lose way as the hydrofoil began

to settle by the stern. Long-legged figures darted the

canting deck in panic, tumbled, thrashing, in the

water. Later she would see to rescuing

survivors-if a later happened. Half a

kilometer astern of the burning 'foil, dead between the

spreading legs of its wake, a single scooter

bobbed. "Gita?" Aileea said.

"I dove under the seaslug,"eaher old friend's

voice came back. "I guess I fooled him.

Fooled you, too, didn't IT" Aileea opened

her mouth, but her words clogged her

throat. "Some vacation, huh, Aili?" Gita

said with a laugh like a silver bell.

Lev uttered a harsh cry of triumph as the

third hydrofoil turned right about and fled. The

vessel Aileea had launched at, meanwhile, was

making good progress toward the horizon. "Good

job, people," Aileea said.

"Daughter," Aagard dinAthos's voice said,

"well done-was "It was Gita, Father."

"But I'm afraid it isn't over yet-was

The image of another hydrofoil

appeared in her display, transmitted from the float.

Beside it was a map, showing a blinking red dot

rapidly closing upon the steady white glow that

represented the ranch house.

"Father!" Aileea exclaimed, blasting power to her

impellers. "Why didn't you warn me?"

"You all were busy. I didn't want to distract

you." As he spoke he worked controls outside her

field of vision. At his back she saw

blue-white sky. He still stood on deck.

"Besides, I have the situation under control."

She felt her lips peel back from her teeth.

The other riders were lining up in a V formation,

trailing to port and starboard of her. They rode

flat out, bouncing off the wavetops like skipped

stones. It was a race to see who would reach the ranch

house first, scooters or lone "foil.

Aileea's eyes flicked desperately from

windscreen to display. Seven hundred meters,

six, five. The enemy vessel was only a little

farther from the float. "I think they're going to try

to board, Father," Aileea said.

Aagard dinAthos uttered a caw of triumph.

"No chance of that now! I've got-was

A lance of red light struck Aagard.

For an instant he became a figure of light,

pale in the sun's glare. Then the red beam

vanished, as did Aagard dinAthos and a section of the

rail.

"Father!"

Water spouted from beneath the Stilter craft's

starboard foil as a wrangler, transformed

by Aagard's signal into a homing mine, struck. The

foil itself was torn away. For a moment inertia

carried the vessel along, poised on one foil.

Then, with apparent deliberation, it began to tilt

toward the water. It veered right, went broadside,

went over. And then it was bouncing up again, stem high,

tumbling across the waves, disintegrating as it went.

When Aileea flashed past the float, the foil was

no more than a finger of burning wreckage pointing

toward its intended victim.

"Aileea," Krysztof said. "The tender is

preparing for missile launch."

"I am taking appropriate steps," came the

basso rumble of Mansur. "Aileea, I am

sorry about your father."

Aileea cried out in grief and frustration and

rage. The Stilter over-the-horizon missiles

weren't very accurate, but they were big enough that you

didn't want to linger too near to where they might be

landing.

"Scatter!?"' she yelled to her friends. She herself

turned and lined out to the north at full power.

Behind her, the float on which she had begun her

life began to sink beneath the waves.

The headquarters had been hewn from lava rock

by raw gouts of power. Only the floor had been

fused to a

glassy smoothness. Walls and ceiling remained

jagged, ready to claw at the unwary.

Klingons were not indifferent to comfort. But they liked

to act as if they were.

The young ensign prostrated himself on the polished

black stone where he had been thrown by two burly

ratings. "Qeyn HoDo waMuch, was he said to the

polished boots of the man who stood before him. "We

lost two craft-Pajwl'and "urng died with them."

He raised his head. His face was young and pale.

A bum glowed on one cheek. His beard was still far from

full and resembled seaweed trailed across rocks by the

tide. "The herd beasts ran again, First Captain,"

he said. "The fault is mine. We failed."

A rumble ran through the officers assembled at the

captain's back. They had been on this

accursed planet for nearly half a Klingon year,

fighting with one arm tied against a foe far more

resolute and resourceful than their allies.

Frustration and the grinding discomfort of life on this

hot, wet, foul world was beginning to eat away at

morale like the surf that battered down islands almost as

quickly as the planet's hyperactive mantle could

cast them up.

Captain of the First Rank Kain gazed down on

the youth with his one good eye. He stroked his long chin,

which was shaven clean in a departure from the normal

Klingon style. As if to compensate, his mustache

swept dramatically to either side of his fulllipped

mouth. Tall, broad in the chest and shoulders, narrow

in the hips, he was a striking figure, by Klingon

standards or by human.

For a moment the black-gauntleted tip of a thumb

brushed the patch that covered his right eye.

"I know the taste of failure," he said in a

resonant voice, far smoother than the usual

guttural Klingon snarl. Those who didn't know

him sometimes made fun of what they considered his

prissy mode of speech.

Once.

"Likewise its price." He dropped

his hand to the hilt of a curious circular,

multiple-bladed weapon slung at his waist. The

ensign lowered his cranial ridge to the floor. "I

request permission to die by my hand, to atone for my

failure."

"Denied."

The youth looked up. Again the rumble from behind

Kain's shoulder, louder this time.

"We are few," Kain said, "too few to waste.

IuHoHta " -- The last was spoken over his right

shoulder to his aide, a handsome young woman who wore

the insignia of a senior lieutenant on her gold

rank sash. "The ensign is sentenced to ten

minutes' confinement in the QI-GHPEJ. his

The face of the young ensign sagged in a parody of

relieved disbelief. Ten minutes in the agonizer

booth, which directly stimulated the pain center of the

brain, was a virtual eternity. Yet it would mean

he lived, and kept honor intact. Such lenience was

an act of grandmotherly kindness. Behind First Captain

Kain's left shoulder a heavy face twisted in a

snarl and a heavy hand snatched for a phaser. "Your

father's toadying to the terangan turned you soft and

spineless as they are!" the grizzled operations officer

roared. "Die, worm!"

At least he meant to roar. The words got lost in

the sudden gout of blood around the kligat, the

curious

throwing weapon that was suddenly lodged between his beard

and the collar of his tunic.

For a moment Kain stood looking down at the

would-be mutineer as his life gushed onto polished

black stone. "That kligal slew my

bond-brother, Juk," he murmured. "It's

really more than you deserved."

He bent, pulled forth the weapon, wiped it

carefully clean on JU-KNOWLEDGE'S tunic. He held

it negligently in his hand as he turned to face the

other officers.

"Is anyone else inclined to mistake

judiciousness for weakness?" he, asked. No one

spoke.

"Let us not forget what we do here," Kain said,

raising his voice so it rang off the snag-toothed

walls. "We have not come to wrest this planet from the

lost lera'ngan on behalf of our foolish

allies. When the time comes we shall take it for

ourselves.."

He made a snatching gesture with his free hand.

The others nodded and growled assent. This was

how a Klingon talked. Juk must have been crazy.

"It matters little how the war goes. All that

matters is that it goes. We are here to forge the

weapon that will split the hated Federation asunder-here

to serve the Devil in the Sea. And we are bait.

Set to draw the Earther who has done our empire

more harm than any other. 99

He slung the kligat, walked to the ensign, and

hauled him to his feet by the back of his torn

tunic. He ,easent him stumbling toward

IuHoHla' with a shove. She caught his arm and

held him upright without deigning to show strain. "Already

the rock rolls downhill, gathering momentum. Our

allies have summoned the Federation, thinking it is their

own idea. When that rock strikes bottom"-he

smiled-"it will crush the man who cost me my eye and

my brother.

"And we are the stone upon which James Kirk and his

Enterprise shall be broken!"

And his officers, one again with him, raised their hands

to the air and roared in the happy fury of the hunt.

"MR. ScorThat," Captain James Kirk

said in surprise. He was walking back toward a

comer of Min and Bill's Pub in Starbase 23,

to a table where Lieutenant Commander

Montgomery Scott sat with his legs stretched out

before him and a book in his hands. The pub had a very

relaxed atmosphere, which made it a popular

place for crews in from space to dissipate tens i

ion. At the moment, though, the captain and Scott

were the only patrons visible. "I'd never expect

to see you here, with the Enterprise undergoing such an

extensive retrofit."

Scott started,, and looked up guiltily.

"Captain," he said, placing the book on the table

and starting to his feet, "I'd be right there overseeing

"round the clockyou know that, sir-if only I could.

But Commodore Snodgrass made me leave! She

said I was working more'self to death." He shook his

head. "Imagine! Tossing me out of my own engine

room. If she wasn't a woman, I'd give

her a piece of my mind."

"Then be glad she is a woman, Mr.

Scott. People who try the Commodore on for size

usually wind up with more than their minds in pieces."

The chief administrator of the Starbase's

extensive drydock facilities had a reputation

for being a poor choice to trifle with.

Kirk slapped Scott on the shoulder. "Sit

down, sit down. If the Commodore has

actually gotten you to take a break, I don't

want to cause such a heroic achievement to go

to waste. Here, what're you reading?"

He glanced down at the book. Its screen showed

a column of English phrases accompanied

by transliterations of equivalent phrases in an

alien tongue. It made Kirk's throat hurt just

to read the rasping consonants, harsh-gutturals, and

glottal stops.

And then the sounds came together in his mind, and he

raised an astonished gaze to his engineering officer.

"Mr. Scott," he said, "a Klingon

dictionary?"

Scott nodded. "Aye, Captain." He

wouldn't meet Kirk's eye. Trying to hide a

grin, Kirk sat down. "Regardless of what

Captain-Lieutenant Korax said back at

Station K-7, half the sector is not learning

Klingon. You'll remember we got the better of

them pretty decisively on that occasion-not to mention

a few times since."

"Oh, aye," Scott said, nodding and smiling at

the reminiscence. Though he wasn't carrying too much

extra flesh- all things considered-his chin tended

to double when he nodded. "I guess we

taught those Sassenach to speak ill of the

Enterprise. his

"Ah-yes. I guess we did." Kirk sat

down. "Why are you learning Klingon, then, Mr.

Scott? I didn't know you had a passion for

languages." Almost five years with this crew, he

mused, and I'm still finding

things out about them. The fact did not disturb him; it

was just another voyage of exploration, and that, after

all, was what he lived for.

"Oh, I do not, sir," Scott said. Kirk

raised an eyebrow at him, a gesture he'd

unconsciously absorbed from his first officer. "It's

just that, what with the Klingons giving technical

assistance to the Romulans, and then this latest round of

peace talks with the Federation, there's a great lot of

Klingon engineering manuals floatin" around-was

Kirk gazed at his chief engineer and sighed a

deep sigh. "Scotty, you truly believe you are

relaxing, don't you?" Scott looked at him.

"Why, of course, Captain. What else would you

call it?"

The chirp of his communicator spared Kirk having

to respond. He took the unit from his belt and

flipped it open. "Kirk here."

"Chekov, acting captain, Enterprise, was a

voice said. Though the starship was currently in the

charge of Commodore Snodgrass and her merry

elves, she was still Kirk's responsibility.

Kirk could hear the young officer's pride at being in

command of the mighty vessel-and therefore due the courtesy

title of captain-warring with his impatience at having

to stay aboard while the rest of the bridge crew got

shore leave. "Admiral Satanta requests your

presence in his office as soon as convenient, sir."

"is Mr. Spock aboard?"

"No, sir. He's currently at Rosa's

Cantina."

Kirk was taken aback again; hanging out in a bar

was not a common form of recreation for his Vulcan first

officer. "I'll collect him myself, then-it's on

the way. Thanks." He started to close the

communicator, then raised it again. "Carry on,

Captain.

"Aye-aye, sir!"

Scott looked up from his book, which he'd snagged

the instant Kirk's attention was deflected. "Will you

be needing me, sir?"

"No, no, Scotty. Stay here and-relax."

Beaming with relief, Scott stuck his

nose back in his book. Kirk swung toward the

door and almost bumped into Min, the stout, cheerful

Terran proprietress, bustling up with her apron

and her tray to take his order.

"I'm sorry, Min. Have to run."

"Hurry back, Captain. You're always

welcome here." She smiled a great smile of

welcome. Most of the Terran crew of the

Enterprise-most of the humanoid crew, in

fact-said Min reminded them of a favorite grandmother.

It was one of the reasons the place was so popular. Of

course, the crew didn't spend all their R and

R time there.

Behind the bar loomed her husband, Bill, washing

glasses. The Atarakian was over two meters

high, with long, jointed antennae and huge, yellow,

selfluminous eyes, which his species, incapable of

speech, used as signal lamps for communication.

He nodded his great green chitinous head to Kirk,

flashing his eyes-literally-at the captain's wave of

greeting and farewell. -- The corridor of the

Starbase's civilian reservation was beginning to fill

with Starfleet personnel and the crews of ships from

half a hundred planets, members and

nonmembers of the UFP (united Federation

of Planets) alike. Starbase 23 was not built

on a planet, or in orbit about one; it had been

carved out of a metallic asteroid floating in the

debris belt of a blue giant whose enormous,

rapidly rotating mass was too great to permit the

formation of worlds. Instead of day

or night, the lives of its occupants were ruled

by shift change. The arched ceiling of the passageway

was high, and deliberately left rough, to provide

a contrast to the rectilinear regularity of most

starship interiors. The irregular metal

surfaces caught and danced with blue and orange and

red and yellow glints thrown out by the taverns and bars,

the restaurants and cabarets and shops, and the meditation

rooms of myriad faiths and philosophical

disciplines. Kirk sidestepped a snouted

Tellarite, who was rolling down the passageway

with a pugnacious swagger, paused to allow a pair of

Vulcans in the yellow robes and filigreed

golden ear clasps of savants from the lyceum

to emerge from a coffeehouse, and nodded greeting to a

blue Andorian standing before a shop that offered for sale

the Hii-dou-rai ceremonial stones, bits of

petrified wood laboriously hand-rubbed

into glossy-smooth round shapes, for which his

race was admired throughout the galaxy.the Andorian

bobbed his antennae politely.

Kirk continued, but had to brake almost at once

to avoid blundering into an altercation that came crashing out

the front door of an Orion pub. TW-O

pale pink-skinned male humanoids pummeled

each other with their fists, fighting with more passion than

skill. Whether either or both were Terran, Kirk

couldn't tell, though to his annoyance one wore a

red Starfleef General Services tunic.

Starfleet service was less onerous than

virtually any military service in the history of

any of the galaxy's known warrior races, among

whom Earth's humans were prominent. Starships were

spacious, clean, and well appointed. Most

menial tasks of cleaning and maintenance were performed

by machines. And

Starfleet personnel were all well-trained

professionals, not grunts or swabbies and

particularly not conscripts. They were where they wanted

to be, and had worked hard to get there. But Starfleet was

a demanding master. While combat was

only-thankfully-a minor component of Starfleet's

job, its main missions of the policing of the Federation,

internal and external diplomacy, and its

overriding task of scientific exploration were

extremely high-tension pursuits. Stress was as

much a part of a starship's atmosphere as oxygen,

especially here, near the F6deration's outward

fringe.

And despite everything twenty-third-century

technology could do, space was steaa harsh, hazardous

environment. A moment's carelessness-or even blind

chance-could kill not just a crewman or comwoman, but

an entire ship.

So for all the Federation's psychology and human

engineering, space crews were not much less prone to the

more extreme forms of blowing off steam than their

surface- navy predecessors had been. The

only consolation was that- with a few exceptions, like the

ultra-self-disciplined Vulcans-the Federation's

other races were little better behaved than humans.

I Kirk felt conflicting impulses-the one

to lay the hard arm on both combatants for the breach of

discipline, the other to'find out who was at fault and

knock him on his fanny. What he did was wait

a moment until the pair fell down on the

walkway, then step gingerly over the writhing, punching

tangle, through the cloud of profanity and the aroma of

cheap Orion distillates they exuded, and go

his purposeful way. Satanta was a friend of long

standing, but when a flag officer invited a captain

to wait upon him

at earliest convenience, it meant "Shag butt

down here at warp factor eight."

Rosa's Cantina wasn't exactly en

route, but it wasn't far off, either-a jog down a

dark and narrow side passage that at first glance

didn't seem meant to carry traffic at all.

Access way or afterthought, a few steps along it

curved left and led Kirk into the sound-and-fight

spill of Rosa's.

The cantina was darker than Min and Bill's, and the

atmosphere less wholesome-it was the sort of place

the crew went when they grew tired of Grandma. The

music floating out the open door surprised

Kirk-not the usual jarring Saurian jazz or

Orion Chrome-5, but the unmista kable, near

discordant wail of a Vulcan lyre.

Accompanying it was an equally unmistakable

contralto voice.

"Lieutenant Uhura!" Kirk said, stepping

into the cantina. It was dark, scarcely lit by dim

swirls of red and violet light. It was packed with

bodies, standing or perched on high, narrow

stools. Kirk recognized scattered Enterprise

crew. In a clear comer stood Uhura in a fall

of yellow light, her voice filling the bar without

necessity of a microphone. Sitting behind her

playing a swan-necked instru m-ent was none other

than the Enterprise's first officer.

The communications officer was just finishing her song.

Kirk made his way to her side through the applauding

crowd. She met him with a radiant smile.

"My set's over, Captain," she said.

"Sorry you didn't get here sooner."

"So am I. I have to admit I'm a bit

surprised to see you here, though." The Enterprise's

communications and electronic- warfare suite was

undergoing an even more extensive upgrade than her

engines, and the

newly promoted communications officer was, if

anything, more obsessive about overseeing work done on

her system than Scott was.

She laughed. "If I had my way, I'd still be

aboard making sure everything was done just right," she

said. "But I didn't have any choice in the

matter."

"Oh? Did Commodore Snodgrass run you

off, too?" "No," a gravelly voice

said from behind Kirk, 7 did." "Bones?" Kirk

said, turning.

Dr. Leonard McCoy nodded. "I swear,

I've got a crew of compulsives to try to keep

inside their skins. You, Uhura, Scott-each of

you is worse than the next. You just don't know when

to quit. At least Sulu has his hobbies to keep

him sane." Ignoring the obvious implication,

Kirk said, "What about you, Doctor? Between you and the

Commodore, Uhura and Scotty are taking time out.

Even Mt. Spock is letting his hair down."

Placing his instrument carefully on a stand, Spock

shot him a scandalized look.

"You, on the other hand, are still on duty, aren't

you?" said Kirk. "Looking after your charges like a mother

hen."

"Confound it, Jim, that's different," said

McCoy. Kirk nodded. "Uh-huh. his

Spock straightened. "You were coming to ask me

to accompany you on some business, I believe,

Captain."

Kirk looked at him. "How'd you know that?" "You

strode in here in a highly purposeful manner. You

showed surprise at seeing Dr. McCoy and

Uhura, but none on seeing me. Therefore, it

was I whom you were seeking. And the tendency which you are

visibly

struggling, not entirely with success, to control-to

bob upon the balls of your feet-indicates

impatience to be somewhere." ""Brilliant

deduction, Holmes."" He held out a hand.

"Shall we?"

Spock turned to Uhura. "It was, as always,

an honor to accompany your singing, Lieutenant.

The mathematical subtleties displayed-was

"Spock!" McCoy exclaimed in disgust.

"You'd explain away a sunset, too, wouldn't

you?"

The Vulcan cocked a brow. "What is so

esoteric about that, Doctor? It is merely the

occultation of the primary-11

Kirk took him by the arm. "If you'll excuse

us-was He towed Spock out the door.

Five meters down the alley, an

eight-foot-tall Gorn, was hoisting Sulu into the

air by the head.

"SuLu!" Kirk whipped his hand phaser from his

belt and pointed it at the monster's scaled back.

The reptilian creature lowered Sulu until

his boot soles touched the stone floor. It

removed its taloned hands from his head.

The helmsman rolled his head on his neck.

"That's much better," he said. "I don't know if

it'll ever replace shiatsu, but it works."

Kirk glanced over his shoulder at Spock. The

Vulcan stood a step behind him, erect and

unruffled. "Gorn massage techniques are

renowned for their therapeutic qualities," Spock

said. "Their rather rough-and-ready nature has, however,

made their acceptance slow within the Federation."

"Captain-Mr. Spock," said Sulu, nodding

past the enormous masseur. The creature started

to turn. Kirk hastily stuck his phaser back in

his belt, thanking fate that the Gorn had a

predator's forward-looking

eyes. "I'd like to introduce my friend, Mr.

Horatio Homblower." "Horatio ...

Homblower?"

"Your people cannot pronounce my name," said the Gorn

via the translator medallion hanging over his

steel-hard pectoral scutes. The unit was set

to produce a high, almost adolescent voice.

"Among you I have chosen to go by the name of a great hero of

your history." He held out a scaly claw.

Kirk hesitated just an eyeblink, then

took the creature's hand and shook it firmly.

"Our-history. Ah, good choice. You pay great

honor to our traditions."

The being swelled visibly, which Kirk took for a

good sign. His sole personal experience with the

Gorn race had not been a particularly happy

one. Since that time the warlike reptilian beings'

relationship with the Federation had regularized somewhat, and

was for the most part peaceful. "To brave the fearful great

expanses of your planet's seas must have required

an extraordinary man," the Gorn said. "Such

bravery-to risk one's life to an environment so

powerful and chaotic."

"Not much open water on the Gorn homeworld,

Captain," Sulu explained. "Horatio, here,

is science officer on a Gorn exploratory

vessel undergoing repairs in drydock."

"Captain," Spock said.

"Right, Spock. Mr. Sulu, I'll let you

get back to your discussion of comparative therapeutic

techniques. Next time you're thinking of trying any

radical experimentation, though, you might first check with

Dr. McCoy."

Sulu laughed. "I'll do that, Captain."

As a student at Starfleet Academy,

Kirk had gotten the impression of then-Captain

Douglas Satanta as an individual who

seldom sat. As a lecturer in Principles of

Exploration he had not been a nervous man by any

means; when he stood he stood still, except when he

talked. Then he accompanied his baritone voice with

deliberate, powerful sweeps of his hands. The

admiral was standing with his back to the door when it

hissed aside to admit Kirk and Spock. He

seemed to be studying the image of a world on a

wall-sized viewscreen. At least Kirk

guessed it was a world; all he could see around the

admiral's looming figure was featureless blue

disk, as if the Starbase's computer were tardy at

drawing in the planet's ter- rain.

The admiral turned. Black hair hung. in

glossy braids to the epaulets of his Starfleet

uniform, framing a heavy dark face, massive through

cheek and jaw. The face was scarred and pitted as an

asteroid. Satanta had been a planetary scout

and first-contact specialist before he became a fighting

starship captain. He was a man who seldom

spoke of his exploits. Plenty of others were more

than willing to do that for him. He nodded

deliberately. "Kirk. Mr. Spock."

His formality told Kirk that something was up;

otherwise that ominous- looking face would have split in

a starling grin, and it would have been "Jim," an

engulfing handshake, and a clap on the shoulder.

"Admiral. I came as quickly as I could round

up my first officer." He gave Spock a

sidelong glance and grinned. "I found him in a

nightclub on Third Level."

Satanta raised his eyebrows. "Mr.

Spock, carousing in a pub?"

"Lieutenant Uhura requested that I

provide instru32

mental accompaniment for her singing," Spock said

imperturbably. "I have observed that her voice

has a salubrious effect upon the morale of the

crewtherefore, it was only logical to comply. Besides,

she was most insistent." He cocked his own eyebrow.

"With all due respect I believe that hardly

comprises "carousing," Admiral."

"If you gentlemen have finished your male bonding

rituals," a cool voice said, "I believe we

have business to attend to." Kirk turned his head.

A woman in civilian clothes of conservative and

expensive cut sat in a chair swiveled away from

the conference table. Dark red hair was pulled

back from a stem face. Her eyes were green. He

had the impression that she was tall, but that might have come

from the stiffly erect way she held herself.

"Commissioner Wayne is correct," Satanta

rumbled, his normally deep voice dropping an

octave. "Commissioner, may I present Captain

James T. Kirk of the starship, Enterprise and his

first officer, Mr. Spock. Captain, Mr.

Spock-Moriah Wayne, the Federation deputy

commissioner for interspecies affairs. She

monitors compliance with the Prime Directive."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Commissioner,"

Kirk said. "I've heard a great deal about you,

Captain Kirk. In fact, certain of your accounts

of first contact with nonhuman races are required

reading for our department."

"Ah," Kirk said, trying not to make himself look

furtive by sneaking a glance at the admiral.

"Your approach is direct, not to say abrupt,

and frequently lacks sensitivity. Your handling of the

Gamma Trianguli VI situation, for instance.

On that

occasion you definitely violated the letter of the

Prime Directive, if perhaps not its spirit."

Kirk's expression hardendd.

"A Starfleet review board found the

captain's actions were entirely justified,"

Spock said. "After all, the computer named Vaal was

in the process of attempting to destroy the

Enterprise when Captain Kirk destroyed it."

"Your defense of your captain does you credit,

Mr. Spock, but it is unnecessary," Wayne said.

She rose, only slightly less briskly than

if she were standing to attention, and gave Kirk a look

of frank appraisal. She was tall, he noted.

"The qualities he displayed on Gamma

Trianguli VI may be precisely what we

require for our mission."

Now Kirk did look at Satanta. The

admiral nodded. "We're pretty much on the

fringe of the galaxy here, as well as Federation

Space," the admiral said. "There isn't much beyond

us for a couple of hundred million light years,

till you get to the next galaxy. But there are a

few systems out past the boundaries of the Federation.

One of them contains a planet called Okeanos."

He stepped aside to clear their view of the great

blue disk. It appeared as featureless as before.

"It was found by a ship of the First General

Survey, UES Herndn de Soto,

back in 2092. The primary is cafled Joan-

Marie's Star, after the navigator. It was her

turn to name something. The chief steward, of all people,

named the planet itself. Its classification is M.

Computer, rotate."

At first the disk didn't change. Then dots

appeared halfway down its curve-chains of

islands, twining back and forth across the equator like

tawny snakes. A few of the islands were

respectably large, but none approached continental

size.

"As the name suggests, it's a water world. Land

masses represent less than three percent of the

surface. Beyond that not much is known. The de Soto

gave it a once-over with scanners and went its

way."

"Why was not more attention paid to the planet?"

Spock asked. "In the early days of Terran

space exploration, human- habitable planets were

at a distinct premium."

"The classification is a generous one, Mr.

Spock," Commissioner Wayne said. She had a good

voice, a rich, well- modulated alto. "The

planet is nearly as hot as Vulcan, and equally

bombarded with ultraviolet radiation. In

addition, it has a dense crust, containing a high

proportion of heavy metals." "Which means high

levels of background radiation," Kirk said.

"Earth humans cannot survive long on the

surface without drugs or shielded environments,"

the admiral said. "Not exactly a tourist

paradise," Kirk said. "But a beautiful world, if

one is prepared to meet it on its own terms," the

commissioner said, looking at the image with

half-closed eyes.

"You have a great love for the sea, Commissioner?"

Kirk asked.

"I have a great love for any world where the elemental

forces of nature still hold sway, unconquered by our

so-called civilization. I'm an ecologist

by training, Captain."

461 see. 99

"The survey crew was surprised to find the

planet in the first place," Satanta said.

"Outside the spiral arm, all you generally see are

ancient Population Two stars, which almost never have

planets-and when they do, they're gas giants. The

ship was actually making a side

trip to do a close-range study of a pulsar

twenty-five light-years distant from

Okeanos. Spectroscopic observation revealed the

nearby presence of a Population One star, and a

closer took showed it had solid planets,

including several in the biozone." "So the de Soto

decided not to waste much time on a marginally habitable

world and moved on to look at the pulsar," Kirk

said. "I'm a little unclear as to what this all has

to do with the Enterprise, Admiral."

46 You're going there," Satanta said. "More

precise-ly, you are transporting Commissioner

Wayne there."

In surprise Kirk looked first at the

admiral and then at the commissioner. At close

range she was as tall as he was. She also might

conceivably have been called attractive, if she

hadn't gone to such lengths to make herself look like a

stern schoolteacher.

"Your commission concerns itself with the affairs of newly

discovered alien races, does it not?"

"We prefer the term "sentients."" Wayne

gave a slight smile. "They're not alien

to themselves, Captain. But yes."

"Then what official interest do you have in an

uninhabited, radioactive swimming pool at the

tail end of the Milky Way? However

beautiful it may be."

"In their haste to return to more congenial reaches of

space, Captain, the crew of the de Soto

overlooked a few important details,"

Wayne said. "Such as the fact that the world they called

Okeanos was inhabited by an intelligent

species." "They call themselves the Susuru,"

Satanta said. "We know nothing about them beyond the

fact that they contacted us by subspace radio

sixty-two stardates; ago."

"I'm sure the commissioner is eager to meet this

new race and make certain that the Prime

Directive is

honored. But the Enterprise is still undergoing

upgrade. She's scheduled for twelve more days in

drydock."

"You'll be cutting that short," the admiral said.

"Starfleet orders."

Kirk frowned at him. Frowning at a flag

officer was not usually considered healthy for one's

career, but Kirk had never been one for letting his

career get in the way of doing his duty as he saw

it.

Fortunately, Satanta was no man to hold it

against him. "Jim," he said, "you haven't

heard the whole story yet. According to the Susuru, they

are not alone on Okeanos. There are also Earth

humans."

"Oh?" Kirk turned to Wayne. "So you're

going to Okeanos to open relations with both groups."

She shook her head firmly. "According to the

comSusuru, the humans are unwelcome

intruders," she said. "They're doing what Earth

humans always dooppressing the native peoples and

ravaging the environment.

"I am going to Okeanos to convince them to leave-with the

Enterprise to back me up."

f'daU VE You Nomcm,

CmTA-IATION?-MR. Scott's voice came

echoing back past the seat of his uniform trousers-"how

these Jeffries tubes have the nasty habit of getting

narrower and narrower as years go by?"

Kirk let the hand that held the palmtop screen

displaying the blueprints for this sector of the ship rest

on a rung of the vertical access tube and sighed.

Scott was his senior by a respectable margin. It was

only natural that he should feel a certain discomfort

at the constant widening of the gap between him and his youth.

Telling yourseble"...t is a great way to avoid

admitting that you've been noticing the same

thing, said Kirk's internal voice. A side of his

mouth quirked up in a grin; strange how much that

voice had come to sound like Bones's. When it didn't

sound like Spock's.

"Marked and recorded, Mr. Scott," he said.

"Carry on.v9

"Well, one thing's for certain, Captain. No

matter how often they lift her face, she's always the

same, and always a lady," Kirk grinned at

Scott's boot soles. The romantic side of

his own nature was stirred by Scotty's undying

devotion to his first and only true love. But the

sad fact was, a man far gone in the grip of his

passions could get to be a dead bore. Even to someone

who, like Kirk, shared that passion to a large extent.

"And speakin' of the ladies, Captain," the engineer

said, turning a grin down past his paunch at

Kirk, 66 you'll no doubt be aware our

distinguished passenger is by way of a bonny lass

herself." , Kirk met his eye. "Really, Mr.

Scott? I hadn't noticed."

The engineer turned a grin down to him. "Oh,

aye, Captain, I understand. I do indeed." And he

winked. Kirk scowled, but held back the angry

words that rose in his throat. What am I

getting so testy about? he chided himself The chief

engineer was just making conversation as they worked.

They were in the process of refamiliarizing themselves

with the starship. Though the Enterprise's overhaul had

been interrupted by the mission comto Okeanos, much had

been completed, and the journey was serving as a shakedown

cruise. In fact, the ship carried several dozen

technicians from Starbase 23 who were still hard at

work installing and fine- tuning.

Naturally, Mr. Scott had to eyeball each

and every "improvement"-quotation marks his-himself And

now he had no gimlet-eyed Commodore to send him

packing. Kirk felt bound to accompany him as much

as he could. Generally Kirk didn't have a great deal

of' patience with detail. His tendency to improvise

had

early been marked by his instructors at

Starfleet Academy, and not with unqualified

approval. That tendency-and ability-had kept him

and most of his crew alive through nearly five years

of galactic exploration. Even if it did tend

to make his superiors tear their hair.

But one area where Kirk had a positive hunger

for detail was the Enterprise herself. He believed in

knowing his ship to the finest resolution possible,

making her every capability and weakness as much a part of

him as his DNA code. "Bridge to captain."

Spock's voice echoed down the Jeffries tube.

There were intercom panels in the access

passageway, of course, but none happened to be

convenient. Kirk unclipped his communicator from his

belt and snapped it open. "Kirk here."

"Commissioner Wayne requests your presence on

the bridge at your earliest convenience, sir."

Kirk frowned. Was Spock's voice even

crisper than usual? The deputy commissioner had

permission to be on the bridge, as a matter of

courtesy-it was neither Starfleet's policy nor

Kirk's to be too stiffnecked about that kind of thing.

But what she might be up to requesting the captain's

presence there he couldn't imagine.

"I'm on my way, Mr. Spock." He

snapped the communicator shut. "Well, Mr.

Scott, it looks as if I'm going to have to leave you

to yourown devices for a while. Have to keep our

distinguished passenger. happy. At least, if there were

anything seriously wrong, like a Romulan attack,

I'm sure Mr. Spock would have mentioned it."

"Our fair commissioner can't seem to get enough of your

manly compresence, Captain," Scott

said. 16 The

lass'll scarce give me the time of day herself.

I reckon there's no accounting for taste."

"That will be more than sufficient, Mr. Scott,"

Kirk said briskly, and scrambled down the

handholds to the passageway below.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Kirk asked as

he strode onto the bridge.

Commissioner Wayne stood beside Spock, who

occupied the captain's chair. She held her head

high, as if in defiance. Her hair was wound into a

tight bun that glistened like spun copper. With her

body language it made her look haughty, almost

aristocratic, rather than severe. Her skin looked

smooth and shiny and hard, as if it were covered in

glaze, or a coat of ice. She wore a tight

tunic and trousers in black and gray in a style

currently fashionable among the UFP

bureaucracy. Kirk sensed tension, and it didn't

take him long to localize it. Spock was

unreadable as always. Sulu-7 Sulu customarily

sat at his helmsman's station in a posture of

relaxed alertness, flexible but ready to respond

instantly. Now he held himself rigidly erect,

his spare frame drawn so tight he

practically vibrated.

"Captain Kirk," Wayne said, turning

to face him as the elevator doors hissed shut behind

him. "I regret to inform you that your Mr. Sulu is

in serious violation of Federation law." Kirk

stopped, and looked from the civilian to Sulu.

Sulu looked straight ahead, at the field of

stars seemingly rushing into the main viewing screen. The

stars were beginning to thin out as the starship drove into the

outer reaches of the galaxy at multiples of the speed

of light.

"What's the charge? Reckless driving7"

"This is hardly a joking matter, Captain."

"Very well." Kirk's expression hardened.

"We will discuss this in the briefing room. Mr.

Kyle, you have the con. Mr. Spock. Mr.

Sulu. If you'll accompany me.tl

"Aye, Captain," Sulu said. He rose, still

not looking at either Wayne or the captain. Kyle

slid into his seat. "Commissioner," Kirk said.

"Surely we can discuss the matter here as

easily-was

"Now. 11

"Computer," Mr. Spock said as they entered the

briefing room.

"Recording," said the computer in a feminine

voice. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Spock,"

Kirk said, seating himself near the three-faced screen

at the table's head. No one else made a move

to sit. "This is not yet a formal proceeding.

Computer, don't record these proceedings."

"Acknowledged, dear," the computer said. Kirk

felt his face get hot. The commissioner's eyes were

darting green laser beams at him.

"I thought we had that little problem fixed," he said

apologetically.

"This isn't a court martial?" the commissioner

asked with a poisonous smile.

"No. It's a simple discussion at this point."

"I thought the military mind loved its little

formalities." "Ibis military mind loves

having a firm grasp of the facts before taking action.

Excuse me, Mr. Spock?" "Just clearing my

throat " Captain."

Kirk gave him a few heartbeats of hard

eye. The first

officer remained unruffled. Kirk turned back

to Wayne. 4'ationow, just what is it that Lieutenant

Sulu is accused of, Commissioner?"

"I overheard him talking on the

bridge. He spoke quite candidly of transporting

possibly dangerous life-forms in his quarters."

Kirk cocked his head. "Really, Mr. Sulu?

What exactly are you keeping in there now?

Denebian slime devils? A mugatu?

Tribbles?"

"No, Captain. It's a mycellium."

"A what?"

"A walking slime mold, from the Gorn

homeworld. Mr. Hornblower gave it to me. It's

really a fantastic organism, Captain. It's

a kind of carnivorous yellow and purple carpet.

It can travel up to half a kilometer a day."

Sulu was a man of many enthusiasms, and he was

warming up to one of them. "That's something of a record,

sir."

Kirk looked at him a moment longer. "A

slime mold." He gave his head a little shake.

"It is truly an unusual organism,

Captain, possessing many unique attributes,"

added Spock.

"Thank you, Mr. Spock. Is that what you

heard the lieutenant talking about, Commissioner?"

"Yes, Captain."

He took a deep breath. "I fail

to see how a walking slime mold constitutes a

threat to the security of the Federation. No matter how

fast it walks."

"Certainly, Captain, the potential for

ecological devastation is enormous should such an

organism be released on a world other than its

planet of origin," Spock said. Wayne shook

her head. "I find it unsettling that a

man in your position could be unaware of such a

basic

fact."

"Commissioner, I'm not unaware of the danger.

Neither is Lieutenant Sulu. And I'm sure

he has no intention at all of letting his ...

specimen ... go, on anybody's planet."

"But the danger of accidental release always

exists," Wayne said. "That's why Federation law

explicitly forbids the transportation of such

organisms."

Kirk sat back in his chair and drummed fingers,

on its padded arm. "Commissioner Wayne, we are

transporting you to your destination in what I'm sure

you'll admit is a fair degree of comfort. But that

does not mean we're a cruise liner. Nor is

Mr. Sulu an irresponsible tourist

trying to smuggle an exotic alien animal home

With him for a pet.

"The Enterptise is a ship of exploration. Her

crew are picked and trained specialists in

exploration. Collecting-yes, and

transporting-alien organisms is an

important part of our mission."

"The law-was Wayne began.

"Does not apply in the present case,

Commissioner," Spock said. "Section

Five-oh-Four A, paragraph three, of the

Federation Environmental Statutes clearly

provides an exemption to exploratory and

scientific vessels and their crews."

Kirk stood up. "Really, Commissioner, Mr.

Sulu's slime mold will not be ravaging any

ecosystems. We know how to handle these things."

Commissioner Wayne exhaled and lowered her head,

seeming to lose a centimeter of statute. "Very

well. I won't pursue the matter. Mr.

Sulu, I hope you understand there's nothing personal

involved. I'm just trying to do my duty, to nature

and the Federa- 44

tion. Sometimes"-the ice cracked, ever so

slightly66sometimes I can be a bit

overzealous."

Sulu glanced at the captain. "Sure,

Commissioner. I understand."

"That will be all, gentlemen," Kirk said. The

two men left. Wayne started to follow.

"Commissioner," Kirk said. "A word with you?"

"Certainly." She let the door slide to behind her

and leaned back against it. It seemed mildly out of

character for the unyielding Federation commissioner.

"I understand that you have to do your job as you see fit,

just like the rest of us aboard," Kirk said. "But I

would appreciate it if in the future, should you have

any accusations to make against any of my crew, you

come to me directly. Public humiliation is not

exactly good for morale."

The commissioner frowned. Kirk met her furious

gaze head on.

Her expression softened particle by particle.

"Fair enough." She paused, studying him as if she

had never really looked at him before. "You're very

solicitous of your men, aren't you?" The question took

Kirk aback. Almost in spite of himself he

smiled. "That's my job."

"And you're very good at it."

"Starfleet seems to think so. They let

me keep it. Now, Commissioner, if you'll please

excuse me, I have a starship to run."

WrrHave A SHPJLL Yip Lieutenant

Sulu sprang forward and disstruck Captain

James Kirk on the side of the head with a stick.

The helmsman stepped back. "You need to keep your

left- hand stick higher, Captain," he said, his

voice muffled by the duraplast faceplate of his

protective helmet. "You make it too easy

to sneak one in, otherwise."

Kirk resisted the urge to try to rub the side of

his head. His helmet was thoroughly padded, as were his

hands, knees, and elbows, not to mention his

protective cup. The sticks, half- meter

lengths of hard polymer, were likewise padded. Still,

the blow had stung. Sulu possessed a wiry

strength that was surprising in view of his size. "Shall

we try again?" "Sure, Captain. Remember-in

a lot of ways escrima is a lot like boxing.

Martial arts all pretty much work according to the same

principles." They

had the aerobics room to themselves. Sulu's words

echoed slightly. "You're a pretty fair boxer,

so you should pick it up fairly quickly."

Kirk raised an eyebrow. Pretty

fair? he thought. He had been the consistent

runner-up in the middleweight division at

Starfleet Academy, losing year after year to the

detested Finnegan. His tormentor graduated at

the end of Kirk's junior year. It still rankled

Kirk that only as a senior, without Finnegan

to face, had he finally been able to take the

championship. He had not kept up with boxing. It

was hard enough to find time to stay in shape, even with Dr.

McCoy harping at him constantly. But Sulu's

words pricked his vanity. He raised his sticks.

"Look to your own guard, Mr. Sulu," he said,

and launched a quick swing at the helmsman's he-ad.

Sulu danced back, and Kirk took great

satisfaction in the fact that his parry seemed rushed.

He aimed a whack at Sulu's advanced left

knee. A beat later he fired an overhand stroke

at Sulu's head. There were advantages to a combat

art that used two weapons, he thought.

To both sides. Sulu countered both strikes with

solid blocks and leapt to the offensive. He

became a whirlwind. Kirk found himself staggering

back, batting ineffectually at the sticks that whistled

and flashed inches before his face. Sulu's left

stick darted around and down, delivering a

resounding whack to Kirk's unprotected ribs. As

Kirk tried to block, Sulu's right came down in

an overhand blow that landed directly between the

captain's eyes. Kirk reeled back three

steps and sat down hard on the resilient mat that

covered the gym floor.

Sulu was instantly at his side. "Captain,

are you all right?" He tried to help his superior

up.

Kirk waved him off. "I can stand on my own,

Mr. Sulu. Nothing's turt except my

pride."

He caught the helmsman trying to swallow a

grin. "I think you're enjoying this altogether too much,

Mr. Sulu."

"Oh, no, Captain," Sulu said a little too

quickly. "But maybe we should take it a little slower,

until you get the hang of it?" Kirk shook his

head. "I won't be coddled, Mr. Sulu. You can

instruct me on the niceties of form later. If

I'm going to spar, I'll spar all out."

A trickle of sweat ran tickling down his

nose. He removed the helmet. "I think I will

take a bit of a breather."

Sulu nodded, took off his own helmet,

and tucked his sticks under his arm. Kirk turned

away to mask his hand feeling gingerly at his ribs.

He'd been lying when he said the blows hadn't

hurt. He felt as if he'd been kicked by a

horse. "I thought you were devoted to fencing, Mr.

Sulu," he said, a trifle plaintively.

"That's still my first love, Captain. But I

don't spend all my time with it. I don't want

to go stale."" Reflecting that there wasn't much

risk of that happening to his mercurial helmsman,

Kirk went and got a drink from the water fountain.

Sulu followed.

"I'm working my way through the martial arts,

actually," Sulu said. "I've been studying

Orion dancefighting, which is a lot like Brazilian

capoeira. Before that I did Tellarite

dag-jumag, except to really get that right a

human-sized person has to practice it on his

knees, which gets wearing. Escrima's a lot of

fun. And

it's very practical. Did you know Ferdinand

Magellan was killed by an escrimador with

rattan sticks?"

"I can't tell you how reassuring that is,"

Kirk said as the other bent to- drink,

"since I'm in the same line of work Magellan

was."

"From what I've heard, you're a lot nicer

to work for," Sulu said with a grin.

Into the exercise room came Commissioner

Wayne, wearing a pink leotard over white

tights. A cloth circlet consisting of a pink roll

braided together with a white one kept the sweat that sheened

her forehead from dripping into her eyes. Apparently

she had been working out on the machines in the neighboring

compartment'

"Oh, Captain," she said. "I heard

voices-I hope I'm not disturbing anything."

"Not at all," Kirk said, wiping his face with a

towel. "Mr. Sulu was just instructing me in the fine

points of Filipino stick- fighting."

"Uh, Captain-if you don't mind, I'd

better go. I'm on duty soon."

"Certainly, Sulu. And thanks for the workout."

"Sure," the helmsman muttered. He nodded

to the commissioner without looking at her and sidled out of the

room. She looked after him with a puzzled

expression. "He seemed uncomfortable. I wonder

why he hurried out."

"You don't know?" Kirk said,

surprised. She shook her head. "You did accuse

him of a serious crime, Commissioner. One that

carries a very stiff sentence."

It was her turn to look surprised. "But I was

only doing my job!"

Kirk shrugged. For an obviously intelligent

woman,

who had risen high in the ranks of Federation

officialdom, she showed some startling gaps in her knowledge

of people. Wayne looked at the helmet, sticks, and

gauntlets Kirk had left sitting by the wall.

"Are you a martial artist, Captain?" "No. Not

really. I try to stay limber enough to stay alive on

strange new worlds."

She laughed. "Ali, yes. Landing Party

Kirk. Never content to stay behind on the bridge

while others beam down into danger."

"You seem to know a lot about me," Kirk said,

starting to feel nettled.

"Is that so surprising, Captain? You've

become quite a legend in the Federation service in the

last five years." She gave him a sidelong

glance, half sly, half shy. "Would you care to spar

with me? Or don't you fight with women?" He rubbed

his aching nibs. "I have an unfair

advantage in mass," he said. "I'm a good deal

heavier than

you. 19

"But I'm not exactly small. And I'm

pretty good at taking care of myself. My father

insisted that I learn."

Kirk looked her over appraisingly-something he

had not really done before. His status inhibited him from

dealing with her entirely as he might another woman,

he had to admit to himself.

He knew she was tall, and not overweight. The

utilitarian clothes she affected did not conceal those

facts, but also failed to call attention to any

particulars. Now he saw that she had a lithe,

long-legged ranginess to her-a figure carrying little

excess pad- 50

ding, but still entirely feminine. She moved with a

dancer's grace and held herself well balanced.

He gestured at the escrima props. "Are you

a stick-fighter too?"

She shook her head. "Bare-handed."

He shrugged. They stepped out on the mat and faced

each other. "Any rules?" she asked.

"Don't do any damage my ship's doctor

can't fix."

"Fair enough-,,

She began to circle counterclockwise.

Crouching, hands up, he turned to keep facing her.

After half a minute it became clear she was waiting

for him to initiate an attack. Obligingly he

came forward in a half-speed lunge.

She grabbed his hand, turned away from him, and

jackknifed forward. He went flying over her

shoulder to land flat on his back with a resounding whump.

All the air exploded out of his body.

"I'm sorry," she said, standing over him. "I

thought you knew how to land."

"I ... do," he said. He felt as if he were

lying there in several pieces. It took some time

to pick himself up. "You just took me by surprise."

She grinned at him. "Try again. As if you mean

it this time." If that's what you want. He swung a

right-handed blow for the side of her head, palm open.

The fact was he didn't want to hit her with his bare

fist. Also, he knew he'd likely bust his

knuckles.

She whipped her left arm up in a forearm

block. At the same time she stepped into him, thrust

her right leg and hip past his, and drove the heel

of her right hand into his sternum with a snap of

her hips.

Kirk cartwheeled. This time he got a shoulder

tucked and rolled properly, taking much of the force

out of the impact.

64 Very good landing," she said, as he climbed

to his

feet.

"You're not so bad yourself," he said dryly. She

laughed. "Aikido and judo are the styles I

learned. I don't believe in causing unnecessary

harm. Even to an attacker."

"You're a pacifist, then," he said, massaging

his breastbone. "Not entirely," she said, "but

close."

He lunged for her, trying to grapple and power her

down. She grabbed his right wrist and he found himself

spinning through the air again. This time he had no time

to tuck; he landed flat and hard.

Instead of lying there stunned he rolled onto his

side and swept the commissioners legs, out from under her

with a scissors kick.- It was her turn to go down

hard and get the breath knocked out of her. Before she

could recover he was lying half on top of her,

pinning her wrists to the mat. "So," she gasped when

she could breathe again, 41 you're not just another

military jock, loaded down with male chauvinism

masquerading as chivalry, after all."'@. He had

to admire her for getting the speech out. "Maybe I

am," he said, lifting himself off her. "But I also

hate to lose." He held out a hand to help her

up. Her eyes narrowed, and the strength of her glare

rocked him back on his heels. Then she took his

hand and let him pull her upright. For a moment they

stood nose to nose, their bodAes touching. Wayne

looked into his eyes with an ex- 5 2

pression he couldn't read. It seemed almost like

wonder. A heartbeat before he reached for her she

pirouetted away. "I'd best not keep you from the

bridge any longer, Captain." He let go a

ragged breath. "You're right, Commissioner. Duty

calls."

They showered and dressed out in their respective

locker rooms. In the foyer to the gym complex they

met. "Will you walk with me to the bridge,

Captain?" she asked. It was on the tip of

Kirk's tongue to ask why she felt she needed

to be on the bridge. Master of unarmed combat though

she might be, she was still a highranking civilian

official, and he knew all too well that such

officials had their foibles. Even if they

did happen to be decidedly handsome women. "My

pleasure," he said, and gestured for her to go ahead.

Dr. McCoy was just walking toward them, down the

corridor from the turbolift. "I just ran

into Sulu," thedoctor said, his round face crinkled

with concern. "Shall I have Nurse Chapel bring a

gurney for you?"

"Very funny, Bones."

"I'm just an old country doctor," McCoy

said, "so you don't have to pay me any more mind than you

usually do. But if you won't stop gadding about the

surface of every hostile planet we make orbit

around, at least you can refrain from getting yourself

knocked to pieces in the safety of your own ship."

"Healthy exercise does him a lot less harm

than sitting in his captain's chair getting fat,"

Wayne said. "I should think you'd know that,

Doctor-unless

your medical ideas are as antiquated as the

speech patterns you affect."

The doctor stiffened. "Among my antiquated

ideas are certain notions about the proper manner for a

gentleman to address a lady," he said. "On the

other hand-- Kirk held his hands up. "Bones.

Commissioner Wayne. Peace. Dr.

McCoy and I are old friends, Commissioner-,

we've been going on like this for years, and we're both

too old to stop."

"Speak for yourself, Captain," McCoy said.

"Do you think it's appropriate for a subordinate

to address you that way?" Wayne asked. She seemed

sincerely puzzled. "Yes. 91

.mcCoy's blue eyes bored into her. "Do you

think it would be better for morale if we had a

uniform shirt stuffed full of Starfleet regulations

for a captain? Our people aren't Romulans."

"Perhaps the Federation would be better off if they

were," Wayne said. "Our citizens are

undisciplined and self-indulgent." "I thought you were

the grand antimilitarist, Commissioner," McCoy

said. "Why are you suddenly hipped on discipline?"

"Discipline and a military mind-set are not

synonymous, Doctor. For all the efforts of the

Federation government to mandate an environmentally

sustainable lifestyle, the fact remains that-was

"I find this debate endlessly fascinating,"

Kirk said. "But unfortunately I have to go to work.

If you'll excuse me"...99 "I'll be in

sickbay," the doctor said, eyeing Wayne with

distaste, "puttering with my horse needles and

patent medicines."

He stalked away. "A strange man,"

Wayne said. "And an angry one."

"He just likes to act irascible. It's part of his

self-image- 19 The commissioner gave him a

skeptical look. He thought of pointing out that she

didn't strike him as being all that different from

McCoy. Then he thought better of it. They walked

down to the turbolift. The crewfolk that they passed

smiled and nodded to the captain. Kirk returned the

greetings.

In the lift, Wayne said, "Your crew seem

to like you, Captain."

Kirk shrugged. "I just believe in 'treating people

decently." "They're not required to salute you?"

Kirk laughed. "Excuse me, Commissioner. I

don't mean to be rude. But I have to say that, while

you seem to know a lot about me personally, you have some

gaps in your knowledge about Starfleet."

"You're right. Your contacts with xenoforms fall under

the Commission's purview. Starfleet protocol

does not."

She studied him under lowered brows. "Captain,

we're going to be working together very closely under

circumstances that will no doubt prove

extremely trying. I know your dossier well, but

I don't really know you. It would be appropriate

for us to become better acquainted. Perhaps we should have

dinner together."

"An excellent idea." Without thinking, he

added, "My quarters, twenty hundred hours?" --

Commissioner Wayne looked at him with eyes like

chips of sunstruck glass. He froze,

belatedly consider- 55

ing the consequences should the prickly commissioner

misconstrue his invitation. He was no careerist, but

he did like his job.

She smiled. It made her seem a different

person. "I'd be honored, Captain. I'd like

to show you that I'm not the total ogre I sometimes

seem to be."

"I HOPE OUR CUISINE is Up to the

standards you're accustomed to, Commissioner," Kirk

said.

64 main concern with food is that it should be

nutritious and wholesome, Captain."

"I ... see. Will you take some more wine?" A

pause, a hesitant smile. andallyes, please.",

Kirk poured, hoping the gesture would distract

attention from his expression. He was seasoned

in the ways of Federation bureaucrats, not to mention

women. But he was having a hell of a time reading her

signals.

Moriah Wayne sipped her wine. To his

surprise she had turned up in a simple gown

of a dark lustrous gray, one that left her arms bare

and emphasized the color and clarity of her eyes.

She wore her hair tied up at the crown of her

head-a less severe bun than usual, at least.

"I see you surround yourself with relics of the sea,"

she said. Kirk's quarters, while spacious, were

a long way from luxurious. The main decorations were

the artifacts she referred to-the wooden wheel of

an ancient sail ship, a ship's bell, a

model of a threemaster under full sail. "You asked

me back at Starbase Twenty-three if I have a

great love for the sea. I might ask you the same

question."

Kirk did care about food. Tonight's

faretournedos of beef with asparagus tips and steamed

Andorian taqq-was special even by the

Enterprise's usually excellent standards. He

ate with his usual appetite and savored his meal

well. Between bites he said, "I do love the sea.

But my first love is exploration. Look

around, and you'll also see a model of the original

Lunar Excursion Module and the first manned

starship." "Men and their toys," she said, smiling and

shaking her head. She sat slowly back in her

chair. "I thought your first love was the Enterprise.

his

A shrug and a laugh. "Perhaps I'm ckle. He

leaned forward, holding up, his hands-and trying not to think

about McCoy's frequent observation that if you chained

his hands behind his back, Kirk would be mute. "I'm

an Iowa farinboy who grew up loving the stars. I

wanted them. There was so much to see in the universe, so

much to learn, to do." He sat back and grinned. "The

Enterprise gives me the stars. So maybe I'm

not faithless, after all." "So do you love the end,

then-or the meansThat" Kirk stared into his own

wineglass. Then he laughed. "I don't think

I'm prepared to be that profound, just now. And I'm

doing all the talking."

"Well. . . ." She had eased her plate to the

side and

held the wineglass on the table before her, rotating

the stem slowly in her fingers. "I'm a city girl

myself. I was born on Jotunheim."

"The industrial world?"

She nodded. "A huge ball of metal circling

a dim red sun." That explained why she had given

him so much trouble in their sparring match. Jotunheim

had a gravity a bit over IO percent greater

than Earth's. She had grown up working her

muscles proportionally harder than a woman on

Terra would. "Growing up in the domes . . . I

hated it. It was like living in a terrarium. You grew

up longing for the stars. I grew up longing for the warmth

of unfiltered sunlight on my face, the wind in

my hair, the feel of grass beneath my feet. For

air that didn't s " mell of the millions of

other people who breathed it and moved in it and sweated in it.

The recyclers and the hydro- ponic trays never could

make the air smell fresh. . . ." Her words

dwindled away. A strand of her hair had fallen

free and hung beside her face, gleaming like burnished

metal. It made her look vulnerable-and entirely

beautiful. Her reminiscence reacted in Kirk's-

mind with something McCoy had said. "Jotunheim-are

you related to Councillor Wayne?"

A sad smile. "He was my father."

"I see." Cornelius Wayne had spent

twenty years as Federation Council member for

Jotunheim. He had been a notable foe

of Starfleet, insisting that it posed a threat of

military dictatorship. A lot of older

Starfleet officers spoke of him with the fondness they

usually reserved for Orion pirates, Klingons,

and the catastrophic decay of dilithium crystals.

Kirk himself had

no particular feelings about him; he had died of a

brain aneurysm shortly before Kirk entered

Starfleet Academy. "My father died when I was

an adolescent," Moriah said. "I-I guess

I was angry at him for a while, for abandoning me.

He was a harsh man in a lot of ways-not very easy

to get along with. He wasn't abusive, don't

get me wrong-nothing like that, ever. Really. He was just

... demanding. "Soon after he died I went away

to college on Earth. He wanted me to go

to Harvard, ashe had, become a lawyer, and go

into government right away-as he had."

She seemed to be gazing at the point of Kirk's

chin. But her eyes were focused beyond, years ago and

light-years away. "I went to the University of

Oceania instead, for their environmental sciences

program. I knew what had been missing in my

life when I was a child-closeness with nature. We

evolved outdoors, Captain- "Jim,"

he said, sipping. "Please."

A beat. "Jim. We humans spent

millions of years on the savannas of Africa.

Only for the past six thousand years or so have we had

cities. That's not long enough for us to adapt to a total

artificial environment-to life indoors, to life

under glass." Spock would probably quibble with that,

point out that on world after world-Earth included-life

tended to adapt very rapidly to changes in

surroundings, if it adapted at all. If it

didn't, it died.

But Spock wasn't here. "I agree," Kirk

said. "I thought if I became an ecologist, that

would get me outdoors. And I really was concerned about

the environment. All I had to do to see what was at

stake was look at my homeworld."

She held forth her glass. "May IT"

"My pleasure." Kirk poured.

"I know the Federation had reasons for allowing

unrestricted exploitation of Jotunheim-no

atmosphere, no life, no environment

to protect. But the industrial 'plexes, the mines

gaping like open wounds ... they were ugly. 1, "But the

Federation is very concerned about the environmental welfare

of living planets," Kirk said. "To an

extent." She shrugged. "I wanted to do more. That's

why I chose that school and that major."

Kirk had finished his own meal. He sat at

ease, looking at her. It was an easy thing to do.

"Was that the only reason?" he asked after a

time. She dropped her eyes. Is she actually

blushing, or am I seeing things?

"All right." She brought her face up sharply.

Spots of color glowed on the prominent

cheekbones, and her eyes were hot. "You're right. I

was rebelling against my dead father-the rebellion I

never had the guts to make when he was alive. Does

it make you feel more manly to score a few cheap

points off me?"

He held up his hands. "A truce. Please."

He felt a touch of guilt. That crack about men

and toys had stung-, he wanted to see if he could

shake Wayne's forbidding composure. He was beginning

to realize that the game, as Bones would quaintly put

it, was not worth the candle. "I was teasing, I admit

it. Please accept my apology. It was

inappropriate."

"No, no. Please." She reached across the table,

took his hand, squeezed it. Then pulled her hand

back as if it were in danger of being bitten.

"I don't always react well. It's my fault.

I've never been that good with people, I know. I didn't

have much social life when 1

was young. I was always-you know-studying and training." A

wan smile. "My father had high expectations of

me. I was his only child. And after all, it was a sign

of high regard that he never settled for anything but the

best from me."

"I-uh-I suppose so." Kirk rose, went

to the wall near his model of the Old Ironsides,

and pressed a button. A panel slid open,

revealing a wide-bottomed bottle of brown

glass. The neck was long, and curiously angled.

"Would you care for a taste of Saurian brandy?

I've been saving the bottle for a special

occasion. If the presence on board of such an

illustrious personage doesn't qualify, I

don't know what does."

"I'd be delighted."

She stood. At a spoken command from Kirk table

and dirty dishes retracted into the wall. Kirk

opened the bottle and poured a minuscule portion of the

amber liquid into two brandy snifters.

"I'm not being stingy," he said, bringing a snifter

to her. "This stuff is as potent as mercury

f4iminate and should be treated the same

way -gingerly."

"Oh, I know. I've had it before."

"I guess you probably have."

Kirk sat in a chair facing the commissioner. He

held up his goblet, admiring the way the faint light

made golden play in the depths. "To what shall we

drink?"

She leaned forward. "To success."

"I'll always drink to that," Kirk said. They

drank, and savored, and settled back into their

thoughts. In time Wayne raised her eyes to his.

They met with something like a shock, locked, and held for

half a dozen heartbeats that seemed to ring very loudly

in the ears of James T. Kirk.

She rose and came to him. She stood above him and

held out her hands.

He took them and stood. "I must be going," she

said. "I'd like to thank you for a truly wonderful

evening."

He felt the warmth of her body washing over the

front of him like surf. "It was my pleasure," he

said. She swayed forward against him. By reflex he

slipped an arm around the small of her back. She

let her head fall back, eyes almost

shut, lips parted.

He kissed her.

Her body seemed to flow against his, like water

joining water. Her mouth opened under his. Her

tongue flicked against his, tentatively, then

surged against it. And her eyes snapped opened, and

rolled, like the eyes of a trapped animal. The

muscles of her back turned to wound wire beneath his

hands. She backed out of his grip as if breaking

bonds, stared at him with wild eyes, and was gone.

Two days later they reached the system of

JoanMarie's Star.

"JoAN-M"...m's STAR," said Spock,

bending over so that the displays of the science console

licked at his face with light. "General Survey

number one dash one-one-two-three dash five-

three-seven. Spectral classification FO,

yellow-white, diameter one point seventwo times

ten to the sixth kilometers, mass one point

nine-two Sol, luminosity nine point eight-oh

Sol. Surface temperature, seventy-five

hundred degrees Celsius."

He straightened and looked at the star's image

blazing on the main viewing screen. "It is rather

unusual for such a hot sun to possess

habitable planets, Captain."

dis"...I have the impression, Mr. Spock, that

we're going to encounter very little at all that is usual

on this mission. Mr. Sulu, go to half impulse

power."

The door to the turbolift hissed open.

Moriah Wayne stepped onto the bridge. She

was wearing a somber navy and black today.

She nodded politely to Kirk's greeting. He

looked hard to see more than politeness in the

glass-green eyes, but if it was there it eluded him.

As she had been eluding him the last couple of days.

He shrugged. He'd been more than busy enough,

surveying the alterations to the Enterprise with Scott,

helping oversee the technicians who continued to work

on his ship. He'd been running himself to the edge of

exhaustion, in fact. He had more important

matters on his mind right now than an ambiguous

encounter with Wayne.

"The star possesses an Oort cloud of comets

and seven planets," the science officer continued.

"The outermost two are gas giants. Our

objective is the fifth planet from the primary."

"Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, "can you give us a

look at Okeanos?" "Aye, sir." He

manipulated controls on his console. A cloud-

marbled blue disk expanded to fill the screen. At

the navigator station, Chekov let out a whistle.

"Look at that storm system in the northern

hernispherel" "in truth, Mr. Chekov, it would

seem to differ little from the storm system visible in the

southern hemisphere," Spock said. He resumed

his recital. "Okeanos orbits at a distance of

three point one-three astronomical units, with a

period of three point nine-nine-six Standard

years- 99

The turbolift door opened again, this time to admit

Dr. McCoy. "So that's our destination," he said,

peering at the viewscreen. "I hope I'm in time

for Spock's lecture. He's as close to a

textbook case of numerolalia as I'm ever

likely to see."

"The compulsive uttering of numbers, to which I

presume your unwieldy neologism refers,

is not a syndrome recognized by the Federation

Psychiatric Union, Doctor." "It will be,

Spock, once I publish my paper on you."

He gestured at the screen. "Say on, say on.

Science is waiting." "The planet has a

diameter of twelve thousand seven hundred

seventy-five kilometers, and a gravity of one

point two. Its rotational period is

fifty-five thousand nine hundred five seconds.

Does that satisfy you, Doctor?" Sulu

whistled. "Fifteen and a half hours."

"Fifteen hours, thirty-one minutes, and

forty-five seconds," Spock said.

16 Isn't he beautiful?" McCoy said.

"You'd barely have time to go to bed before it's time to get

up again," Sulu said.

"I think they make up in quality of daylight

what they lack in quantity," Kirk said dryly.

"Indeed, Captain," Spock said. "While

Okeanos receives almost precisely the same amount of

irradiation as Earth does, a much higher percentage

of it is in the form of ultraviolet light."

"We'll have to remember to wear our sunscreen,"

Kirk said. "The atmosphere consists of

seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty percent

oxygen, and two percent argon, with traces of

carbon dioxide and water. Concentrations of sulfur

compounds range from annoying to hazardous, depending on

proximity to volcanic activity."

"Twenty percent oxygen's pretty thin for a man

to breathe," McCoy said dubiously.

"A greater atmospheric density than Earth's

brings 66

the oxygen content well within the range of human

comfort." "I don't get the idea comfort is a word

it's going to occur to me to use much in connection with this

planet, Spock."

"Unfortunately not, Doctor. However, I

anticipate that I shall find the climate eminently

salubrious. The average daytime temperature at

thirty degrees latitude is three hundred

eleven degrees."

Wayne had been gazing raptly at the screen.

The statement jolted her from her reverie. "Three

hundred degrees? My God, that's almost as hot

as Venus. How can there be liquid water?" "Mr.

Spock is using the Absolute scale," Kirk

said, eyeing his science officer. "He means

thirty-eight degrees Celsius." "Which is still

almighty hot," McCoy said. "Reminds me of a

story from back home. A Southern gentleman

once remarked that if he happened to own both hell

and Texas, he'd rent out Texas and live in

hell." He gestured toward the screen.

"Obviously, he never heard of this place."

"Obviously, Doctor, since that

quote predates even the crudest spaceflight

by almost a century."

Wayne made an irritable gesture. "Your

numbers are just that-numbers. This is a beautiful

planet, Mr. Spock. V9 "But potentially a

very deadly one."

"All planets are potentially deadly,

Spock," Kirk said. "If there's one thing our

travels have taught us, it's that." Commissioner

Wayne crossed her arms. "How very masculine,

to see the unknown as a threat."

"I beg your pardon, Commissioner,"

Lieutenant

Uhura said, "but on the Enterprise we've found

that very often the unknown is a threat."

The commissioner turned a glare on her. Uhura

didn't flinch.

"Captain-was

"What is it, Mr. Sulu?"

The helmsman frowned. "I'm not sure, sir.

The planet's magnetic field is extremely

powerful, and the flux is incredible. It's causing my

sensors to give back anomalous readings, but I'm

getting somethingthere. his

His finger stabbed a button like an

entomologist pinning a rare insect. A little

designator box appeared at the lower left comer

of the disk. "There's a vessel in orbit around

Okeanos, Captain. Just coming around the edge of the

world."

"Shields up, Mr. Sulu. Go to full

impulse power." Kirk leaned forward

unconsciously. "Can you bring it up on the

screen?"

"Aye, Captain. Going to full magnification

... now." The ship resembled a sinister bird, with

downturned wings and a long, slender neck.

Commissioner Wayne caught her breath.

"YJ-INGON battlecruiser," Ensign Chekov

said in wonder. "It's magnificent," Commissioner

Wayne said. She held the fingertips of her right hand

pressed against the notch of her clavicle, as if she

were touching an invisible amulet. 661tvs just what

we needed," Kirk said. He wasalm amused by the

situation. Fate never threw him a fastball down

the middle, that much was certain.

"Captain, the vessel is broadcasting a standard

Klingon recognition sequence," said Uhura.

Kirk made a sound low in his throat.

"What are they doing here?" Wayne

asked. "No good, no doubt," Kirk said. "Open

hailing frequencies, if you please,

Lieutenant."

"Aye-aye, sir. Hailing frequency open,

sir."

"This is Captain James Kirk of the USS

Enterprise, calling the Klingon ship in orbit

around the fifth planet of this system. Identify

yourself, please."

A snarl of syllables that sounded like a lion

gargling came from the bridge speakers. "comtaj

mayeaDuj t1h1ngan wo at -- was The

translator kicked in. "comImperial Klingon

Battlecruiser Dagger. Leave the system at

once or you will be destroyed!" "It's nice to be

made to feel welcome," Kirk said. "They're not

transmitting any visuals, Captain," Uhura

said. "No, wait-I'm getting something now."

Wayne had stepped forward. "I am Federation

Commissioner Moriah Wayne," she said. "I

demand to know-was A face appeared on the screen. It

was darkly handsome, notwithstanding the bony ridge that

thrust up from the crown of the skull to part heavy black

hair that hung to broad shoulders. A long face,

punt almost, with black mustaches sweeping

down to either side of a full-lipped mouth and a jutting

narrow chin. A pale scar slashed down from the high

forehead and across the right eye to gouge deeply into the

cheek. The eye itself was covered with a black patch.

His good eye more than made up 'for its lack of a

partner. It was as hot and black as the core stuff

of a sun. Energy and dangerous charisma seemed

to shine from him like hard r adiation.

"To know"-Moriah Wayne stood openmouthed,

making a vague spreading gesture of the handswhat

you're doing here." "We tender fraternal assistance

to the natives of this world, who are being unjustly

oppressed by members of your race." "This from the

galactic experts on the subject," McCoy

muttered under his breath.

Apparently failing to hear him, the face turned.

"Ah, Captain Kirk! Welcome! You honor

us with your presence." The speaker settled back in his

command chair, which had the shaggy black and purple

pelt of some animal thrown over it. The motion

permitted the watchers on the Enterprise bridge

to see more of him. He wore the customary Klingon

jerkin of silver mesh, and over it the gold sash of his

rank. "I see, Captain, that the years have been

kinder to you than they generally are to members of

your species."

Kirk was trying not to stare. It was not the Klingon

way to so much as offer greetings. Here was a Klingon

being effusive. "You have the advantage of me, I'm

afraid."

A black-gauntleted hand dropped to the hilt

of a curious multiple-bladed knife slung at

the Klingon's waist. "Much time has passed since

last we met in the flesh, Kirk. I am Kain,

now Captain of the First Rank and officer commanding the

Klingon Imperial advisory detachment to this

unhappy world."

Kirk sat back in his chair as if the other had

reached through the screen and punched him in the sternum.

Kain! The years, the savage scar-if he looked

beyond them, Kirk thought, he could just recognize the

youthful junior lieutenant, fresh- faced for a

Klingon and painfully eager to prove himself, who had

stared

warily out from behind his father's shoulder in the receivin

line.

"The Axanar peace conference," Kirk said. "It

has been a long time, Captain."

"Our paths have crossed since theneai" the

Klingon said. "They have?"

"Indeed. I was a senior lieutenant on the

Fist of Retribution at Endikon, Captain.

I commanded a certain landing party." Kirk goggled.

"That was you?" I can't laugh. Now, of all times,

I have to keep a straight face.

Kain nodded. "We Klingons, believe that third

meetings are fateful, Captain."

"Is that your ship in orbit?" Wayne asked.

"It is, Commissioner. I am not aboard her,

however. I speak to you now from our mission on

Homesward, the chief island of the Susuru

archipelago- 9Very

He smoothed a wing of his mustache with a thumb.

"Now perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me what you

are doing here.""

"We're here in response to a call from the

Susuru," Wayne said. "They are being

victimized by human interlopers." "So they say,"

Kirk said.

"You have summed the situation admirably,

Commissioner. Yet I admit I'm puzzled.

Klingon generosity is widely known." "That's

true," Kirk said. It was known in precisely the

same way Klingon. mercy was-for the purity of its

absence. "We have come to help them, with strong

hands and strong hearts. Why then would they

summon"-he

was able to keep most of the contempt from his voice-

"Earthers?"

Kirk sucked briefly on his lips. "Their

message to the Federation said, 'Theyeaare your people-come

comand get them."" Kain laughed. It was a hearty,

rich laugh. It put Kirk in mind of flaying

knives and white-hot pokers. "So they do not

slight us. It is good." The Klingon smiled. His

teeth were very white. "I must say, Captain, your

arrival greatly eases my mind."

"It does?"

Kain nodded earnestly. "The situation here is

highly volatile- skirmishes and worse occur

daily." He leaned forward. "Surely with your

powerful assistance we will find a peaceable solution

to the problems of this world."

"No doubt we shall," Kirk said, "one way or

another. Captain-First, it's an honor to speak with

you, but I have to cut this short. I have other people to talk

to."

Kain nodded. "I await your calLike Captain.

And that of your very capable commissioner." . The screen

went blank. "Now, how did he know she

was capable?" Dr. McCoy asked. Wayne was

staring at the now blank screen as if she still saw

something there. "What an extraordinary man," she

breathed.

"He is that," Kirk said.

The commissioner beamed. "With him working together with us,

surely we'll have the situation here cleared up in just

a few days."

Kirk took a deep breath. "Commissioner," he

said, "I certainly hope so. Lieutenant

Uhura, see if you can find me a channel to the

Susuru."

A mommqThat's DimblefcAmation, and then Kirk

was standing shin deep in grass. He looked down,

surprised, then glanced left and right at Spock and

Commissioner Wayne, who had beamed with him to the

surface of Okeanos.

"Greetings, Captain Kirk, Commissioner

Wayneea11' a familiar voice said. Kirk

looked up to see Kain striding across the sere grass

at him. "And you, of course, are the remarkable Mr.

Spock."

46I am12

Kain walked up to the commissioner, took her hand,

and raised it to his lips. Her hand looked

fragile and white against his black gauntlet.

Kirk restrained the impulse to either goggle or

roll his eyes. Instead he blinked past Kain's

shoulder. Despite the grass, the coordinates to which

they had beamed were indoors. The ceiling seemed to be

a low, flattish dome with a broad circular

skylight to admit the light of the brief Okeanos

afternoon. The glare of

Joan-Marie's Star was muted heavily by red

filters, so that the chamber was filled with a murky

dimness.

"I hardly expected to find you here,

Captain-First," Kirk said. "Where are our

hosts?"

"We are here, Captain," said a voice like

water over smooth stones. A figure resolved

itself out of the gloom, with a number of others trailing

behind.

The creature was small, perhaps a meter and a half

tall. It walked tentatively on the toes of

long slender forelegs-which looked horribly

uncomfortable to Kirk, who was feeling the pressure

of 20 percentgreater-than-usual gravity in his

knees and ankles and lower back. Its hind legs

were held together at the rear of its short and

narrow but long torso. Slim hands were folded across

each other on the body's centerline. The head was

narrow and long, with huge forwardlooking liquid amber

eyes above a muzzle covered in soft, honey-

colored fur. The nostrils were wide and

sensitive-looking. The ears rode high up on the

crested skull, long and pointed and mounted to track in

all directions, like a Terran horse's. At the

moment their focus was twitching nervously from Kirk,

to Wayne, to Spock, and back to Kirk again.

The being stopped three meters in front of

Kirk, performed a complicated gesture that was part

prancing, part genuflection. The captain saw that the

fur of his muzzle was hoary. His hands were almost

human, bony knuckled and sparsely furred. They

gave the impression of substantial strength

despite their slenderness.

"I am Swift," the creature said. His front

teeth were broad chisel-shaped incisors, yellow and

worn. "The Susuru follow where I walk."

"I am Captain James Kirk, USS

Enterprise. This is Mr. Spock, my first

officer, and this is Deputy Commissioner Wayne,

of the Federation."

The Susuru was backing slowly away as

Kirk spoke. The other twenty Susuru backed

with him, scrupulously maintaining position so that he

stayed in front. When he had retreated to about seven

meters he stopped and raised his head. His body was

golden, with white on the belly and a ruff like a

collie's around his neck of darker fur shot through with

gray. The tips of his ears were black.

"And these four Fives are They Who Walk in the

Vanguard," Swift said, indicating his

companions. "You would call them our council of

elders. The fifth Five, who brings the number

to perfection, is, of course, myself. We bid you

welcome." The other Susuru spoke what Kirk

took for a ritual greeting in chorus, and performed

an abbreviated version of Swift's earlier

gesture.

"Our browse and water are yours," said Swift.

Commissioner Wayne walked forward. The Susuru

leader went rigid. The others backed away, whining

softly. "Commissioner," Spock said, "I believe

you are invading Swift's personal territory."

She turned a furious look over her shoulder.

"Mr. Spock, I'll thank you to let me do

myjob! I am Deputy Commissioner for

Interspecies Affairs."

Spock raised an eyebrow. Wayne turned

back to Swift, who cringed visibly.

"You communicated your need to the Federation," she

said. She dropped to one knee. "I have come to help

you."

The Susuru had pulled up one foreleg. The

toes

were long and tipped with thick pads. The creature

leaned so far back it seemed impossible that it

didn't topple backward. "You are not planning

to leap for my throat?" Swift asked, tucking his

chin deep in his ruff.

Wayne gave him a wondering look. "But I'm

from the Federation. 1'rrLike here to help you."

"Besides," Kain boomed in his rich baritone, "I

am here to keep you safe."

"If you'll forgive my curiosity, Captain,"

Kirk said, "just why are you here? Are you seriously

expecting the commissioner to leap for his throat?"

Kain chuckled. "Not at all. I'm here

to advise the Lead Walker. Their experiences of your

fellow Earthers has been anything but reassuring."

"They are your people," Swift's sibilance turned

to a jagged shrill keening, with a piercing

fingernails-onblackboard edge that made

Kirk weak at the knees. "Come and take them!

They despoil our world. They enslave our wild

sea beasts, they rape our ocean bottoms and befoul

our water with their mining! All to serve their insatiable

greed."

The Vanguard Walkers set up a wail,

rising higher and higher in pitch even as Swift's

voice dropped. 16 And they kill us. Our youths

who venture upon the sea, our mothers and young in our

bomb-shattered habitations. Your people. Yours!"

The wailing rose until Kirk's eardrums

bulged inward. "Oh, you who run in the van guard of

your human herd," the Susuru leader cried above the

intolerable sound. "The blood of innocence cries out

for justice. Hear now my words should you not act, in

two fives of days, with the aid of our friends from far

stars, we

shall mount a mighty offensive and scour your folk from

the face of the planet!"

Dr. McCoy was waiting as they stepped off the

transporter platform back aboard Enterprise.

"Well? How'd it go?" Moriah Wayne held

her fingertips over her ears and shook her head. "That

wailing! Such grief-I can't get that awful sound of

loss out of my ears."

"That well?" McCoy said. Kirk shrugged.

"It is illogical to give such free rein to the

natural response of grief," Spock said.

"How can you speak of logic at a time like this?"

Wayne flared at him. "We are talking about pain,

Mr. Spock. The pain of the loss of loved ones.

Or does your green Vulcan blood run too

ice cold for loss to have any meaning to you at all?"

-- "I never thought I'd say this," McCoy said,

"but you took the words right out of my mouth,

Commissioner."

Spock looked at her. "I, too, have known

loss, Commissioner," he said. "Even Vulcans

mourn. But there is a danger in abdicating control

so completely. It is frequently difficult

to regain."

"Lieutenant Uhura," Kirk said as he

strode onto the bridge, "see if you can raise

one of the human cities."

"They're very impressive structures,

Captain," Sulu remarked. "The Okeanians

aren't going to be happy to leave them behind."

The Enterprises sensors had revealed seven of

them, sprawling metallic clusters apparently

floating free on the endless ocean. Four

occupied the northern

hemisphere, three the south. None approached the

equator nearer than twenty degrees latitude.

There was a great deal of broadcast traffic between the

cities, as well as with a multitude of smaller

settlements. Few of these encroached far into the

equatorial zone.

"They don't have any choice in the matter,"

Wayne said crisply, stationing herself next

to Kirk's command chair even as he settled into it.

"The only question is how many transports we'll

need to take them off-planet."

"That's not necessarily the only question,

Commissioner," Kirk said. "We haven't even

spoken to these people yet." She stared at him in

disbelief. "But didn't you hear those beings down there?

Didn't you feel their loss reverberating in your

bones?"

"Believe me, Commissioner, I heard them. But

we have not yet heard what the humans on Okeanos

have to say."

She tossed her head. "What difference does that

make? They're intruders. They have to go."

"Situations are seldom as clear-cut as they

seem upon cursory examination,

Commissioiier," Spock said. "Surely we cannot

take action on the basis of such incomplete data

as we now possess."

"Captain," Uhura said, "I can't seem

to get anybody to respond to me."

"What do you mean, Lieutenant? Are you trying

to tell me that no one's the least bit interested in being

contacted by visitors from outer space?"

"No, sir, that's not the problem. Everyone I

reach is willing to talk. They're bubbling over with

questions, in fact-and they all seem to be able to speak

English."

"Well, at least we won't have to rely on our

transla78

tors." The "Universal Translator" Also

technology was relatively new. While

Starfleet made extensive use of it, it was known

to display some highly embarrassing glitches from time

to time. "What seems to be the problem, then?"

She swiveled her seat to face him. "I can't

find anybody in a position of authority, sir.

Everybody I speak to just laughs when I ask to be

put in touch with their planetary or local

government."

"Maybe they don't have one," McCoy

said. "Ridiculous," Wayne said. "They

possess cities and technology. They can't be

complete anarchists."

"If they have had extensive dealings with the

Klingons," Spock said, "perhaps they have grown wary

of spacefaring cultures in general."

"That sounds dangerously close to bigotry,

Commander," Wayne said. "Captain Kain is

obviously a man of great integrity and

sensitivity." I

"Those aren't traits the Klingon culture

values highly," Kirk said. "It's hardly

bigotry for Mr. Spock to base his observation on

facts that are, after all, pretty widely known."

"What is widely known, Captain," Wayne

said, "isn't always true."

"She's got you there, Jim," Dr. McCoy

said. Kirk rubbed his jaw. "I know," he said.

"Captain," Uhura said, "I have somebody

who's agreed to speak to you."

Kirk raised his eyebrow at her and sighed.

"Are they transmitting a visual?"

"Yes, sir."

"Put them on the screen, if you please."

The screen showed three people seated in a

room. It was dark except for three lights shining

down on them from the ceiling. What he could see of the

room was

devoid of decoration. The three occupied a low

dais. At their backs a window opened on night

and a gray sea whipped to thrashing frenzy by a storm.

He took all that in in a flash. Then his

attention snapped to the people themselves.

"What?" whispered Moriah Wayne. She

didn't seem aware that she had spoken.

Kirk tried hard not to stare himself. These are

supposed to be humans. What's going on?

The three individuals onscreen appeared

to belong to three entirely different species.

"I am Captain James T. Kirk of the

United Space Ship Enterprise. We have come in

the name of the United Federation of Planets-was

"We offer you and your people an enthusiastic

welcome, Captain," said the man who sat in the

middle. He looked entirely normal-a

light-skinned black, theatrically handsome, with

pronounced epicanthic folds to his eyes. He

was dressed in a russet jacket and trousers over

a collarless black shirt, with black thong sandals.

"But you might as well save your breath.

It doesn't matter to us whom you claim

to represent."

"Oh, really?" Kirk said. In the comer of his

vision he noticed Uhura paying perhaps stricter

than regulation attention to the spokesman.

The man nodded. "Really. But I forget my

manners. This is Aileea dinAthos of

Securitech, and this is Mona Arkazha,

representative of the Deep-ranger Syndicate.

I am Jason Strick. I'm an arbiter

by trade."

Kirk frowned. "Are you speaking for the duly

constituted government of your planet?"

That elicited polite laughter from Strick and the

woman named Aileea, who sat at his right. "There

isn't any such thing," she said in a singsong accent

much like the man's. "Unless you talk to the

Susuru." Her face hardened. "They seem to have a

lot of fancy ideas along those lines."

Lightning cut a brief purple wound across the

sky at their backs. Kirk studied dinAthos

briefly. She looked to be in her early

thirties, and wore a dustye-green vest over a

white top that left her midriff bare, and dark

green slacks. She looked human,

too-beautiful, in

fact. I

at But the hair she wore in a shag to her

shoulders was a deep green, and down the sides of her

slim neck ran slits that reminded him of gills.

"Just whom do iou represent?" he asked.

"Ourselves," said the third person. She-Kirk saw

comwas a squat being, hairless, with rubbery-looking

black skin. A clear respirator mask covered

the lower half of her broad face. A dark metal

yoke enclosed her short neck and flowed down over

the tops of her shoulders. It surrounded her with a

constant irides at cent shimmer of mist. She had

webbed hands and feet, two vertical slits for a

nose, no external ears-holes in the sides of

her head. Where the skin was close to bone, on

knuckles and feet and under her square jaw, it showed

yellow highlights. She wore no clothes except

for the mask and yoke, and a harness holding small

implements whose function Kirk didn't

recognize. She looked like some kind of

amphibian, only vaguely humanoid.

"Jason says I speak for my syndicate, and

in some matters L do. In this matter I have no

authority beyond my own skin." Her accent was

harsher than the others', and sounded somehow familiar.

"But understand something, Captain-you are unlikely

to get a different answer from anyone else on

Discord." "Discord?"

The man held his hands out. "Our world. This world."

"It isn't your world," said Commissioner Wayne.

"And who are you to say so?" demanded Arkazha. "I

am Moriah Wayne, Federation Deputy

Commissioner for Interspecies Affairs." "The

what?"

Wayne drew herself up. "I have been sent

to prepare you to evacuate this world in order that it be

returned to its rightful owners."

Lightning blazed again, powerful enough to tumble the

image momentarily into a flurry of horizontal

lines. When reception cleared the green-haired

woman was standing, legs braced, fists clenched.

Kirk saw that she wore a heavy-looking handgun

on a beft at her hip. "This is our world!" she

exclaimed. "Our ancestors came here when Earth

rejected them. They mixed their blood with sea and

crust to make it theirs."

"The Susuru-was Wayne began.

"The Susuru are the interlopers! They weren't

here when our mothers landed. And they are

murderers, Captain. We're willing to let them have

the land, and the freedom of the seas. But they want it

all-and they want our lives as well."

"Aileea, please-was Strick said.

"If the Stilters want to take one they'll have

to take the other," dinAthos declared. "They'll have

to kill us all." She thrust a finger at Wayne.

"You can have Discord on the same terms, Commissioner.

And that's the only way you'll get it."

She sat down again, cheeks flushed, jade eyes

glaring. "Not so fast," Kirk said. "We're not

going to rush

into anything here. Ms. dinAthos, I'd like to come

down to the surface and meet with you in person, set

up talks between you and the Susuru-was

"And what of the Susuru's new friends?" asked

Arkazha. Kirk shrugged. "We'll deal with them,

too."

" What a merry party that's going to be," McCoy

muttered. Strick held up his hands. To Kirk's

surprise they were callused hands, workman's hands.

"You have the freedom to land where you will, Captain. In

fact, I invite you and all your crew to come down

freely as our guests. In this I do speak for most

Discordians. We're a hospitable

folk, and it's been a long time since we've had

news from Earth.

"But if you're looking for someone with the authority

to speak for all Discordians-that person doesn't

exist. And please understand that, so far as we're

concerned, you are here as private citizens. We do

not recognize your Federation, nor any power you

derive from it."

"You have no authority here," said Arkazha. "You

are tourists-no more."

The screen returned to the image of

OkeanosDiscord, the settlers called it.

Wayne slowly unclenched her fists. "I don't

think there's any more room for doubt," she said

quietly. "Doubt of what, Commissioner?" Dr.

McCoy asked. "That what those beautiful Susuru

said was true? These so- called Discordians are no

more than bandits."

Kirk sighed. "I'm calling a command conference in

the briefing room to discuss the situation. Fifteen

minutes." He rose.

"I thought the Susuru said the colonists were all

human," Sulu said.

"Perhaps we all look alike to these Susuru,"

Chekov suggested. Wayne scowled.

"I have to admit I was somewhat startled myself,"

Kirk said. "I wonder what races were

represented. I couldn't place the two of them, the

dinAthos woman and Arkazha."

"Arkazha speaks with a good Russian accent,

Captain," Chekov announced. "It has

undercurrents of St. Petersburg." "Thank you,

Mr. Chekov. That's an interesting datum."

"Sensor readings"-Spock bent to the science

console- "indicate that all three persons belong

to the same species- Homo sapiens."

He turned and straightened. "They are all every

bit as human as you yourself are, Captain."

"Tim moBum we've got to deal with now,"

Kirk said, "is how to proceed from here."

46 Surely that's self-evident, Captain,"

Wayne said. She alone declined a seat at the

table. "The humansif they can be called that-are

invaders. Our instructions from the Federation require

us to persuade them to leave. Duty and justice

alike require that we c . arry out those orders."

"I dinnae like xeaCaptain," Scott said.

"To uproot a whole people from their homes, move "em

clean across space to God knows where ... it goes

against the grain."

"Do you examine all your orders to make sure

they're in accord with your sentiments before you obey them,

Lieutenant Commander Scott?"

Scotty worked his mouth and glared, but could find

nothing to say. "Mr. Scott," Wayne said,

smoothing her tone. "It's not just a question of orders.

It's a

question of right. If a burglar breaks into your house,

does he have a right to be there?"

Scott eyed her suspiciously. "No,

ma7am," he said. Since she was neither part of the

ship's complement or the Starfleet chain of command, she

didn't rate the honorific sir. Or at least

he didn't feel compelled to apply it to her. "But-

if he should somehow manage to stay a week-does that

give him a right then?"

"No. 99

"What's the statute of limitations, then, Mr.

Scott? When does theft turn into ownership?"

Scott moistened his lips. "I cannae answer

that," he said. "But clever words and fair countenance do

not make wrong into right, Commissioner."

"As distasteful as the fact may be," Mr.

Spock said, "it is common knowledge throughout the galaxy that

time does, in fact, confer such

legitimacy. There are few cultures today who do

not occupy at least some land that their forebears wrested from

another culture.

"Because it's accepted, does that make it right,

Mr. Spock? Is the Federation about righting

injustice, or papering it over with rationalizations and

legalisms and so perpetuating it?" "'allyour

arguments are at base emotional," Spock said.

"Logic tells us that any attempt

to systematize justice will entail a degree of

compromise."

"Then set logic aside. What does your

heart say?" "My heart is incapable of speech,

Commissioner." Wayne stared at him. "Is he

making a joke, Captain?""

"He's Vulcan," Kirk said. "He can't

make jokes."

He saw the sideways flicker of McCoy's

eyes, the ghost of a grin, hastily hidden.

Wayne walked around the table to stand near Spock.

"Mr. Spock, tell me, as a Vulcan, how

does it make you feel that your people are dominated

by Earth humans." She held up her hands. "No,

wait. I know Vulcans don't like to admit they have

feelings. So-what is your response to the

fact of your domina- tion?"

"The Vulcans are not dominated, Commissioner,"

Spock said matter-of-factly.

"But look around you. What do you see? Vulcan

faces? Hardly. Any nonhuman faces?

None. Mr. Scott, the doctor, Lieutenant

Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, the captain-all

human. Doesn't that suggest an imbalance.

"Vulcan has its own space service. Most

Vulcans inclined to venture into space choose

to join it." He paused. "They find the Federation

service somewhat beneath them."

disren't Vulcans superior to humans? Are you

not stronger than a man? Are you not quicker, more

resistant to heat and radiation ... more intelligent?"

66I am. 99

"Commissioner," Dr. McCoy said, "do you really

think the ends of this mission are served by inciting our first

officer to rebellion?"

Kirk held up a hand. "Bones. Let her have

her say." "Then why is a Vulcan not head of the

Federation? Why isn't one captain of this ship?"

"Because that would not be logical."

She blinked. "Not logical? How is it not

logical?" "Leadership requires a

certain ambition, a drive, a desire to lead-or

to conquer. We Vulcans lack that ambition. When

we forswore emotion, Commissioner, it was in fact

primarily to expunge precisely those drives, which

had caused such great devastation to our

people and our planet. Our Romulan cousins, on

the other hand, indulge their ambition, to the detriment of

their culture and galactic peace."

Wayne raised spread fingers near her temple

and dropped them again in a gesture of defeat.

"Doesn't anyone see what the Federation is like?"

"I see a century of peace and harmony,"

Scott said. "Haven't there been wars, with the

Klingons and Romulans and Gorn? Haven't you

buried your own dead?" "Relative to the bulk of

human history, Commissioner," Kirk said, "I

think one would have to say the Federation era has been one

of unprecedented peace."

"How exactly does it come to pass that a high

official of the Federation is arguing so vehemently against

the Federation?" McCoy asked.

"Don't misunderstand me, Doctor. I'm not

saying the Federation is evil. I'm saying it could be

better. Don't you feel that the UFP has the

obligation to be as ethical as possible?"

"Yes," he said reluctantly. "I do."

"The fact is that Earth humans dominate the

Federation. That is wrong. The fact is also that that

"human history" you spoke of, Captain, is

nothing but a litany of rape, degradation, murder,

and exploitation. And that is what the Susuru are

facing on Okeanos today."

"Commissioner," Kirk said, and then had to pause with

his hands on the table before him to order his thoughts.

"I-I can't agree that human history is as

black a picture as you paint it. No, wait,

please-r-that doesn't have any bearing on our

discussion here-was

Wayne would not be restrained. "It has every

bearingff91)

"The key point is that we do not have all the facts

about what's going on down there. And as Starfleet

officers, I submit, we have a responsibility

to withhold action until we know more."

"Hear, hear," McCoy said. A ripple of

concurrence ran around the table.

"You all saw the meeting with the Susuru leader on

the viewing screen," Wayne said, almost pleading.

"You heard his words, his passion. How can you doubt

what he said?" "His passion was no doubt

authentic, Commissioner," Spock said. "Yet that

does not mean that he told the whole story. I do not

mean to imply that he lied. He may have told the

truth as he knew it-and saw it. All we have to go

on are unsupported allegations made by mutually

hostile parties. It would be the height of recklessness

to proceed on no better grounds." Wayne looked

around, her lovely haughty face with scorn. "How

like Earth men, was she said. "What other

Earth-derived men say is all that's

important-the outcries of native beings count for

nothing."

"Two of the spokespeople for the Discordians were

women, Commissioner," Uhura said quietly.

Wayne dismissed the objection with a flip of her

hand. "The leader was a man. They're a

maledominated, exploitative society. The

women were figureheads-nothing more. They'll recite

the lies they're told to."

"This ship is commanded by a man, Commissioner,"

Uhura said. "Does that mean I and all the other

women aboard are nothing but puppets and emptyheaded

liars?" "Lieutenant, I don't think I like your

tone."

"Commissioner, I don't think I like

yours."

"Crew," Kirk said, "Commissioner. Let's not

de- 8

scend to personalities. Commissioner Wayne,

my bridge crew and I seem to agree that we need

to learn more before we act." "Do you run your starship as

a democracy, then, Captain?" Wayne asked

with a sneer.

"What's wrong with democracy?" McCoy

demanded. "The answer, Commissioner, is no,"

Kirk said softly. "The Enterprise is not a

democracy. No starship is or can be. The

decision is mine, and mine alone.

"But my officers are professionals, the best

Starfleet has to offer. We have served together for

nearly five years. They know my decisions may

affect whether they live or die. When the situation

permits, I respect them enough to hear what they have

to say before I decide."

"Even if that brings you inffconflict with your

ordersr, "Even then."

She s tared at him a long moment, nostrils

flared. "Sometimes," she said quietly, "I feel

as if I'm talking to myself." She marched from the

briefing compartment. Into the heavy silence,

Kirk said, "Tomorrow we will beam down to the surface and

see if we can't find out what's really going on

here. Now, dismissed."

Kirk had just collapsed on his settee and

pulled his boots off when the door annunciator

chimed. "Damn," he said. He stood up and

clumped to the door, dangling his boots from one hand.

The door opened to his command. Moriah Wayne

stood there.

"I knew it was you," he said. "No one else

would have timing that perfect."

Her face was serious. "Could I come in? I-I

don't want to intrude."

He, looked at her a moment, then shook his

head. "You aren't intruding." He waved her in with the

boots. "Come in. Make yourself at home."

She entered. He tossed the boots down by the

door, walked wearily back to the settee, and

dropped bonelessly onto it. "Would you like something

to drink, Commissioner?" She shook her head. She

had walked over to stand staring at comhis model of the

USS Constitution in its illuminated niche. The

lights in his quarters were turned down to a mellow

glow. The ship seemed to float in a pool of

yellow glow. He noticed that two strands

of her hair had come loose. They hung fram- ing

her face, softening, mellowing.

"If you're here to continue our policy debate,

I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. I'm just not up

to it."

"No." She reached out a finger as if to touch the

model, with its bellying white sails and intricate

rigging. He tensed. Irrationally, he didn't want

her touching his ship. Instead she withdrew her finger and

turned toward him. "Why does the crew dislike me

so? Everyonethey all seem to be against me."

He inhaled deeply and let it out through his nose

with a sound like a snore. "Commissioner-was

"Moriah." Her eyes glowed.

He stood. She flowed forward to stand before him.

"Moriah, you have a positive talent for alienating

my bridge crew. You accuse Sulu of a major

felony, you patronize Uhura, you accuse

Bones of being a

male-chauvinist quack, not to mention impugning his

standing as a Southern gentleman. You make Spock

out as a puppet and a bad imitation human. All you

need to do is call Scotty a whiskey-addled old

soak who doesn't know his spanner from a hole in the

ground, and you'll have made a pretty clean

sweep."

"Am I so undiplomatic, Jim?"

"'UndiplomaticThat Moriah, you-was He

held his hands- up, almost cupping her face. "You

make Kahless the Unforgettable look like

Talleyrand."

She turned her face aside, took his right hand

in hers, brought it to her mouth, and kissed the palm.

He felt as if someone had tou ched a cattle

prod to his coccyx. He straightened, fatigue

forgotten.

"You're a strong man, Jim," she said,

pressing his palm against her cheek. The skin was cool

and smooth. "You stood up to me today."

"I hardly thought it was going to have this effect on

you.

"I know you stand up for what you believe. That's

important." She looked into his eyes. "We

need a man like you." "We?" He drew back,

dropping his hands. "I'm not sure I understand."

"We. The Commissioner, me. The nonhuman

races of the Federation. We need your strength."

"Moriah." He shook his head. "I don't

know what to tell you. 1-1 care about the status of

nonhumans. I don't think many

Starfleet officers have introduced more new species

to the Federation. I fully understand-I fully feel-the

ramifications of what I've done. Even with the

Prime Directive, and all the procedures the

Federation has in place to ease the shock, contact

with a galaxy-spanning civilization can be terrifically

dislocating for a culture."

He turned away. "But I still feel that the

Federation gives more to its members than it takes

away. If I weren't convinced of that I could never do

what I do."

He felt a hand on his arm. "James."

He turned. Her arms went around him.

"I need a strong man, too. It wears me

down, always being so self-sufficient, so steadfast,

me against the world. Sometimes I need a strong chest just

to ... lean against." She laid her head against

Kirk's chest. He held her to him and stroked her

hair.

In time she raised her face to his. He kissed

her. This time she did not pull away.

UGHT spiLLED iDowationwARD like a shower of

gold dust from a point two meters above the deck.

A shimmer, and Kirk, Spock, and Moriah

Wayne stood on a mat of some woven

sea-green fiber.

Kirk looked around. He and Wayne wore

wraparound sunglasses with a chip inside that kept the

fierce tiny dot of Joan-Marie's Star blacked

out in a constant eclipse. Even at that his first

impression was of ferocious glare. His second

impression was of body-blow humid heat, and a

gravity that seemed much greater than one-fifth more than

he was used to. His knees started to buckle. The

world whirled around him.

Get a grip on yourse1r, he commanded

sternly. You're the intrepid explorer. It wouldn

I do to set fqot on a new world only

to collapse in a helpless puddle of protoplasm.

Grinning at the image, he grasped the rail-which

thankfully was sheathed in some fibrous material that

shed heat-and forced himself upright. They stood on an

observation deck three stories above a city of

glass and metal and open water, all dazzling in the

sun's white glare. The city obviously lacked a

powerful planning commission; it was a jumble, towers and

turrets and domes and horizontal cylinders

thrusting every which way, split by waterways of varying

widths and linked by catwalks and skyways in a

weird thronged web. "Chaos," said

Wayne, sniffing. "Total confusion."

"Commissioner," Spock said, "as of local

sunrise this morning, our sensors revealed the

presence of some one million, one hundred

thirty-five thousand, two hundred sixty-two

human occupants. Whatever system of living the

inhabitants have evolved, it is certainly not altogether

dysfunctional." "It's a blight," she said. "A

silver scab on the sea." "Freefolk," a

voice said from behind them. They turned into a wind

tanged with astringent metal smell to see the trio

they had spoken to last night emerging from a low domed

metal structure. The light of the primary made it

resemble the hemisphere fireball of a nuclear

explosion at ground level, frozen in time. Behind it

was sky like a gray blanket that had been slashed with a

knife. Painful blue shone through the rents.

The speaker was Jason Strick. He wore a

brightly colored dashiki over white duck trousers

today. "Welcome to Discord." "The city as well as

the planet," added Aileea dinAthos. She wore

a loose cream-colored blouse over khaki

shorts, and soft knee-length moccasins. She was still

wearing her gun belt. "They both have the same name."

"Your name," Wayne said, her words so

frosty even

the sun couldn't melt them. "The natives no

doubt call it something else."

"The Susuru call the planet by a name that means

Island," Aileea said levelly, "if that's who

you're referring to. The Susuru aren't native

to this world, any more than we are."

"Thank you very much for your welcome," Kirk said

loudly. "We're here to uncover the facts of the

situation on this world, whatever it's called."

Strick offered his hand to Wayne, who accepted it

after a moment's hesitation. DinAthos shook hands with

Kirk. Her grip was surprisingly strong-strong

enough'that he had the impression she might have been

able to crush his hand if she chose, despite the fact

that she was shorter than Wayne and lightly built.

"That is very impressive technology," said

Arkazha, shaking Spock's hand. "The means by which you

arrived here." , "Transporter beams," Kirk

said, shaking hands with Strick. He was armed, too,

Kirk saw. The butt of a handgun projected from

under the tail of his dashiki, behind his left hip. "A

lot has happened on Earth since your ancestors

left."

"No doubt," Strick said. "And

we're eager to hear all of it."

"Those-transporters?-cause a lot of interference

without communications," dinAthos said. "When you beamed

in 'ust now it made all our electronics go J

crazy."

"That can occur when transporter beams function

near unshielded electronic components of a certain

rudimentary stage of development," Spock said.

The three looked at him, more curious than

miffed, it seemed. "I suppose we do seem

primitive to you."

Wayne opened her mouth to say something. "Actu-

ally," Kirk said, "I don't think we're

all that far ahead of Y." He glanced up at the

sky, which was clear overhead, though cumulus balls

rolled along the western horizon like white

tumbleweeds. "I just hope we're not due for one of

your colossal electrical storms. Big

lightning discharges interfere with our transporters

something fierce."

"Our meteorological observations indicate

no major storm cells are likely to form in or

move through this area for at least the next eight hours,

Captain," said Spock. "And Mr.

Sulu will, of course, alert us should conditions

change."

"Excellent, Mr. Spock."

"Would you care to see something of our city,?"

Jason Strick asked. "We can walk a little

ways, if our heat and gravity aren't too much . .

."

"We'll survive," said Kirk, who

privately doubted it. As appalling as heat,

humidity, gravity, and glare were, they were nothing

compared to the invisible stuff-high UV output from the

primary, background radiation from heavy metals in

the crust. Dr. McCoy had fussed over the party

before they beamed down, slathering them with sunblock and

hypospraying them full of antiradiation drugs.

"This'll keep you alive," he said, "but nothing

on Earth or Okeanos is going to make you

comfortable."

"We call our sun Eris, was dinAthos said.

"For the Goddess of Discord, who disrupted the

banquet of the gods b y rolling the golden apple

inscribed 'For the Fairest" into their hall on

Mount Olympus, I presume?" Spock said.

"That , s the one," the green-haired woman said with a

grin. "An arbitrary bitch, but she

keeps us all alive."

They walked to a broad stairway and down to ocean

level. The motion of the sea made itself felt as a

gentle rocking, barely perceptible. The walking

surfaces were all covered in the resilient fiber

mats, which seemed a very efficient insulator. Not

even colonists well adapted to this hellhole to go

abroad in daylight lightly clad and bareheaded could

endure contact with bare metal heated by the tiny sun.

"Captain," Spock said quietly from Kirk's

left elbow. Their hosts were descending the stairs behind

them, while Wayne preceded them, turning her head

left and right with a pinched expression. "I find it

remarkable that these people can have adapted so completely to the

extremely rigorous comlocal conditions in the two

hundred years or less for which they can have occupied the

planet."

"Two hundred years, Mr. Spock? You

seem awfully definite." "Zefram Cochrane

demonstrated a practical warp drive some two

hundred and seven years ago," Spock said.

"Inasmuch as this planet is rather more than three

ihundred light-years from Earth, and human

spaceflight of any kind is a mere three

centuries old, it is highly unlikely

that these colonists' ancestors departed, Earth before the

advent of warp drive."

"An excellent point, Mr. Spock,"

Kirk said. "The rapid adaptation of these

Discordians is another mystery. As if we

didn't have enough."

The spaces between buildings were comfull of people,

walking, hawing, debating, splashing in the sea,

batting a handball against a wall. The first thing

Kirk noticed about them was that both Strick and

dinAthos were fairly conservative in their style of

dress. The norm seemed to be bold, almost gaudy

colors in clothing of flamboyant cut in which

coverage from the sun seemed a minor consideration and

modesty none

at all. People dressed like Arkazha were more in

evidence than ones dressed like her companions, and not

only the amphibians.

The people themselves presented a variety as astonishing as

their garb. There were hulking humanoids covered in

pliable gray armor plates like rhinoceroses,

stocky men and women no larger than Tellarites,

others the same height-waist high-but so slight

Kirk at first took them for children. A creature like

Arkazha leapt from a canal onto the

walkway before them in a great surge of blue-green

water, straightened, turned toward the approaching

party, nodded politely, and walked past them.

Wayne's eyes widened; the being was nude, and

emphatically male.

A moment later a much more humanoid woman,

equally naked, plummeted past Kirk's elbow in

a dive from a third-story window. Kirk had an

impression of aquamarine hair streaming back over

a pale slim body with a delicate fringe of fin

running down each arm from wrists to short-ribs. Then

she was gone, leaving barely a ripple.

Wayne stopped and scowled back at Kirk, her

arms tightly crossed over her sternum. "Are we

going someplace, or just wandering at random through this

warren?" Aileea's jade eyes got narrow and

dangerous. Strick smiled easily.

"At your pleasure, Commissioner," he said. "You

are our honored guest. We'd like you to see something

of the way we live."

"I've seen more than enough urban blight in my

time." The party caught her up and passed her by.

After an angry moment, she followed.

"One thing puzzles me," Kirk said

emphatically.

"Mr. Strick-ahh, is there any particular

title I should call you by?"

"Mr. Strick is fine," Strick said with a

smile. "Or Freeman Strick, or Jason.

Or you can simply pointit's all the same to me."

"Just when did your ancestors leave Earth?"

"In two thousand seventy-two," dinAthos said.

Wayne gave her a look that glittered like glass.

She was white-faced and taut,. and seemed to be

building toward an explosion. He felt

disoriented. Last night they had been so close.

Today they were walking a ragged edge. He had a long

way to go to understand the commissioner.

"At the height of Earth's Third World War,"

Spock said. DinAthos nodded. "You might say

we sneaked out when no one was looking."

"And what had you done that made it necessary for you

to sneak off?" Wayne asked.

"We were born," the Discordian woman said with a

defiant head flip that shook green bangs from her

eyes. "We left to escape extermination," Mona

Arkazha said. Her bulging eyes studied Wayne

with evident disdain. "It seems our mothers chose

wisely."

"Now, Mona," Strick said

soothingly, "look at Mr. Spock, here. They

allow Vares on old Terra, evidently."

Spock arched a brow. ""Vares," Mr.

Strick? I am unfamiliar with the term."

"Our own name for ourselves," Strick said. "It's from

"Variants.""

"From the human somatotype," dinAthos added.

Spock blinked. "I beg your pardon, sir, but

my own departure from the human norm arises from the

fact that I am half Vulcan."

FROM THE DEPTHS

Strick stared at his face. Spock bore the

scrutiny with his customary dignity.

"You mean you're half alien?" the Discordian

asked.

"Xenoform," corrected Wayne.

"I am," said Spock.

Strick's face split in a huge grin.

"Marvelous! So old Terra was able to overcome her

fear of difference after

"Quite evidently," Spock said, "since the

Federation now comprises several score of humanoid

races' Strick looked at his companions.

"Maybe it's good our isolation's ended.

Perhaps Earth is ready to accept u9t

"Do not rush into happy conclusions, Jason,"

Arkazha said warningly.

DinAthos grinned. "He's a professional

optimist. It serves him well in his line of work."

They had come into a sort of plaza around a broad

artificial lagoon in which a dozen children-actually

children, as a second look verified-of various types

frolicked, without apparent consciousness of difference.

People took late breakfast or early lunch under

brightly colored awnings. Others browsed through stores

selling underwater -- breathing rigs, entertain- ment

electronics, and lightweight weapons systems for

nautical vessels. Kirk noted that even those people

who showed no obvious physical departures from the

norm often showed flamboyant cosmetic

differences, such as bright blue hair or orange

skin.

He felt a prickling at the back of his neck

and turned. A person who appeared to be half

woman, half calico cat sat on a low wall

covered in a fiber mat colored like a Persian

rug next to a cafd whose name was written in what

looked like Chinese ideograms.

She noted his attention and gave him a

slow smile with a long, curved fang at either edge.

Her eyes were yellow, with vertical slit pupils.

"Fascinating," he heard Spock murmur.

"Mr. Strick," he said, "there's no tactful

way to ask this, but how in heaven's name do you come

to be-that is, why-was He held his hands up in a

helpless gesture. Aileea -- dinAthos laughed.

"Why are we such an odd assortment of freaks,

Captain? Genetic engineering."

"We are as we have chosen to be," said Arkazha.

Kirk and Wayne stared at them, thunderstruck.

4'YOU'-GENE engineer-yourselves?" the commissioner

asked. "The gene sculptors among us shape us

to our request," dinAthos said, looking curiously

and a bit warily at the commissioner. She got a

queer tight smile. "That bothers you, doesn't

it?"

410f course it does!" Wayne flared. Her

face was drained of color. "You people tamper with the

natural order!" 1 14 So does Dr.

McCoy, Commissioner," Spock said, "when he

cures someone of a disease that, if untreated, would

otherwise prove fatal."

"But they're ... perverting themselves. Their children.

Twisting themselves into monsters on a whinil"

"Moriah, get hold of yourself!" Kirk snapped.

She glared at him. "Do you need further evidence?

These people aren't just alien to this world. They're alien to the

cosmos! They're unnatural!"

Jason Strick's cheeks looked as if they had

been dusted with a fresh fall of volcanic ash.

Aileea dinAthos was looking at Wayne as if

she were a poisonous sea creature that had flopped

up onto the

walkway. Only Arkazha was showing no sip of

response, though with her heavily modified

physiognomy she probably had a limited

range of facial expression. Kirk took

Wayne by the arm and steered her a few steps away.

"Commissioner," he said, pitching his voice low, "you

are comporting yourself in an entirely inappropriate

manner." "Inappropriate?" Her laugh was like

glass shattering. "The very existence of these people is a

crime!" "We're not within the Federation now. Our

laws don't apply." "We have come to bring this

planet under the rule of Federation law.

Remember?" Color was coming back into her face

now, starting with the points of her cheekbones. Her

eyes were fever bright. "That's going to be a

positive pleasure!" Kirk moistened his

lips, which were beginning to prickle a little from the incoming

ultraviolet. He tasted the medicinal tang of

sunblock. Better not lick this stuff off, he

thought irrelevantly. It was supposed to be

impervious to that, but experience had taught him

better.

"I don't know what these peoples status is

under Federation law," he admitted. "But I won't

have you abusing them. Your tone suggests mobs with

torches and ropes, Commissioner." "Are you speaking

of lynch mobs, Captain? Or of those old

horror movies, where peasants with torches storm

the castle to destroy the mad scientist and his

monsters?" Kirk turned away in disgust. Strick

and dinAthos stood with heads together, speaking in low

tones. Spock looked up from conversing with Arkazha.

"Dr. Arkazha has been explaining something of the

Discordian culture to me. She and others of her

Gens, for example, have been optimized to survive

in the ocean depths without the need of life support

or the need to decompress after returning to the

surface." He tipped his head to the side. "It

is, indeed, a highly efficient system."

Kirk felt a pulse of queasiness in his stomach

and hated himself for it. Much as he found

to admire about Moriah Wayne, he did not want

to resemble her in any particular just now.

He put a hand on his science officer's biceps

and steered him out of earshot of the others. Wayne

continued to stand by herself, looking off into the sky.

"Spock, you know gene engineering of sentient

species is forbidden under Federation law."

"But, Jim, these people don't belong to the Federation."

Kirk sighed. "That's true. But you have to understand.

On Earth we had some very unfortunate experiences with

genetic engineering of humans."

Spock nodded. "The Eugenics Wars of the last

decade of the twentieth century."

"And you've seen firsthand some of the results of that

conflict, not to mention one of the prime movers behind it.

Like everybody on the Enterprise.

"The passengers of the Botany Bay. was

"Exactly. We distrust gene-engineered humans.

I know it's irrational-but you might say it's in our

genes."

"Captain."

He turned, a little too quickly. "Mr. Strick

"I understand why we might ... unsettle you.

The Discordian spokesfolk had approached to a

discreet range. "We left Earth

to escape bigotry," Aileea said bitterly.

"It's nothing new to us."

Strick held up his hand, "Aileea." She

scowled but said no more. -- "We make no

apologies for the way we are," said Mona

Arkazha. "In fact, it was in part to preserve the

right to choose our forms for ourselves that we left Earth.

But we did not, initially, become this way

by choice."

"In fact, we owe our existence to an

individual of whom you may never have heard,"

Strick said, "since his heyday ended almost three

centuries ago. A twentieth-century tyrant

named Khan Noonian Singh."

61 IC

.jhmea91 Kw.k EcHow.

"You've heard of him?" Strick asked.

"There were so many dictators on Earth back around

then," Aileea said. "Hard to believe you can even

tell them apart after all this time."

"Mm." Kirk glanced at Spock and envied him

his Vulcan poker face. "We have a very

comprehensive political history program at

Starfleet Academy."

"In fact," Spock said, "I

believe I am familiar with a few of the particulars

of your case. As I recall, your forebears were

subject of UN Resolution Fiftywone, of

two thousand thirty- eight., You will remember, no

doubt, that was the resolution that determined that no Earth

citizens could be held liable for the- acts of their

ancestors. A rider to the resolution confirmed the

human status of certain human-variant strains

who had been created in the gene research

laboratories that created Khan and his fellow

tyrants. This was the so-called 'Khan's

Stepchildren" resolution."

"You're very diplomatic, Mr. Spock,"

Aileea said. "What they really called us was

Khan's bastards."

Spock raised his brows. "Perhaps my sources

elected to be circumspect."

"Captain Kirk," Aileea said with a flip of

her head, "I apologize for speaking sharply to you a

little while ago. I made the mistake of reacting

to something ,someone said. Speech is free."

"That's why we fight," Strick added. "No

apology necessary, Ms. dinAthos," Kirk said.

"Why not let your people walk among us?" Arkazha

asked. "They can decide for themselves whether

we're monsters or not. Otherwise"-she hooked a

thumb at Wayne, still standing off in splendid

isolation-"all they'll have to go by is what she tells

them."

Kirk rubbed his jaw. He looked at Wayne,

looked around at the denizens of Discord City, and

looked at Spock. . "Captain," his first officer

said. "During our sojourn at Starbase

Twenty-three, leaves were of necessity cut

short. Indeed, a quarter of the crew got no leave

at all. And leave within the sealed environment of an

orbiting Starbase produces far less favorable

effects upon morale than leave upon a planetary

surface."

"You're the only person in our crew who'd find

this an ideal port of call, Spock," Kirk

said. As a Vulcan Spock needed neither

sunglasses, shots, nor sunscreen. Kirk

thought for a moment, watching the children splash in the

lagoon. These people seemed open and friendly enough. Still,

there was the fact that they seemed fond of carrying

weapons. And there were the Susuru allegations

to consider. Wayne was certainly correct that they could

not be dismissed out of hand.

I'm the one who talks about getting

thefacts before I

make a decision, he thought. A trickle of

sweat ran down his neck into the collar of his shirt.

Maybe I should put that into practice.

"I appreciate your offer of hospitality,"

he began guardedly. "But I'm responsible for the

welfare of my crew. So far I've seen no more

than a couple of blocks of your charming city. I'm

not yet really in a position to evaluate the risks

involved." "Sonic fields keep the sea beasts

at bay," Arkazha said. "The storms are

savage, but if you stay inside a dwelling, you're

safe enough, if not always comfort-able."

"It's an unknown environment," Aileea said,

somewhat to Kirk's surprise. "He's right to be

cautious."

"He could let the crew decide for themselves what

risks they're willing to take," Arkazha stated.

"Come, Mona, that's not their way," Strick said.

"And x"...ness hardly up to us to reform them, is it?"

"If we want to be left alone, we must know

how to leave alone," Arkazha agreed. "You are

correct."

"We cannot compel our people, you understand, but in fact

you'll be welcomed almost anywhere you choose

to go," Strick said. "We Discordians are mostly

friendly folk, and I think most you run into will be as

eager to hear about what's, been happening on Earth and

in the galaxy the last two hundred Terran years.

I'd warn you to stay away from the equator, though."

"Why's that?" Wayne asked. "What've you got

to hide?" ""Fools from harm-thougheat's not our

usual way," Aileea dinAthos said. "Here at

fifty degrees north you're fairly safe from

Stilter attack. Close to the equator, you're

fair game for them and their friends."

"Is there anything in particular you'd care to see?"

Strick asked. "I should start calling soon,

to make arrangements." "The Susuru say you're

destroying the environment," Wayne said abruptly.

"How about showing us your mining and sea- ranching

operations?"

"Destroying the environment?" Strick drew his

handsome head back. "Why in Eris's name would we comd

that? We live on this planet! Why would we do it

harm?"

"And what business is it of yours?" dinAthos

demanded. "We don't live by your laws!"

Wayne gave her a look of ineffable smugness.

"That might be a place to start," Kirk

said. "It would help us understand how you live.". He

looked at Wayne. "And it might lay certain

ecological misgivings to rest."

"Apparently environmental self-righteousness still

persists on Earth," Arkazha said, "as well as

fear of Variants. Perhaps not that much has changed,

Jason."

Strick ran his hands backward through his short,

crisp hair. "In fact, I think the welfare of

our planet means more to us than it can to you. Most of us

live on intimate terms with the sea." Wayne

gestured around her. "All I see is that you

surround yourselves with steel and glass. Artifice, not

nature." "This is a city, was dinAthos said.

"Don't you have cities in your Federation?"

"Far too many."

"If we were to commence our tour," Spock said, "it

might save us all a great deal of profitless

debate."

Arkazha showed her teeth in a startling grin. They

were wholly human, which made her appearance all

the more jarring. "I like you," she said. "You are a

man after my own heart. Practical."

"Logical," Spock amended.

Strick nodded and reached for his waist.

Wayne stiffened, eyes going wild, but he merely

came up with a hand communicator of his own.

"I should call and arrange a flyer first."

"That's hardly necessary," Kirk said. He grinned.

"How would you like to experience our 'impressive

technology" firsthand?"

The Discordians looked at him like kids at

Christmas. "Could we really?" Strick asked,

forgetting for the moment to be cool and dignified.

"You can do more than that." Kirk flipped out his

communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise. Mr.

Sulu, lock onto my coordinates." Kirk

turned to Strick. "Care to show us the scenic sights

of Discord?"

It was night at the mine at eighty degrees

south. A low black cone thrust up from the ocean,

its outline vaguely saw- toothed, like a fractal

design. Waves driven by a fifty-kph wind

hurled themselves against it, as if trying to batter it down

for its presumptions in challenging the supremacy of the

sea. Spotlights poured light out in actinic

pools on the seamount. In their glow, forms moved,

human and mechanical. The wind and waves did not

seem to hamper their activity. "I don't envy them

out there," James Kirk said, face almost

pressed to the armored glass port of the submersible.

The small craft lurched as a wave too big for

impellers and gyros to compensate for rolled past.

Kirk clenched his jaw and thought about the men who

had ventured forth on the sea in the wooden sailing

ships whose models he displayed in his quarters. Then

he tried not to think about them.

"If the motion of the sea troubles you," Arkazha

said with a slight smile, "be thankful for your

wonderful transport beams that placed us here

directly without the need to traverse many uneasy

kilometers of sea. 99

"The workers don't envy us," said Aileea. She

turned a frankly malicious glance at Wayne,

who sat next to the port across the cabin from Kirk and

Spock. Her pale redhead's skin had taken on

a greenish tinge that made her almost look as though she

had Vulcan blood. "Th ey're Grunts. They were

bred for heavy labor-strength, endurance, low

volition and intelli- gence. When we were freed, they

chose to reclaim their wills and intellects."

"Now they can perform physical tasks virtually

on autopilot, leaving their higher minds free,"

Strick said. "They give us some of our greatest

philosophers and theoreticians."

"The wind and the spray don't bother them?" Kirk

asked. The thick hull muted the fury of the wind, but

he could feel its howl in his bones, a lonely

souldevastating sound. "These chose further

modification for this environment," Strick said. "You

see, we Discordians prefer to shape ourselves to our

environment as much as possible, instead of vice

versa." This last was directed to Wayne. Unlike

their other two guides, Strick was still making every

effort to win the commissioner over. She ignored him,

though whether she rejected what he said or was merely

too seasick to respond, Kirk couldn't tell.

"There would seem to be a risk entailed in

adapting yourselves too closely to a given

environment," Spock said. "Throughout the known

universe, overspecialization is a consistent road

to extinction."

"As individuals, our human intellect always

gives us further scope to adapt," Arkazha said.

"Our minds help us adjust to changing situations, as

humans have through history. If you consider us as a

whole population, I think you would agree that we

maintain an adequate degree of diversity."

"Indisputablyea.doctor Arkazha."

Kirk glanced at his first officer and friend.

Spock was showing the Discordian more deference than he

generally offered humans. The keen intellect she

displayed, notably unblunted by sentiment,

obviously commanded his respect. "Ready to dive?"

The voice of the pilot came back over the

intercom. She was a beautiful woman of early

middle years with orange hair, cropped close and

shot through with gray. She was also one meter tall.

She belonged to a strain known as Micros, or

sometimes Pixies, who had been developed by the

Eugenicists as pilots and operators of craft

where mass or volume were at a premium-fighter

aircraft, space vehicles, deep- sea

probes. They had faster-than-normat reflexes,

greater tolerance for G-loading and pressure, and

keener eyesight. "I'm getting tired of fighting the

seas with this bitch."

"We're ready, Mattie," Strick said, and the

craft submerged. Bubbles seethed upward past the

ports as ballast blew. The pitching instantly

eased as the drive planes bit and carried the

submersible below the action of the waves. The moaning of the

storm went away.

The craft canted to port and swung around. Even

Wayne could not restrain a muted

exclamation of wonder as the seamount came into view.

The seamount was a hive of activity in the blaze of

spotlights. The lava upthrust was honeycombed with

tunnels. Deep-rangers-Vares similar

to Arkazha-moved in and out, wrestling cutting lasers

and guiding ore pods. "They work the most recent

flows," Strick said. "The metals just lie there in

layers, from beryllium, cobalt, and copper, down

through iron and iridium and on to uranium. There for the

taking."

Spock stirred himself. "He has a tendency

to oversimplify." Mona Arkazha said. "But not

by much, in this case.tv "Do you restore the

habitat when you've finished with your plunder?"

"Not much of a habitat to begin with," Strick said.

"We catch the seamounts as soon as they seem to have

grown dormant." "What if you guess wrong?"

"Accidents happen," Arkazha said. "Life

goes on."

"Life is cheap, to the exploiters," Wayne

said. "Exploiters?" Arkazha's rubbery lips

proved more than adeeableduate to sneer. "We need

the metal. We pay to get it. Where is

exploitation?"

"What about the workers?" Wayne asked,

gesturing out the port.

"I was one such worker, for this very corporation, when I

was young. I was born in Exile, which floats not far

from here. As a deep-miner I earned money for

school."

Her tone got distant. "I saw friends die, when

a plug blew. Life is risk."

A trio of Swimmers, as Aileea's Gens was

called, swam slowly past the submersible with lazy

sweeps of the fins strapped to their feet. They wore

goggles and wetsuits, but their necks were bare,

to allow their gills to work oxygen from the water.

"Why do they wear suits?" Kirk asked. "We

don't have polar caps, the way Earth does,"

dinAthos said. "But the water does get a bit

chilly way down here." "You know a lot about

Earth," Kirk said. "We remember where we came

from."

"Would you like to visit Earth?"

Aileea gazed out the port. "I'm happy

here."

Outside the city Storm, where it was afternoon, they

looked at a surface plant where minerals were

extracted from seawater. In the city itself they saw an

artistic competition, where looming metal

sculptures were revealed to the discordant

electronic music and the cheers-or catcalls-of

crowds packed into stands.

It was morning at Qara-Qitay. An

Asian-looking Micro flew them over the city, a

loose and sprawling collection of metal

structures anodized in shades of gold and

yellow, then landed them on a float next to an

electronics plant on the fringe. They spoke

to a foreman, a rhino-skinned Grunt with a

hdTdhat perched atop his disproportionately

small head. He assured them that by-products were

preserved and sold to other fabricators who could

make use of them.

"Discord is rich, but harsh," he said in a

highpitched whisper. "When we first came here, it was

a struggle just to live. Webledencearned to throw away as

little

as possible." A mountainous shrug. "Besides,

there's money to be made selling what we can't

use."

Wayne sneered.

In Harmony, where insulative matting was made

from seaweed, the people displayed few weapons of any

kind. In the baking heat of their central

square they besieged Spock with questions about Vulcan

philosophy, and even listened sympathetically

to Wayne when she criticized their fellow

Discordians as self-centered individualists.

They An turn pressed upon her their theories of

nonauthoritarian communal living. Their efforts were

hampered by the tendency of the proselytizing to dissolve

into shouting matches, until the whole plaza was

packed with teamed discourse carried out at the tops of

lungs and the party gratefully escaped via

transporter beam.

Rakatau drifted through the Sea of Smokes.

Despite a brisk rain even Spock had to don

a respirator against the stinging sulfur fumes

issuing from seamounts and bubbling up from subsurface

vents. Neither stench nor downpour bothered either their

hosts or the locals, whose faces showed strong

Malay traits ---- coneven the heavily

gene-modified ones. They wore colorful sarongs

and carried wavy-bladed kris daggers in pref-

erence to firearms. They mined the, vents and seamounts,

and built ships and habitations. They didn't seem

to draw much distinction between the two.- Wayne asked a

passing Swimmer with long black hair and a

profusion of gold jewelry bright against her

mahogany skin if the city discharged its wastes into the

sea.

"Of course not!" the Swimmer replied, gills

flaring

in indignation. "It's broken down by gene-engineered

bacteria and sold as fish food. Eris, what a

question. We swim in this water!"

There was excitement in Serendip. At twenty

degrees north it was the closest of the Discordian

cities to the equator, and suffered accordingly. A

Susuru surface force had attacked a fishing

fleet thirty kilometers to the southwest of the city,

sinking two boats and killing eight. Casualties

among the Susuru were reported to be high. Kirk

knew full well that reports of damage

inflicted on an enemy tended to be floridly

optimistic. Still, the distant black column of

smoke rising into mauve dusk indicated that someone

or something had been damaged severely.

Since the Klingons' arrival, the Susuru had

become aggressive about launching over-the-horizon

missile attacks to test the Discordian

antimissile defenses. So far these had proven

excellent. When the party arrived the city was just coming

off an alert'.

When Aileea-dinAthos learned of the attack,

she walked to a rail and stood staring off at the

setting sun for a few moments before rejoining the others.

Serendip by sunset had a pronounced Indian

flavor, with skirting music and exotic cooking

smells riding the breeze off the sea. The dusk

light was an alkaline white, which seemed to cut age

deep into the faces it touched.

The sunset itself was beautiful and somehow ghastly.

Distant Eris had an apparent size less than a

sixth that of Sol as seen from Earth. The tiny ball

had fallen into a puffy pile of cumulus way beyond

the horizon, with dense slate bands of cloud in

front of it, and lit it into a yellow fireball.

The surfaces of the cloud slabs above and below the sun

glowed yellow like heated

metal; the sky between them was lemon yellow as

well. Above and below the sky shaded orange, then

red. With a start Kirk realized it looked like nothing

so much as pictures he had seen of thermonuclear

explosions.

It seemed ominous, given the fact of the earlier

raid. Would the Klingons give their clients

nuclear weapons? He shook his head. Kain was a

rogue, but no account had ever made Kain

out to be a fool. Not even the fact that Kirk had

bested him on Endikon-Kirk had been quicker then,

that was all. Introducing nukes to a planetary

conflict like this would bring a Federation battlefleet

at warp factor eight, with the full weight of the

Organian Peace Treaty to back them up.

He found his mind adrift, as the cities themselves

drifted on the endless face of the sea. He was

feeling sunburned, footsore, and utterly spent.

Discord's gravity and heat had been squeezing him

for hours like a giant hand; the rapid shuttling back

and forth between the, surface and the climate- controlled

comfort of the Enterprise's transporter room had

reached the point of overstressing his system rather than

refreshing him. The arc welders of the great Indra

shipyards spouted eerie spumes of blue light on

the horizon, but he couldn't take any more.

"Let's.call it a day," he said. Nobody

argued.

SnPP-ING GPATEF-ULLY oFF the

transporter stage for what he hoped was the last time

today, Kirk turned to his three hosts. "I thank

you all for a most educational day," he said. "Now, in

a small way, perhaps I can repay the favor. If

you'll just follow me-was

On the bridge Kirk was pleased by the effect his

starship, had on his er/while guides-they reacted like

kids at the zoo. At the sight of Discord spread

out in all her blue-and-white- whorled glory on the

main screen, Aileea cried out in wonder,

momentarily a little girl again. Jason Strick stared

about him with wide amber eyes.

Even Mona Arkazha seemed impressed. "The

engineering that has gone into this creation," she said.

"Magnificent!" Kirk smiled indulgently.

"You'll have to meet my chief engineer. If he

hears you talking like that, you'll have a friend for life."

DinAthos turned toward him. "Captain, this is

wonderful. But I'm afraid we're going to have

to cut this visit short." "Why is that, Ms.

dinAthos?"

She was vigorously massaging her upper arms.

"Because we're freezing to death."

Commissioner Wayne did not accompany them back

to the transporter room. No one complained at her

absence. Spock took over the bridge.

"What do you think of my earlier invitation,

Captain?" Strick asked, trying to stop his teeth

chattering. "I think," Kirk said, "that I'll just

take you up on it." He stepped to the

wall communicator. "Kirk to bridge."

"Spock here."

"Mr. Spock, kindly see to having a schedule

of leaves drawn up. I'd like to give the crew a

chance to stretch their legs."

"Certainly, sir."

"Kirk out."

He turned away to find dinAthos standing behind him,

well within his personal space, looking at him

challengingly. "Well?" she demanded. "What have you

decided?"

"To permit my crew to beam down for leave."

"No, Captain. What are you going to do about us?

Are you ready to start driving us aboard the cattle

cars, the way she wants you to?"

She really is most breathtakingly lovely,

Kirk thought, and then Whoa, son. You've already

let your romantic nature complicate the situation

once this mission. "No. Speaking frankly, I

hope it never comes to

that. But keep in mind, Ms. dinAthos, the

Susuru are threatening to launch a final offensive

to wipe you out." Her eyes blazed dark green

fire. "Let them try! We're ready." "What

I most want," Kirk said levelly,

"is to institute peace talks between you and the Susuru.

Maybe it's time your peoples tried to learn

to coexist."

Aileea's face seemed to snap shut. She

whirled away and walked to stand by the transporter

platform, looking away from him.

"I take it that plan doesn't meet with her

approval," Kirk said to the others.

"She's had a loss, Captain," Arkazha

said. "The Stilters raided her family's ranch

two weeks before you came. They killed her father and

sank the house. Or maybe these Klingons of yours

did it; they used one of their off-world energy beams that

makes a man vanish if it so much as brushes

him."

"She's still on compassionate leave, Captain,"

Strick said. "That's why she has the leisure

to help serve as liaison. The thought took her

by surprise, that's all. Like most of us, I'm

sure she'd like to see the war ended."

"Keep in mind that it will be a complicated

process to get us Discordians to agree on the

terms of a peace. Most will not honor an agreement

they were not personally party to," Arkazha said. "Still,

we do not attack-much as some of our

hotheads would like us to. We defend only. If the

Susuru quit molesting us, there will be peace in

fact."

Kirk nodded. "That's my first goal, then.

To tell you the truth, peace negotiations are never

anything but a complicated process, and in my

experience "brief

peace talks" is an oxymoron as great as

"military intelligence." Getting the parties

to talk is usually the most important step."

Arkazha and Aileea made brief farewells.

DinAthos wouldn't meet Kirk's eye.

"Captain," Strick said, sounding almost

diffident. "A word with you before we beam back down?"

"Certainly."

They walked a few steps aside. "That

communications officer of yours, the one with the lovely

eyes-was "Lieutenant Uhura."

"That's the one. I'd like to extend my personal

invitation to introduce her to our world."

Kirk looked at him oddly. "Let me see

if I get this right- you're asking me for permission

to ask my communications officer on a date?"

Strick laughed. "I don't want to violate

your customs' Captain. So far you've

been scrupulous about honoring ours." "The

lieutenant is one of my most valued officers.

She's one of the most intelligent people I know. She

possesses excellent taste and judgment. That being

the case, all I can say is"-he shrugged-"go for

it."

Bone-weary though he was, Kirk called a

command meeting in the briefing compartment to relay what had

been learned that day. "The customs of the human

colonists of Discord-and never forget, please, that

they are all just as human as we are-are so different

from ours that they might as well be aliens. Still they

seem reasonable enough, and by no means belligerent,

in spite of the sidearms. Therefore, it is my

judgment that tomorrow we shall get in touch

with the Susuru and try to get peace talks going

between the warring species. Any comments?"

"I'm a doctor, not a diplomat," Dr.

McCoy said, "but it seems to me it's always better

to have folks talking than fighting." "For once your

sentiment is in accord with logic, Doctor,"

Spock said.

The other bridge crew murmured agreement.

Kirk was just nodding, pleased at the easy consensus,

when Commissioner Wayne spoke from the far

end of the compartment, where she stood with arms tightly

folded.

"Your plan is-unacceptable, Captain."

"In ... whatt ... particular," Kiric

asked deliberately. He was trying to hold his

temper in check.

"Our mission is not to serve as peacekeepers.

Our purpose is to remove alien organisms that

have illegally been introduced into the planetary

environment."

"You're talking about people as if they were vermin again,

aren't you?" McCoy asked.

"Doctor, from an ecological standpoint, people are

the most destructive vermin of all."

I "Might I remind the commissioner," Spock

said, "that Starfleet's primary mission is always

keeping the peace." "Not when orders signed off on

by Captain Kirk and stored in your computer memory

countermand it," Wayne said. "Starfleet instructed

you to help me remove the colonists." She looked

around. "And frankly, all this talk of peace

strikes me as unutterably naive. Despite

your captain's remarkably ingenuous assessment,

these people spring from an armed and neurotic society,

poised always on the edge of violence. There

is no

doubt in my mind that they will resist our carrying out

our mission with the fury of cornered rats."

"People's being willing to resist being taken from their

homes by force doesn't make them psychotic,

Commissioner," Uhura said.

"You're forgetting that these people are outlaws,"

Wayne said. "They reject the concept of authority

within their own culture. They practice a

technology that has been banned, on Earth and

later by the Federation, for almost three centuries. And

they conduct wanton attacks against the rightful

inhabitants of the planet."

"They defend themselves," Sulu said. "So they

say. Are you so prejudiced that you reflexively

take the word of a human over the word of a

nonhumanoid?" She tossed her head. "Or do

I even need to ask?" Sulu's handsome face

darkened, and he looked quickly down at the table.

"She makes a good point, Jim," McCoy

said ruefully. "We can't just take what these people say

at face value simply because they're human."

"You are, of course, correct, Commissioner,"

Kirk said. "I have every intention of examining the story

more thoroughly from the Susuru's side.

Tomorrow."

"I think you'll find the charges substantiated,"

Wayne said. "After all, their allegations of

ecological devastation have been amply borne out."

"What?" exclaimed Kirk. "Commissioner, that's

ridiculous. Will at ve just spent an entire day in

that pressure cooker down there looking at recycling

measures and hearing sermons on ecological

consciousness that would do credit to a twenty-first-

century city council! What in the hell are you

talking about?"

"Commissioner," Spock said, "a single

moderately active volcanic vent of the Sea of

Storms discharges more waste into the ecosystem in one

hour than all human habitations upon Discord do in

one day. Simple mathematics suggest this to be

true, and sensor readings confirm it."

"What about waste heat?"

"As we observed today, the human settlers make

extensive use of solar, wind, and wave power,"

Spock said. "None of these energy sources

introduces extra heat into the system." "They also

have fusion generators in those cankerous cities of

theirs."

"Computer," Kirk said.

"Yes, darling." Wayne flashed her eyes at

him. He ignored her. "Show us the planet listed

in your memory as Okeanos." "Yes, dear." The

cloud-swirled blue disk appeared in the

three-faceted viewer at the table's head. . .

"Now display all hot spots of, oh, one

hundred degrees Celsius over ambient

temperature. On second thought, make it

fifty."

The image glowed with red spots as if it had

developed a bad case of acne. "Now

subtract all those. sources that are of artificial

nature. Flash each one white as you delete it."

"Yes, dear."

"Stop that."

"Affirmative ... dear."

Kirk sighe d. Dots flickered out, one by one.

He noted that about twenty percent of them were on

islands in the Susuru archipelago.

" "That leaves," he said, "almost all of them.

That's lava, Commissioner, being discharged by the tonne in

some places. The level of human activity

we're observing isn't making much dent in that."

"The humans still commit ecological rape on

an enormous scale, Captain,"

Wayne said primly. "You saw the way they

ravaged the seamount. You saw the factories by which they

plundered the sea of its very substance."

. "If such-standards were applied across the

Federation," Spock said, "they would seem to forbid

any level of technological activity at all,

or indeed any form of interaction with the environment.

Surely you're not proposing the end of all of

technic-civilization , Commissioner?" 461'm not

too sure that's a bad idea," she said. "What

about beavers?" Sulu asked.

"Or mud daubers?" asked Uhura.

"They're part of nature," Wayne said.

"Unless you subscribe to certain fringe theories to the

effect that sapience was taught to the ancestors of all

present sentient races by some undiscovered

agenCY, was Spock said, "intelligence evolved

quite naturally1

"The Susuru had their hot spots, too,

Commissioner," Kirk said, "from power plants and

foundries." "Incorrect," the domputer said.

Wayne turned him a look of triumph.

"Explain," Kirk said.

"Five heat sources are identified as

foundries, six as assorted

manufacturing operations, and four as fission-fired

nuclear power plants. The remaining three sources

are imperfectly shielded mobile

matter-antimatter generators of standard Klingon

issue."

""Imperfectly-shielded?"" Mr. Scott

echoed. The

computer's words had jolted him loose from the

polite fugue in which he always spent conferences not

directly connected with nuts and bolts or matters

of immediate survival. "But any decent mstam unit

converts output into usable energy with a hundred percent

efficiency."

He shuddered at the shoddiness of Klingon design.

Kirk grinned at a vision of him chucking his

Klingon dictionary and technical manuals down a

disintegrator chute at the first opportunity.

"All this is entirely off the subject,"

Wayne said stiffly. "You have your orders,

Captain, and frankly it is unacceptable for you

to waste further time in implementing them."

Kirk lowered his chin to his clavicle and stared at

her. "Then orders be damned, Commissioner. To herd

those people into transports at gunpoint and whisk them

away from the planet on which every last one of

them was born would be an act worthy of a Hitler-or

a Khan."

He raised his head. "You will recall that, in both

of those cases, "only following orders" failed

miserably as a defense." "Captain, I warn

you-was

He held up a hand. "Save your warnings,

Commissioner. If on the conclusion of my investigation

I ascertain that the presence of Earth human

settlers upon Okeanos places an intolerable

burden on the planet or on any of its indigenous

species, I will see to their removal. By whatever

means necessary.",

McCoy started to his feet in outrage.

"Jim-was "Sit down, Bones. I'm a

Starfleet officer. I've sworn to follow my

orders-we all have. If those orders are lawful.

If in my judgment they are not, Enterprise will

return to Starbase Twenty-three with those orders

unfulfilled. In no case will I take action

until I'm certain it is the right action to take."

Wayne dropped her voice. "This could cost you

your ship, Captain," she said, almost sadly.

"I'm aware of that," he said. "But it won't

cost me my Soul."

"LIEUTFNANT. May I speak with you a

moment?" "Why, certainly, Captain."

The briefing was breaking up, the bridge crew

returning to their duty stations or, in the case of

Uhura, heading for their quarters. As Kirk himself

hoped to be soon. "Do you remember the spokesman

for the Discordians-the man who came up to the bridge

with the two women?" "The tall one with the gorgeous

eyes-is that the one you mean, sir?"

"Um. Yes. I believe he's going "to offer

you an invitation soon."

"'Oh, really.

"y es. And while it wouldn't be wise to get

too tangled up with a participant in a dispute

we're going to try to settle- whether the Commissioner

wants it settled or not-there's no reason you

can't"-he

made a rotary gesture with his hands-"enjoy

yourself."

"I certainly will, Captain," the lieutenant

said with a gleam in her eye.

"Of course, you know a degree of discretion is

called for-was How is it that so often I wind up

sounding like a father lecturing his adolescent daughter?

he wondered.

64111 uphold the finest traditions of

Starfleet, Captain," Uhura said, "and I'll

be sure not to do anything you wouldn't do. Good night,

sir."

"I was afraid you'd say that," he said to her

retreating back.

"Captain."

Kirk stopped. Seeing the expression on his

face, the crewfolk walking the other direction

along the passageway gave him plenty of sea

room. Or remembered errands they'd forgotten back

the way they had come.

"Commissioner," he said, as the purposeful

footsteps caught up to him.

Moriah Wayne's face was white with fury.

"Why wasn't I consulted on allowing the crew

leave Among the settlers?" "I'm the captain.

This is my ship and my crew. How I schedule my

leave rotations is my concern. It's no more my job

to check with you on the subject than it is for Bones

to ask your permission to order more supplies for

sickbay."

Her eyes took on a dangerous glint. "I

believe you are deliberately trying to sabotage this

mission, Captain," she said. "My

report will so state."

He stared at her. "Because I'm allowing shore

leave?"

"Precisely. You're playing on the crew's

natural sympathy for humans over what they think

of as aliens-even though those, those ersatz humans

below, are at least as alien as the Susuru. You

want to create a situation in which it will be impossible

to compel the settlers to evacuate without risking

mutiny."

"Mutiny?" His first impulse was to roar at her.

That died quickly, to be supplanted by the urge to laugh

in her face. He gave in to that one.

"Commissioner, really. You have the most amazing view

of how Starfleet operates."

He held up a finger. "First of all, let me

remind you- Enterprise is not a democracy."

Another finger. "Second, let me point out to you that

everyone on board, except a few civilians and

yourself, has sworn an oath to uphold the laws and

ideals of the Federation, and to obey all lawful orders

of their superior officers, regardless of their

personal preferences. These are people who have already

obeyed my orders many times when they might-have

preferred not to, even at the risk of their

lives." "What about the example you gave them

earlier in the evening by defying my ordersThat"

"You're a civilian, Commissioner. You're

outside the Starfleet chain of command. And every man and

woman in the crew knows that, should you profess charges

on my return, I will face a board of

inquiryor a court-martial. There's a price

to disobedience, one even I am prepared to pay."

He held up his hands before him. "Don't you see

how you're insulting them, Commissioner, when you suggest

they'll mutiny if I give them an unpopular

order?"

She sagged so abruptly that he was aft-aid she

would collapse to the deck. Instead she leaned her

back against the bulkhead.

"Jim," she said, "I'm sorry. I ... I

guess I'm getting too close to the situation."

He turned away from her, raised a forearm, and

braced it against the bulkhead. He could not honestly have

said what he was feeling at that moment.

A touch on his arm. He spun angrily away

from it. "What are you trying to do to me?" he demanded.

The planes of her face shifted, as if she were

trying on various emotions and finding none of them

fit. She settled on something that seemed

halfway between hurt and haughtiness. "I might ask

you the same thing.

"Moriah, I'm trying to keep separate my

dealings with you as a person and my dealings with you as a

Federation commissioner. You're not making it particularly

easy."

"You're angry with me because of our-policy

disagreements." "Policy disagreements? You keep

telling me how you're going to have my job the moment we

set foot back on Federation soil, over just those

"policy disagreements. "You really can9t

separate the business from the personal, then?" she

asked in a hollow voice.

"That's not it," he said, facing her once more.

14or that's not all of it. It's just-was A chopping

motion of one hand. "I remember what you had to say

about the Discordians this morning, Commissioner, and. the

tone of voice in which you said it." He shook his head.

"That showed me a person I don't find it very easy

to

She came to him and clutched at his arm. "But,

Jim, you don't mean that old movie remark? That

was a joke! That's all it was."

"It wasn't easy to tell, under the

circumstances."

She laughed weakly and shook her head. "I

guess that's another area where I've got a lot

to learn about dealing with people."

He sagged at the knees, Is this conversationfor

real? "Maybe it is. But, Moriah, you had

plenty to say about the colonists, and I don't think

it was all supposed to be funny." "No. It --

wasn't Maybe I reacted a little stronglybut it

was an honest reaction."

She dirifted a 'IvWill steps down the

corridor. "I remember reading about the Eugenics

Wars when I was a little girl. I saw the

pictures of the devastation Khan and the others wrought.

And I saw the pictures of the things they'd created in

their labs."

He came up behind her and put a hand on her

shoulder. "Don't you see that these people were Khan's

victims? They didn't ask him to experiment on

them."

"Khan and his cadre and the other tyrants were

products of gene engineering, too, don't forget."

Kirk winced. He couldn't very well forget,

since two years before the Enterprise had come across the

Botany Bay adrift in space-the sublight

"sleeper" colony ship in which Khan and a

handful of his comrades had fled Earth in 1996.

Khan had taken the Enterprise by treachery, and

several crewfolk died before the ship was recovered.

Kirk had marooned Khan and his followers,

including the Enterprise's historian, who had

become infatuated with him, on Ceti Alpha V.

"They were the rulers," he said. "A

self-proclaimed

master race. These people were bred to be their slaves,

Moriah."

She pivoted toward him. "But you're missing

something vital. They perpetuate it. I've been

reading about their ancestors in the computer's

historical archives. After Khan fell, the

tyrants" altered humans were declared wards of the

United Nations. They were sent to live in a series

of camps in isolated areas. Normal humans had

suffered enormously in the wars. Some blamed

Khan's creations for their hardships-made them

scapegoats, I'm aware of that. Others simply

feared them. So they had to be kept carefully

segregated and under guard." "That's a terrible

tragedy, Moriah. It seems-to me someone of

your pronounced compassion might find some to spare for people

whose forebears went through a thing like that."

"But don't you see? The United Nations banned

gene engineering of humans. As I said at the

briefing, it's still illegal. I was raised to regard

the very concept with horror. So were you, Jim. So was every

other human child in the Federation." "Well ... yes.

That's true."

"They kept it alive themselves. Defied the UN

ban, kept passing the forbidden knowledge along, kept the

equipment carefully hidden away in the camps. They

not only passed their own artificial traits onto

their children, they created new ones. They made that

decision for their children-imposed xeaon them, for all their

atomistic raving about the sanctity of individual

choice. Can you honestly say that isn't monstrous?"

"I don't know. You met those people. You talked to them.

Do they really seem like monsters to you?"

She turned away. "Yes. And the testimony of the

Susuru bears that out."

He threw up his hands. "Commissioner, I

suppose we will have to agree to disagree. Until our

fact-finding mission bears fruit. Now-good

night."

A hand on his forearm. "Jim." Her eyes glowed

as if they had incandescent arcs behind them. "Let's go

to your quarters an tal about-other t ings.

About your plans and aspirations. About the future.

About US. 11

He filled so full of things to say that none of them

made it out of his mouth.

"Not tonight," he finally managed to say. And he

turned and left her standing alone.

"Bmow," said Captain of the First Rank Kain

with a grand sweep of his gauntleted hand. "The

majesty of Island."

Standing next to Spock, Dr. McCoy, and

Commissioner Wayne on a weathered granite knee

looming high above the ocean, Kirk beheld. It was

morning and the sky was miraculously clear. He had

to admit the sight was majestic indeed, despite the

awful heat.

At eleven hundred meters the promontory was

the highest point in the Susuru archipelago. A

few active seaniounts were higher, but there was no

current volcanic activity along the equator.

Across a strait so blue it was painful to look at

lay the western end of Madagascar-sized

Homesward, colored more shades of green than

Kirk ever knew existed, from the dark green of the

interior jungles and terraced mountainsides to the

pale yellow-green of the cultivated

coastal areas and cleared plateaus. To left and right

other islands shouldered up from the sea, some large enough

for habitation, others little more than the nubs of

long-dead searnounts, all so thickly furred with the

vegetation that sprang up whenever and wherever it was given

a chance that they appeared to be wearing green wigs above

the black mar-gin where wave action kept the lava

scoured clean of growth. Kain pointed out the most

prominent of them "There lie the Sea Dragon's

Teeth, there Fever Tree, Tribulation,

Sulfur Island. That bare spit of black stone,

the nearest point on Hornesward, is known as

Cape Sorrow."

"Gloomy damned set of names," remarked Dr.

McCoy. "Okeanos-Island-is a harsh world," said

Wayne in a distant voice. She stood atop a

small boulder, apart from her Federation companions and

rather nearer the Klingon. She had her arms crossed and a

dreamy expression on her face. The brisk

breeze whipped loose hair like whisks of copper

wire against her forehead. "She lays a heavy

burden on her chil- dren.

"You are very perceptive" Kain said. "Ids a

world not unlike my own."

"Leaving aside the fact that Klingon

is cold and dry," McCoy said, "whereas this

place is the Devil's own sauna."

"Its similarity lies in the fact that both worlds

are exacting environments, Dr. McCoy," Kain

said. "But the very ferocity of the world adds savor, do you

not think? Beauty without danger is insipid, like a

rose without a thorn."

He walked forward to stand next to Wayne and point

out a particularly interesting feature to her. McCoy

put his head near Kirk's.

"Now, tell me if the sun's getting to me,"

he said, "but I thought the KJ-INGON appreciation for

natural beauty ran along the lines of, 'Up on

thai crag a few well-armed warriors could stand off

an army.""

"Maybe our Captain Kain has the soul of a

poet."

"Maybe pigs have wings." ,

"Gentlemen," Kain called in his molten-amber

baritone, "shall we head back down to the flyer? We

are due to meet with the Lead Walker soon. Permit

me, Commissioner." He held a hand up for

Wayne. After a heartbeat's hesitation she took

it and jumped down.

"Beware of Rornulans bearing

gifts," McCoy said under his breath, "and polite

Klingons."

Kain and the commissioner led the way down the long,

slow slope that fell away inland from the

promontory. The trail vanished almost instantly

into a tunnel backed through unbelievably dense

vegetation. Humidity and the smell of green decay

seemed to enfold their heads like wet blankets.

"Confounded steep mountains they have on this planet,"

McCoy said, batting at a gigantic fleshy

triangle of leaf that Kain had happened to allow

to swing back into his face. "Notice that the

extremely durable stone of the outcrop, on which we

stood was polished quite smooth by erosion," Spock

said. "The archipelago is quite ancient."

. "Given how jagged these islands still are after

millions of years of being exposed to the tender

mercies of the elements," Kirk said, "I think

I'm just as glad I wasn't around when they were

formed."

"There just isn't much peace to this planet, Jim,

and that's a fact," McCoy said.

The ground leveled off into a broad extended

hip. The flat expanse was occupied by a clearing,

natural or otherwise. The flyer that had

brought them here was parked at the far side. "I feel

like, if I were wearing snowshoes, I could skim right

across the tops of this stuff," McCoy said as they

trudged through the grass, dew heavy and knee high.

"Hardly practicable, Doctor," Spock said.

"But I know what you mean, Bones," Kirk said.

"This is unbelievable growing land-soil to gladden a

farm boy's heart." "It is fortunate for the

Susuru that the soil is so fertile," Spock

said, "since such a small percentage of their land is

arable."

"I wonder why this plot isn't under

cultivation?" Kirk asked. "Because it's a park,

Captain," said Wayne, who had paused to let the

others catch up. "Look."

To the side of the clearing a Susuru. family

frolicked, two children racing in circles about what

might have been a mated pair of adults. As

Kirk watched, the larger adult, possibly the

male, darted toward one of the young ones with an

exaggerated spraddle-foot walk. The young

Susuru promptly fell down in a tangle of

gawky forelimbs. Its sibling hopped from foot

to foot, hooting at it. The elder Susuru

extended a foreleg to help it up. Then the

three skipped through a complicated trefoil dance

while the smaller adult sang in a sweet

soprano voice. "Look at them," the commissioner

said. "Peaceful, playfuLike They're not carrying

guns." She headed off toward the Klingon

aircraft.

"Y'know, Jim," McCoy said. "When I

look at these

critters the main word that comes to mind is cute.

"He shook his head. "Hard to see them as the

demons the colonists make them out to be."

"But the colonists do not demonize the Susuru,

Doctor," Spock said. "They speak of them

mainly in terms suggesting amused contempt."

Except Aileea, Kirk thought, vaguely

troubled. And she's not without a reason to dislike them.

He wondered then why he cared how dinAthos

felt about the Susuru-and why he made excuses for

her.

The larger of the two young Susuru froze, legs

apart, the fur of its ruff extended, staring across the

grass at the little group of humanoids. It uttered

a whinny of fear, stamped its forelegs. The other

Susuru looked around, saw the party for the first time, and

bolted into the undergrowth.

"Most curious," Spock said.

The flyer grounded in a field on the outskirts

of the largest city of Homesward. A trio of

field workers fled at their approach, running with

startling leaps across orderly rows of bushes with

thick-lobed, succulentlooking leaves. Ignoring the

fact that the field was cultivated, the Klingon

craft settled down, crushing several rows of

bushes into the friable black soil. Showing no

concern, Kain leapt down from the craft and assisted

Wayne out after him. The Klingon pilot followed,

and all three tramped off across the cultivated

rows. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy climbed out more

gingerly. "These Klingons sure have quite a way about

them," McCoy said, eyeing the Susuru farmers who

watched from several hundred meters away, twitching

from forefoot to fo refoot in agitation.

"For a fact, they seem a bit abrupt for

"fraternal advisers,"" Spock said.

"Mingons have a different concept of brotherly

love than the rest of us," Kirk said. "It's an

example of what the commissioner would call cultural

diversity."

They set off after Kain and the commissioner. The city

was laid out in concentric rings, with

progressively decreasing distances between them. As the

rings grew closer together, the character of their comsurroundings

changed from rural to urban. The structures tended

to be low and sturdy, to stand up against the violent

weather-pentagonal structures of cement and stone that

had been melted and poured into forms. The doorways and

windows were all five-sided polygons, with

vertical sides parallel and two shorter sides

angling together in an arch at the top.

"Observe, Captain," Spock said, "how the

number of structures in a ring is always a

multiple of five."

"Play us some slack, Spock," McCoy

growled. "We don't all have a surveyor's

transit for eyes."

Spock raised a brow. "Doctor, surely

you're aware a transit is used to measure

angles, not as an adjunct to enumeration." , "You

should learn to listen to what I mean, man, not what I

say."

"Your request is illogical, Doctor. I

can hear only that which you actually deign

to vocalize."

Kirk listened to their banter with half an ear.

Usually he took an active interest in

their fencing matches, even after five years of listening

to them; they were inventive, if nothing else, each one

always finding something new to tweak the other with. More to his

sui-prise, he was paying little attention to their

surroundings, although the thrill of encounterin an

alien civilization close up for the first time was

usually his intoxicant of choice.

Instead he kept watching Wayne and the Klingon

captain walking side by side, close together, and

speaking very earnestly.

Except for Spock the Federation

representatives were all staggering visibly when they

reached the innermost circle, a broad green lawn

around the sprawling pentagonal building that housed the

seat of Susuru government. There was no pavement.

The Susuru Lead Walker and his entourage emerged

from the grand five'-sided portal and went down a

short flight of steps directly onto the grass.

"Delay is unacceptable!" shrilled Swift as the

offworlders approached. "The humans must leave our

planet or face extermination!"

"I have tried to impress the urgency of that fact

upon the captain," Wayne said. "So far I have

failed."

"Lead Walker," Kirk said, "just how

well do you know your enemies, the Discordians?"

Swift snapped his fingers, an apparent sound of

annoyance. "Well enough. They are intruders and

ravagers." He glanced at Kain, who stood with

Wayne by his side. "What more do we need

to knowThat'

"Perhaps if both sides understood each other

better, you'd feel less like booting them offyour

world," McCoy said. The Lead Walker eyed him

narrowly, with his ears angled down and out. Then he

looked at Kirk. "You permit voices to speak from

the herd? Anarchy, anarchy.

"The doctor is one of our own ruling Five,"

Kirk said. "And I can only echo his sentiment.

Why don at t you sit down with the Discordians and

talk? You

might not find them that unpleasant a set of

neighbors." Swift stamped his right foot. His

Vanguard Walkers set up an ear-piercing

ululation.

"No! They are not our neighbors! They plunder,

they kill-was 16 Perhaps if you were to show us some of the

damage they have done to your dwellings," Spock said,

"it might help us to frame a more perfect understanding

of the situation." Swift went up on his

toes leaned back as if to flee, and looked at

Kain in something like panic. The captain only

smiled back encouragingly-if a Klingon's smile

could be said to be encouraging.

"It cannot be," Swift said slowly, lowering his

weight again. "Security concerns forbid."

- He dropped his muzzle to give Kirk a

glance of sly appraisal. "They are your fellow

humans, after all. How do we know you won't

report to them what we show you."

Kirk felt his cheeks get hotter than the sun

was already making them. "I am not human," Mr.

Spock said. "I can assure you of my complete

impartiality."

"You all look alike to me," Swift said

suspiciously. "As Commissioner Wayne said at

our first meeting, we have come to help you," Kirk said,

back in control of his temper. "But surely it will be

easier for us to help you if you'll meet us

halfway."

"No! No halfway!" Swift's grizzled

ruff bristled. "Thi's planet- ours! You are

humans. The intruders are human. We called you

to take your people off. Take them off, or we destroy

them!"

"It is our impression that you have been waging

warfare with the humans for almost forty of your

years," Spock said. "In all that time, neither

side has achieved a decisive result. How do

you propose to defeat them now?" Swift thrust his

muzzle at Kain. "Our friends from the stars. They

give us much-show us much."

"Introducing advanced weaponry to a planetary

conflict constitutes a violation of the Organian

Peace Accords, Captain," Kirk said. "The

Discordians describe new weapons being used

against them since your arrival, which sound suspiciously

like phasers."

"They lie," Wayne said.

Spock arched a brow. "Indeed? How then could they

describe them so accurately?"

"My people are warriors, Captain, as you're

well aware," Kain said. "They are under strict

orders not to violate the Peace Accords.

Nonetheless, in the heat of battle, their blood might

overwhelm even their sense of duty." A shrug.

"I shall make inquiries."

"I trust the usual Draconian standards of

Klingon discipline will be applied," Kirk said.

"Of course." Kain fingered the hilt of the

bladed weapon at his belt.

"Then what is the answer to Mr. Spock's

question?" . "Really, Captain Kirk, do you think

it's appropriate to badger him?" Wayne

demanded.

"The Susuru are apt pupils," Kain said.

"In fact, properly stimulated, they have a marked

talent for tactical innovation. The Earther

colonists can expect no end of surprises in the

not- too-distant future."

"But those who walk before you have ordered you to help us,

Captain," Swift said. "We will not need those

surprises-will we?"

"Lead Walker," Kirk said deliberately,

"the uproot- 1 4 3

ing of an entire people is something that the Federation

views very gravely. Under most circumstances" comhe

looked at Wayne- "it is considered a heinous

crime. I appreciate the depth of your feelings.

But I am not willing to undertake an act of this

magnitude without exhausting every possible

alternative." "No alternative!" cried

Swift. He calmed himself, looked at Wayne.

"You speak for those who walk before all, whom all

follow. Do they not command him to our help?"

"They do."

"Do you then disobey your leaders, Captain?"

"In the Federation'we have a rule of laws, not of

beings. I am faithful to those laws. I intend to go

on being so. Accordingly, I'm not going to take any

action until I get you and the settlers together

to talk. Do you understand?" The twenty elders started

screeching again. "And that damned racket isn't going

to make me change my mind!"

Swift stamped his foot. The wailing ceased.

"There's something I must ask you, Lead Walker,

something that might work to your benefit. My crew need

recreation, need to feel the wind and sun on their

faces ... even this sun. Will you let leave parties

beam down among your islands so that my people may walk

among yours and learn of them? It would help us

to better appreciate your plight."

"No." Swift was too angry even to shriek.

The guard hairs of Swift's ruff quivered to the

intensity of his emotion. "This world is ours. Ours

alone. We will have no humans upon it. Not the ones

who invaded from the sky forty years ago. Not the ones

you bring

with you on your ship, with your flat faces and your

thick, ungainly, ill-placed legs."

He drew himself up to his full height.

"Island belongs to us. We want it back. There can

be no negotiation. Remember, Captain-nine

days. And then ... annihilation."

THE DOOR ANNUNCLATOR to Kirk's cabin

chimed. Sitting at his desk reading a digest of

reports on Okeanos comor Island, or

Discord-James Kirk lifted his head, thought about

rebelling, and finally said, "The hell with it. Come

in."

The door slid open to admit Dr. McCoy.

"You look relieved, Jim."

"Maybe it's the sight of that bottle in your

hand." "This?" McCoy held it up. Brown

liquid sloshed inside. "Just a product of the

local culture."

He tossed it to Kirk, who only just managed

to field it. He peered at the label.

""Hagbard's Select"?" "Literary

reference, they tell me." McCoy went to the

settee and sat down.

"The seal is broken," Kirk-said, "and there

appears to be some missing."

"Well, since the stuff is manufactured by a

belligerent in a war you're trying to stop,

it'd be a clear

dereliction of duty for me to permit my captain

to drink the stuff without subjecting it to rigorous

scientific analysis first." He rubbed his

stomach. "It passed the taste test with flying

colors. And it hasn't killed me yet. So I

feel confident in pronouncing it fit even for a

starship captain. Especially one with a load of

travails."

"You can say that again." Kirk squinted at the

bottle a little more closely. "Except-tell me

one thing. Just what grows on this planet that

sQmebody might be able to distill "fine sipping

whiskey" from?"

"Some things, Jim, a man isn't meant to know.

Now drink, don't analyze. Prove you're a

man instead of a Vulcan." Kirk went to the

sideboard, took out a couple of tumblers, and

poured a couple of fingers in each. He handed one to the

doctor.

"You first."

"What? You don't trust me?" He hoisted the

glass. "To the wonders of modem medicine." He

tossed it off, smacked his lips, and sighed. "Ah.

Five or six more like that and I'll forget

what it's like on that infernal Dutch oven of a

planet." Kirk sipped his cautiously. It

rolled silkily over his tongue and down his

throat-then seemed to ignite like a kerosene spill.

"My," he gasped, "that's-was

"Smooth. But beware the afterbite

"I'll say." Kirk paused, sucking on his

lips. "You know, a man could get accustomed to that."

"The way you sounded when I rang," McCoy said

as Kirk poured himself another, "I figured you thought

I was the Terror of Red Tape Mansion."

"She's still safely down on the planet, continuing

her own inquiries." Kirk sat in his

desk.chair. "For some reason the Susuru don't

mind her staying on."

"She tells them what they want to hear. Also,

I think their bosses, those "forward walkers" or

whatever you call "em, are only too eager

to give their shiny new ridge-headed friends anything their

black hearts desire."

He looked closely at Kirk. "Funny you

should use the word safely in this context. If I

didn't know better, I'd swear that silver-tongued

Klingon bastard is beating your. time."

Kirk laughed weakly. "Do you really

think that's likely, Bones?"

"Well, now, Klingons and humans are

anatomically compatible, reproductively speaking,

much as it might gripe them to admit it-was

"I mean-do you really think a woman in her

position-was McCoy was leaning back. "I think that

Deputy Commissioner Wayne has so many demons

crammed "into her head there's no telling who's

running the show at any given moment. By all accounts

Daddy Cornelius was as tyrannical an old

reptile as you'd care to run across. Moriah was his

only child. Now, I'm a doctor, not a

headshrinker, but I'd say that's a situation

tailor-made to produce a confused overachiever

who's always looking to please Daddy. And never, ever

can." Kirk stared into his glass. "You mean to say,

you think her interest in me was based on a desire

for a father figure?" McCoy grinned.

"Bones, I'm a year or two older than she

is, if that. And the idea of Kain as a father

substitute-was

"The human mind is a wondrous contrivance,"

McCoy said. "Who knows what gyrations it's

capable of?" He crossed his legs and the two men

drank in companionable silence. After a

few moments Kirk went and retrieved the bottle.

"How did that Klingon son of a gun Kain get

to be so damned smooth, anyway?" McCoy asked

as Kirk poured. "Most Klingons think

etiquette means you don't wipe your hands on your

sash after you stab the person next to you at the dinner

table. This boy's fit to be presented to the Queen of

England. Most Klingons talk like a handful of

gravel being shaken on a washboard. This one has a

voice Wu Shanxi would kill for." He referred

to the Federation's leading operatic baritone. "He

does show a lot of polish for a Klingon" was

Kirk said. "For example, you contradicted him

over the similarity of Discord and his homeworld, and he

didn't even try to kill you."

McCoy blinked and swallowed. "Yeah. Well,

he sure doesn't come by it honestly."

"Oh, but he does, Bones. His father was a

diplomat." "A diplomat?" McCoy raised

an eyebrow. "I didn't know the Klingons grew

any of those."

"They don't, many. But even a fanatical

warrior culture needs a negotiator sometimes.

And given the stakes that're liable to be involved

wherever YJ-INGONS are concerned, they tend

to be good ones. That's how I met him, in fact-he

accompanied his father to a conference I attended, when I

was still at the Academy."

"Axanar."

"That's the one. His father was a big man, imposing,

very dignified. To tell you the truth, aside from

height, Kain doesn't look a thing like him.

Krodan, we knew him as, though I guess his

real name's more along the lines of QoDang."

He was slumping lower in his chair as the fierce

Discordian whiskey relaxed him. "Want to know

something ironic? I think that's why Kain is such a

swashbuckler. He's trying to compensate for the

dishonor of his father's occupation." He shook his head.

"And in his heyday, Krodan was one of the four or

five most powerful men in the Empire."

"From the way he was talking to you, you and he have some

history beyond the Axanar talks."

"I guess so." Kirk shrugged. "He and I

never saw each other. Planet called Endikon.

I was still a lieutenant on Farragut-after

Captain Garrovick died. We and the Klingons were

vying for the right to trade for life-extending

pharmaceuticals from yet another crabby, zealous

race with bony heads. The Klingon

captain sent a party down to steal a valuable holy

relic to hold for ransom."

"What happened?"

"It-ahh-disappeared before they had the chance."

McCoy squinted at him. "Are you telling me

you stole the relic yourseIP"

"I thought of it as removing it for safekeeping."

The doctor roared. "Then what happened?"

"Somehow the local authorities had been tipped

off. The Klingon group walked right into their arms.

Repercussions blew them clean off the planet."

He tossed off the tag end of his drink. "I

remember now, the party was commanded by a kid ensign.

I guess that was Kain."

"Given the usual Klingon response

to failure, that was a pretty rough trick to play

on a kid."

"I suppose it was. That wasn't the kind of

thing I thought about back then, when I was young and wild

and full of beans." "And now you're old and wild and

full of beans."

Kirk stood, and swayed. "Who's old?"

Ask the man in the mirror." McCoy leaned

forWard and held his glass between his knees. "I

wonder what our friend Kain is doing wearing

a kligat. his

Kirk looked at him. "The knife? It looks

familiar, somehow." McCoy laughed. "Are you

getting old, or is the booze clouding your

memory? That's a kligal, favored weapon of the

inhabitants of Capella IV. One of whom just

happens to be my godson."

"Teer Leonard James Akaar," Kirk said.

"Does have a bit of a ring to it, you gotta admit."

McCoy rubbed the back of his neck. "Of course,

I still have a knot on the back of my head left

over from where his mom cold-cocked me with that rock.

My old friends the Capellans are even crankier

than Klingons comz that Kfingon spy found out. What

was his name, anyway?"

"Kras."

"Very conspirators he had talked into killing old

Teer Akaar, Senior, whacked him out with one of those

flying can openers ... I wonder if Kain knows how

to use his."

"Probably."

McCoy shook his head. "If they've got many

more like him, we're in a peck of trouble."

"There's only one Qeyn HoDo waDI-CHILD, was

Kirk said, making fairly heavy weather

of the Klingon, "in either the Empire or the

Federation."

McCoy held up his glass. "Thank God for

that!" He chuckled. "Though I think our lovely

commissioner may have a point. You are a pretty

close counterpart ... say, this thing's empty."

"So's the bottle."

McCoy eyed him blearily. "I still see before

me a man in the throes of stress. As your

physician, I prescribe more of the same

medicine. What do you have in the cupboard?" Kirk

held up a brown glass bottle. "How does

Saurian brandy sound?"

McCoy pursed his lips. "Extremely

fancy. How come I rate a shot of it?"

"Well, I.was saving it for a special

occasion-was "And?"

Kirk shrugged and poured two generous'snifters.

"It came," he said, "and went."

McCoy accepted the goblet and gazed into the depths

of the liqueur. Then he looked up at Kirk.

"What if he's on the level, Jim?"

Kirk smiled. "What-was that you said, about pigs

having wings? Prosil. his

Where the deep submersible drove there were

no lights except those she projected from her own

stubby bull. Screens in the cramped interior

offered views generated by a variety of sensors,

including visual imaging of radar and sonar

returns. Right now they were displaying a seafloor

bare of vegetation, across which small, strange

organisms crept. "I admit to perplexity,

Dr. Arkazha," said Spock. The pilot glanced

back over his shoulder. He was a curly- haired

young man with plump red cheeks, wearing a mustard-

yellow jump suit. He belonged to a

Gens of stature similar to the Micros, but

chunky and round- faced, and tending to thickness around the

middle. They called themselves Hobbits.

Mona Arkazha nodded her heavy head. Her

mister was turned off, though water still circulated through

the yoke that covered the gill slits in her neck.

Her skin only required moistening in direct

sunlight.

Spock looked to the screen. It showed what

seemed to be a glow coming from the ocean floor itself, It

was surrounded by an abundance of submarine vegetation,

like an oasis in a desert.

"What is that, Doctor?"

"Volcanic vent. They provide the

energy sufficient to run a tidy little ecosystem.

Each is in effect its own little world. Right now, in

fact, they are my main area of study."

I The large gelatinous-looking eyes studied

him for a moment. "But you asked about the war. We found

no Susuru when we arrived, though we scarcely

had the opportunity to make an exhaustive

survey of the planet. We did not encounter them for

some three local years-about twelve Terran

years."

"How did the initial contact transpire?"

"A boatload of Swimmers noticed sips of

activity on an island. Thinking there might be someone

shipwrecked, they stood in to investigate. What they

found were Susuru, who opened fire on them with

projectile weapons."

Spock frowned. "Are you certain your people did

nothing to incite them?"

"Mr. Spock, we Vares, are a contentious

lot, and frequently- flamboyant. And I am

sure you are aware that the fact of persecution does

nothing of itself to render a group more tolerant; generally

it has quite

the opposite effect. But we tried our best

to learn from our travails. We have never

wanted to do to anyone what was done to us.

"More than that-do we strike you as people who would fear

or hate something because it was different? I'm almost as

alien to young Jason or Aileea as the Susuru

are, no matter how human my genes are. Do you

think we would reflexively attack them?"

"Why should they attack you?"

The pilot laughed bitterly. at If you learn

the answer to that one, please let us know," he said.

"When we capture Stilters, all they ever say

is that we're a danger to them. And unless we catch

them, they won't talk to us at all."

"Most odd. When we visited them, the Susuru

seemed anything but a belligerent race."

The pilot turned a stunned look over his

shoulder at the Vulcan. "But they shoot at us on

sight!" "Almost forty-two years have we lived on this

planet," Arkazha said. "For thirty-nine of those

years we have been at war. And never have we had any

idea why. "Coming up on our objective,

Mona," the pilot said. "Thank you,

Suleyman." Arkazha hunched her squat form

around to better see the screen. Her body

language bespoke excitement. "Look at this,

nowlook!"

The oasis surrounding the vent had fallen behind. The

ocean floor spread flat and featureless below. Then

a line appeared across the "horizon." It grew

wider as the submersible approached, became a

crack, a chasm, a canyon, and then what seemed

a split in the world.

"Hellsgate Rift," Arkazha said. "Ten

kilometers deep and more."

The submersible was over the abyss now. Even the

small craft's artificial senses showed

only'blackness below. "Bad waters," the Hobbit

pilot grunted. "Craft disappear around here all

the time. It's Leviathan takes them. We're

precious near the lair of the Devil in the Sea."

"Superstition," scoffed Arkazha. "No one

knows what's really down there, save volcanic

vents in plenty. They roil the water so our sonar

works poorly, and the strong electromagnetic

activity associated with volcanism on this world

befuddles our radar."

"Fascinating."

She nodded. "It is that, Spock." She placed

greenish black fingertips on the screen. "I

hope to help unlock the mysteries of

Hellsgate. I've already glimpsed things

down there-but I don't know if I can trust Y."

Spock looked at her quizzically. "Why not,

Doctor? I have dealt with you as openly as I am

able. In fact, I must say, I've found our

association ... most congenial."

She smiled. "As have I, Spock, my friend. But

I keep forgetting ... you work for the State. For

Leviathan comour ancient enemy, whatever form He

takes. I just don't know if I can trust you."

"What does my employment with Starfleet have to do

with my trustworthiness?"

"You owe a duty to your State and to your

superiors. If they should decide to stick their boot

on our necks, the way Commissioner Wayne wants

to do, you will be bound to relay anything I tell you."

"It is difficult to see how what lies at the

bottom of an oceanic trench might constitute

usable intelli-gence. 11)

She turned her head aside. Her rubbery lips

twisted in a strange smile. "Ah, but you never know

what might be down there. Perhaps even the lair of

Leviathan."

Spock raised an eyebrow. Still, Dr.

Arkazha possessed a most refreshingly logical

mind for one of her species. He could not

hold the occasional descent into fanciful thinking against

her.

She could not help herself, after all. She was only

human.

THE LetterrmEvery AiRcRAF-RATHER flew two

thousand meters above a sea like a sheet of sapphire

with milk-white stars for wave crests. "Aren't you

worried about the Susuru ultimatum?" Kirk

asked from the passenger seat on the cockpit's

starboard side. "Three days left."

Aileea dinAthos snorted a

laugh-unladylike but charming, he thought. "If they

could have wiped us out, they would have done so forty years

ago."

"They have help now."

"The Kofirlar. -- She sneered. "We can handle

them, too, Captain, so long as they don't range

their weapons of mass destruction against us."

She gave him a sideways glance. "Where do you

stand? If their ship of space takes us under fire,

what will you do?" "Warn her," he said. A pause.

"If she doesn't stop, I'll blast her out of

orbit. That kind of intervention is way outside the

rules, and the Klingons know it."

She flipped her head, clearing

shag-cut hair from her forehead. "Then we will

endure. Just the way we always have. We're good at

enduring, Captain."

"Jim. 19

Aileea nodded. "There it is," she said, banking

the aircraft to circle an assembly of three

shiny metal cylinders fastened together in parallel,

one above the other two, with an oval tower rising from

one side and a white fiber-matted deck extending from

the other. "My home float."

"Your home?" Kirk shook his head, puzzled.

"I thought Dr. Arkazha said the Susuru sank

your home."

Aileea looked at him from the pilot's seat and

smiled thinly. "No. Mansur submerged it,

to avoid the Stilter missiles."! To his blank

look she explained, "It's a submarine, too, you

see. Practically every dwelling on Discord is.

It's the only sure way to beat the real killer

storms-though a big city can ride one out. That's one

of the attractions to living in one9' "I thought you

made your home in Discord City now." "I'm

based there. This is my home." She brought the

craft level and began a descent. "Even now."

"So you're still a country girl at

heart?" Kirk asked. He sat turned in his

seat, with his left arm propped on the back. She

looked, at him with a slight frown of incomprehension

pulling her brows together. With her green bangs

hanging almost to her eyes she looked quite

cute-despite the ominous mass of the pistol hung

to a nicely rounded hip. Watch yourself, he thought.

This trip is purely business. Which wasn't

entirely true; Bones had threat- 1

ened to write him up unless he found time to get a

little R and R himself. With the clock running out on

planetwide escalation, it seemed strange to be

beaming down for shore leave. Yet with the Susuru

stonewalling the very concept of peace talks, Kirk

could find no excuse not to go along when dinAthos

asked him if he wanted to see what life on a

Discorthan sea ranch was like. There was nothing to do that

he hadn't already done. Her face brightened. "I

understand," she said. "You mean, my heart and soul still

belong on the ranch. That's true." He nodded.

"Thought so. I'm an old Iowa farm boy myself.

I know all the symptoms."

She nodded absently, speaking into the microphone

of her lightweight headset. Wallowing in

the surface chop, the craft slowed. With a creaking

sound the high-mounted wings rotated upward, allowing the

broad props to hold it up instead of the airfoils.

Aileea held the ship steady, then steered it

expertly over a round platform floating beside the main

house, hovered briefly, and settled down to an

easy landing. Kirk made an appreciative

face. He was a Navy man, not a flyboy; as

her name implied, Enterprise bore a much closer

relationship to an old Earth aircraft carrier than

the craft that flew from its decks. But he knew

neat piloting when he saw it. He carefully said

nothing. His hostess's prickly pride might

interpret a compliment as condescension when it concerned

such a workaday task. Starting with nothing but will,

resourcefulness, and the equipment they had been able

to carry on board their sleeper ship-which Kirk knew

must have been next to nothing, given the space the

cryosleep units and crude

warp drive took up-the colonists had done a

mapificent job of building a technic

civilization. Nonetheless they were markedly less

advanced than the Federation, and inclined to be

defensive.

Aileea hopped out, to be met by a

pair of meter-tall women with short hair and round

faces, stockier in build than the Micros. They

traded hugs with the tall woman, then helped her

make the aircraft fast to the pad and cover it with a

tarp as Kirk stood by with his seabag over his shoulder,

wanting to help but feeling as if he'd only get in

the way.

"This is Captain Kirk," Aileea told the

two. 16 He's one of the men from Earth everyone's

talking about. Captain, these are Ranit and Yuki.

They've been with us for years."

"He's very handsome," said Yuki.

The other looked skeptical. "Is it true that

you'll try to make us leave Discord, Captain?"

she asked. "Where would we go?" "I don't want

to move anyone anywhere. I want to bring peace."

The two laughed. It was not a cheerful sound. He

followed Aileea across a short floating walkway

that bobbed alarmingly underfoot. She was wearing white

shorts and a short loose top that left her flat

tanned stomach bare. He reminded himself of how it

would look to a board of inquiry if he got too

intimately involved with one of the very people he was

supposed to be seeing off the planet with all

deliberate speed.

Kirk stepped aboard the float proper and

stopped. Jutting above the topmost cylinder of the

ranch house was a rack of tubes tip ,ped with sharp

con' es.

"What're those?" he asked.

11Koman ship-killer missiles," she said

with grim satisfaction. "Supersonic,

hundred-kilometer range. They guide o'n

data provided by our wranglers. A solid hit

with one can sink the biggest ship the Stilters have. 19

She glanced at him sidelong. "They're just

installed comwe haven't got the protective shrouds

up yet. The Stilters won't find us such an

easy mark next time, Captain' was 4 61

see." Aware that she was gauging his reaction, he

paused a moment, staring up at the ominous shapes,

their white noses ringed in yellow. They seemed

to serve as a reminder of just how tough the task facing

him was. He allowed himself to show her a frown of

concern. She led him into the house. Inside it was

climate- conditioned to perfect comfort-by Discordian

standards. That mean' t only moderately

sweltering, though for the moment, out of the unforgiv ing eye of

Eris, it felt blessedly cool, in fac that. He was

skeptical as to how roomy the ranch house

could be. The main cylinders were twenty-five meters

long and six across, which didn't seem to offer much

space for the twenty or so people Kirk understood lived

and worked there. Then Aileea led him down a

circular stairway, and he realized that, like an

iceberg, much of the house lay under water. In a

narrow passageway with exposed pipes in red and

yellow and white running overhead a couple of

cylinders down, Aileea pushed open a door.

"This'll be your cabin, Captain. It's

probably nowhere near as grand as you're used to, of

course." It was a small chamber, with a bed that

seemed to be built into the curving hull. It was

clean and well lit.

A port showed seawater surging without, with shafts

of white sunlight falling through like searchlight beams.

It felt like a Turkish bath.

He smiled. "This will do nicely indeed, Ms.

dinAthos." "Aileea, Captain."

""Agreed-if you call me Jim."

She grinned. "It's a deal. Would you like something

to eat before we see how the ranch works?"

"I feel as if I could eat a whale."

"No whales on Discord, Jim. But wait

until you see comour prawns."

com11 A

I he uppe, cyluiderserved-as mess 'Hall.

caret 11ongta-b ran down the center.

Extensive ports looked out over the deck on the

one hand and the sea on the other.

A giant Grunt in a white apron served them

dishes of stew- of sea pulses steamed with

shellfish-with hard-crusted bread on the side. He

acknowledged Aileea's introduction of Kirk with a

ponderous nod and left without speaking.

"That's Mansur," Aileea said. "He

hasn't been with us all that long-three or four

years. He came here not long before I went off

to school. But he's the backbone of the ranch. He

pretty much runs things now."

"And he's the cook?"

"He enjoys it. A Grunt needs something to do with

his hands or he fidgets himself crazy."

"I guess the way you live is determined to a

great extent by what Gens you belong to."

She stopped with her spoon halfway to her mouth.

"No. The way we live is influenced by our

genes, same as everybody else. We're aware of

our differencesEris, we cherish them. But it's up to us

to choose our lives. Our chance-and our

responsibility."

The hatch to the outside opened, allowing a

dtagon's breath of the metal-smelling sea air

inside. Three ranch hands came in, two men and a

woman, to greet Aileea with happy cries and a

back-thumping group hug. Aileea introduced them

as Haidar, Krysztof, and Jasmine. They went and

drew bowls of stew from the counter at one end of the

mess and joined the two at the table.

"We have to thank you for bringing our Aili back

to us," said Haidar. He was a short brown young man

with a shock of straight black hair and a round face

that reminded Kirk of Chekov. He had more than a

little of the Enterprise navigators ebullience,

too, though from the tiny network of wrinkles at the

outsides of his pitch-black eyes it was clear he

was older than Chekov.

"We see her all too little since she went

away," said Jasmine. She was a brown-haired,

brown-skinned Swimmer woman of early middle

years, with amber eyes and a long, somewhat sad mouth.

She gave the appearance of having faded from

spectacular youthful beauty to a wiry, weary

handsomeness. Like the other two hands she was dressed

only in brief swim trunks and a

utility belt supporting, among other implements,

a bolstered sidearm. "We feared to see her even

less after the attack."

"This will always be my home, Mina," Aileea said

in a subdued voice.

"And now our Aili's gone and lured lovely

Gita off to the city to join her company," Haidar

said. "We have to wonder who'll go next."

"Haidar," said Krysztof sternly. The third

outrider was a large man with a craggy, sharp-nosed

face, wild and wiry blond hair and beard, and

an impressive blond-haired paunch. Like

Haidar he showed no

outward sip of modification. He might have been

a Norm, who in fact had none,

Realizing that his remark wasn't in the best of

taste, given the death of Aileea's father, Haidar

flushed and paid close attention to his stew.

"I know you work for some kind of security company,

Aileea," Kirk said. "But I don't actually

know what you do." Aileea looked away. "Aili,

listen," Jasmine said. "What you do is no

disgrace. We won't hold it against you. Your handsome

guest won't either.""

She looked at Kirk. When something

engaged her interest, her eyes were lively bright.

"That spaceship of yours-she's a warship, is she

not?"

Kirk nodded. "I don't really like to think of her

that way. Enterprise's primary mission is

exploration. But she's pretty well armed, and I

do draw my pay from an outfit called

Starfleet."

"See?" Jasmine said to Aileea.

The green-haired woman nodded. "All right.

I'm a soldier, Captain-a professional

warrior."

Kirk frowned. "But you work for a security

company- 99 "Our Aili commands a squadron of

one thousand," Haidar said proudly. "She holds the

rank of colonel."

"We don't have standing armies on Discord,

Captain-Jim. And we've been fighting a long

time. We have two types of warriors, volunteers

and professionals. I'm a professional,, under

contract to the Discord City Service

Corporate."

"She's a wizard pilot and a dead-eye shot,"

said Haidar. "Even before she went off to get

trained, she was as good as the best."

"Not quite, Haidar," Aileea said. "And in the

raid, it was Gita who played the heroine."

"That's why you took her from us," said Krysztof.

"She's freeborn, "Sztof," Jasmine said

sternly. "She makes her own destiny, like all

Discordians."

"You take your individualism seriously,

don't you?" Kirk asked.

"It's one of the reasons our ancestors left

Earth," Haidar said. "Along with the fact that the

place was busy blowing itself up at the time."

"I'm surprised to see you eating in a communal

setting," Kirk said. "It seems to run contrary

to your individualist natures." Haidar laughed.

"Do we look as if we dislike each other? We

are all free, we are all ourselves, and we live as

we choose. But being individuals doesn't mean

we cannot work together. The ranch, our profits, our very

lives depend on our cooperating. Neither does it

mean we cannot enjoy spending time together."

"sometimes," Krysztof said.

"When we want privacy," Jasmine said, "we

have our quarters. And we always have at the sea."

Like a moving island, the prawn undulated through

clear sun-shot water. Kirk propelled

himself alongside the dark metallic bulk of the beast

with strokes of the fins strapped to his feet. He

hoped he didn't look too hurried in his

attempt to keep pace with his hostess.

He was bucking the surge of water displaced by the

prawn's two hundred-tonne bulk, a slow

tidal push, and the pulse of the propulsor

membranes, which ran like ribbons along either side

of the underside of her carapace, rippling like

peristalsis. Moving like a slim fish, silver with

sun under water, Aileea swam right up to the

creature near the stylized wave combrand and patted

its shell.

Kirk followed, bubbles from his respirator

mask

rising in tickling clouds past his ears.

He'felt naked beside that armored va/s. He nearl

was-in the I y womb-warm ocean of Discord there

was no need to wear more than the almost indecently brief

trunks Aileea had lent him. There was tension

in-his guts and throat; no mistaking the fact that

the merest accidental twitch by the monster would break

him like a cheap toy. But that was wariness, not fear.

What he really felt was awe.

He reached to touch the shell. It was cool

and hard as a starship's hull. "You eat these things?"

he asked. The button mike glued over his

trachea picked up his words without his needing even

to vocalize and transmitted them to the bone- conduction

speaker behind Aileca's right ear. "Now, this is what

I call a jumbo shrimp."

Aileea laughed. "We won't eat Old

Lucy. As near as our biologists can reckon,

she's over a hundred of our years old. She'd be

pretty tough, wouldn't you think?" "She'd take a

lot of cocktail sauce, that's for sure." He

did his best not to sound breathless. He was swimming

nearly flat out to keep pace with the giant's

unhurried roll. Even Aileea seemed to be

exerting herself-a little bit, anyway. His hostess

eased off, let the creature gain way on them.

Kirk became aware of the rest of the pod at graze

about them, from infants no larger than he was to monsters

nearly as intimidating as the matriarch. The

microscopic sea life that they sucked into wide

funnel-shaped mouths shimmered like fairy dust in the

water around them.

"She still lays eggs, though not as often as a younger

prawn would," Aileea said. "They're our main

stock. We eat the eggs, and we eat the

younger prawns. They also exude a waxy substance

between the scutes of

their belly. We scrape that off and sell it.

It's very valuable-it's used in a number of

pharmaceuticals and cosmetics."

"You must get a lot out of Old Lucy,"

Kirk said. "We do." She grinned at him. She,

of course, wore no masLike The gills along her

neck pulsed to a leisurely rhythm. In her own

environment, to which the Discordians" outlaw science

had fitted her, Aileea did not seem at all

exotic. She seemed as natural-and as

beautifid-as the sea life that teemed around them at

a respectful distance from the prawns. If only

Moriah could see her like this, Kirk thought., With a

pang he realized that would do no good; the deputy

commissioner would never see past the woman's

differences- and their source. It made him uneasy

to think that a woman he felt such honest respect and

affection for-a woman with whom he had been more than

slightly intimate-could be so blind. "She's really more

the ranch than we are," Aileea was saying.

"She's been alive since long before humans got

here, and she'll still be swimming long after all of us are

dead."

"Those are impressive," Kirk said, eyeing the

three. meter dragonflies that hovered over the

raft. They had six wings like ruby sheets. Their

armor showed blue tiger striping over dull scarlet

bellies.

Aileea had the scooter heeled well over

to port to circle the thick seaweed mat. Spray

raised by their booming passage through the waves misted

the left side of Kirk's face and body.

Miraculously, it felt coot "We call them

Hinds," she said. "I'm not really sure where that

comes from. I think it has something to do with the time our people were

in Russia, after the

Soviets captured SS General Prester and

his geneengineering project from the Nazis-at the end

of the Great Patriotic War." World War II,

he translated mentally. While the Vares came from

all races of Earth, ethnic Russians,

Pacific Rim Asians, and Polynesians

predominated. Mona Arkazha's birth city of

Exile in the far south was as thoroughly Russian as

contemporary Volgograd-to the delight of

Chekov, who was fit to bust waiting for the rotation

to allow him to beam down on shore leave.

Discordian cultural referents tended

to be a lot like the ensign's.

""How does a beast that huge fly?" Kirk

asked. They still wore their communicator patches,

allowing him to make himself heard above the rush of air

and water without shouting. -- "High metabolic

rate. Discord's a fantastically high-energy

ecosystem, Jim, what with all the highfrequency

photons Eris puts out. The air those bugs pump

out through their exhaust spiracules is only

slightly cooler than live steam We have to put

computer filters on our heat-seeker rockets

to keep them from locking onto the Hinds."

Kirk grimaced. That was another facet of

Discordian life-talk of weaponry was never

absent long.

"What do they eat?" he asked.

As if in reply a Hind dipped down to the mat

and rose up again clutching a wildly waving

joint-legged thing in its chitin- covered palps.

"They'll eat you, if you give them half a chance,

though they couldn't lift a full-grown Micro.

There are reasons we carry guns, James

Kirk, and not just what your delightful Doctor

McCoy would call our cussedness. Hang on."

The clear metal-crystal canopy

sealed itself above

them, cutting off the spray and the sound of their

passage. The scooter nosed down; the sea bubbled

up at Kirk's face, and then they were flying

underwater, beneath the raft. He marveled at the

life-forms that thronged around, and in its shaggy green

undersidesteel-spined worms like demon

caterpillars; moving blobs of brightly colored

jelly; things like rolling tangles of knotted gray

string, strung with plump yellow nodules.

Three-eyed raft-dodger fish, fat and agile,

played tag with the scooter.

The scooter was not properly a two-person

vehicle. Aileea had adjusted her padded pilot

seat so that Kirk could slide in between her and the back,

where he got to ride about the sea at alarming speed

@. clutching handrails, down by his thighs. With the

craft sealed off like this it was even harder than before not

to be aware of the fact that he had a beautiful,

virtually naked woman pressed against the front of

him. He forced his mind off the subject. Aileea

drove too fast for his comfort, but he had to admit that

Haidar was right about her piloting skills. They

flew among schools of eels like animated

ribbons, giant swimming insects holding

serious-looking pincers before them, clouds of colorful

fish that looked a lot like ... well,

M.

"If it wouldn't cost you time in our decompression

chamber, I'd take you to see the bottom,"

Aileea said. "It's only three hundred meters

down here. Our seas are mostly shallow- though

Hellsgate Rift is ten klicks deep in

places, and more." The canopy shook. A sound like

thunder reached Kirk's ears and shivered in his marrow.

"What was that?" "Detonations."

"Are you under attack?" Visions of himself getting

caught up in a battle flooded his mind like

water through a breached hull. He could imagine what

Commissioner Wayne would make of that when they got

back to the Federation. He realized in a rueful

flash that he had begun thinking of her as an

adversary. It was an uncomfortable transition to have

to face.

Aileea was shaking her head. "That's Lev and the

new 'rider, Magda, trying to drive off

predators with rockets. Our wrangler robots

project sonic vibrations to keep predators out and

our stock in, but sometimes predators sound beneath the

coverage-or just come through regardless."

"What kind of predators do you need to hunt with

rocketsr" Kirk asked, looking around the ocean

with a whole new interest. "Sea dragons,

akyula, volk, kraken. They are-let me

remember my lessons of Earth-similar

to plesiosaurs, sharks, reptilian orcas, and

giant squid."

"They prey on the likes of Old Lucy?"

She laughed. "We ranch fish and other sea

creatures a lot less spectacular than the

prawns. With the prawns our main problem is

parasites. Not even a big kraken would dare try

to drag Old Lucy down. Unless the legends are

true."

"11.eaegends?"

She glanced back. "Are you easily alarmed,

Captain?" His turn to laugh. "I guess not.

Any creature big enough to eat Old Lucy, we

wouldn't make a decent hors doeuvre for." "Good

saying, Captain. Our legends speak of the

mightiest of all kraken Leviathan, the Devil

in the Sea."

"I wouldn't want to meet him. Or her."

A shrug. "I wouldn't worry. Leviathan

doesn't really exist. He's just a story

we use to scare ourselves with-and a personification of the

all-powerful State we all fear. Thomas

Hobbes, and all that."

"They teach you a lot about Earth in school."

"We remember where we came from. Terra

rejected us, not vice versa."

When they returned to the float the sun was already

low-that short rotation period again. The eastern

horizon was weighed down under towers of white cloud

that bulked upward until the jet stream shaved their

heads off flat.

Aileea froze on the deck, shading her eyes

to stare off to the east. Kirk looked that way, and

shortly made out a tiny black fleck sliding

across the sky. It slowly grew larger. She lifted

a communicator from her belt and called the tower.

"Mansur," she said, "are we expecting company?"

The gray giant had a voice like a wire brush

skimming steel. "The aircraft is friendly. Do not

be afraid."

She looked at the communicator. "That's all

he's going to say, isn't it?" She stuck the unit

back on her belt and stood watching the sky.

It seemed natural to Kirk to come and stand right behind

her right shoulder. She did not move away.

"Storm coming," was all she, said.

The fleck grew larger, became another verti like

the one Aileea and Kirk had flown out in, "with

similar bulky pods affixed to the sides of the

fuselage. As it rotated its wings upright to hover,

Aileea gestured

Kirk back against the ranch house.- With the

floating pad occupied, the only place for the craft

to touch down was on the deck itself

It landed in a whirlwind of farnace-hot air.

The hatch on the pilot side opened and a young woman

dropped lightly to the mat. She was shorter than

Aileca and emphatically rounder in a loose white

blouse and blue and red pantaloons. Her skin was

cinnamon, her hair a luxuriant dark blue

mane. Aileea ran to her and hugged her. The two

waltzed each other in a laughing circle.

"Gital" Aileea said. "What a wond erful

surprise to see you!"

"Yes," the newcomer said in one of those

contraltos that ran down your spine. "It's been

all ofthree days since I saw you last."

"I still haven't gotten used to having you around all

the time."

Holding her arm around the shorter

woman's waist, Aileea steered her toward

Kirk. "Jim, there's someone I'd like you to meet.

Her name's Gita. She's my oldest friend, not

to mention the newest recruit in my unit."

Gita stepped forward, away from Aileea, and

walked right up to Kirk. She had a long straight

nose and black eyes deep as Hellsgate

Rift. At close range she had the same sort

of brute- force sultriness of an Orion slave

dancer, except she wasn't green.

"'So this is your starman, Aili," she said,

reaching out a fingernail to run down the center of

Kirk's chest. Over her shoulder he saw

AilPea droop. The proud and competent warrior

suddenly looked like a wet, sad bird. What's

going on? ,

Gita spun to face her friend. "Well, guess

what? I couldn't let you outdo me. So I brought

home one of my own!" Around the snout of the

aircraft came a compact

figure wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a

Panama hat, and swim trunks. It held a

seabaijust like Kirk's over its shoulder. It

stopped.

"Captain?"

"Mr. Sulu?"

The helmsman faltered. "Um, Gita-maybe

comth isn't such a hot idea-was

"Nonsense, Mr. Sulu. At ease. Man

does not live by slime mold alone."

Gita went to Sulu's side. He slid a

hard brown arm around her.

"I'll say," he said.

CM-TA-IATION KA-JATION held up the glass of

heavy but expertly cut crystal so that the green

liquid within caught the torchlight and seemed

to sparkle. "To the success of your mission," he said,

"and the return of peace to this planet."

His black eyes met the green eyes of

Moriah Wayne. They drank.

The Klingon mission was headquartered in bunkers

blasted out of the lava of cliffs on comthe coast not far

from Swift's capital. Klingon doctrine preached

austerity and resistance to discomfort, but the Klingons

weren't deranged on the subject. Or at least

Kain wasn't. He kept the rock-walled

bunkers air- conditioned to approach the norm of the

Klingon homeworld. Several hours before he had had the

climate controls adjusted so that this chamber actually

warmed a few degrees, to a temperature

an Earther would find pleasant. Kain wa s a most

considerate host.

Wayne looked at her glass. "Wonderful

vintage, Captain. It's tart, but marvelously

refreshing. It tastes comx tastes like spring somehow.

Is it Klingon?"

He shook his head. "No. It is a Susuru

beverage, fermented from a fruit they brought with them-was

He paused, scowled. "Brought with them-was Wayne

prompted. "From a distant archipelago, on the other

side of the world. It's, ah, it's extinct there now,

of course. The Earther intruders clear-cut the

island where the treasure fruit grew, left the

ecosystem so devastated it could never recover."

"Really"? How tragic." She shook her

head. Tonight she wore a sheer green off-the-shoulder

gown. Her hair was done up in an intricate

knot, and the torches burning in black iron

sconces on the walls sent highlights chasing each

other through it like tiny flames. "And the settlers

claim they don't use the land for anything at all."

A rich laugh rumbled up from Kain's chest. He

had a greyhound build, long-legged, narrow at

hip and belly, big in the chest and shoulders.

"In your experience, Commissioner," he

asked, 66are your people generally addicted

to truthfulness?" "My people are addicted to many vices,

Captain, she said, "but telling the truth isn't one

of them."

"What about indiscipline. Is that one of them,

perhaps?" She dropped her eyes to her plate. The

meal was steamed sweet grasses and broiled

fillets of the white flesh of some sea beast, served

with an astringent green sauce that reminded her of

Japanese mustard. It was an excellent meal.

It did not accord with the reputation Klingon cuisine

enjoyed in the Federation for being as fierce as the

warriors who ate it.

Should I be surprised? she thought. Captain

Aain is living refutation of most of our

stereotypes.

"Captain Kirk is a man who believes in

doing the right thing," she said softly, "just as you do."

"Is it right to defy the orders of one's

superiors?" "I'm not really in his chain of command,

after all. I'm only a civilian."

Why am I defending him? she wondered. He's

ready to sell justice down the river for his Earth

human prejudices. But something compelled her

to take Kirk's part. As something had

compelled her to defend her father against those who said he was

tyrannical and overbearing, that his personal ambition

and Just for power had done damage to the Federation.

"It isn't just that he disrespects you,

Moriah." She looked up sharply. His one good

eye was looking at her in just the right way-forthright,

challenging, yet not judgmental.

"Does he not also defy his own superiors of

Starfleet?" She dropped her eyes again.

"Yes," she almost whispered. "The duty. of the

warrior," Kain said, "is to serve. To obey, in the

interests of the greater good. Or is it otherwise in the

Federation?"

"We permit the individual greater rein," she

said brittlely. "Too great. Everyone thinks he

has the right to pass judgment for himself on any

issue-that his conscience outweighs the voice of the

community."

"Does that make you strong?" He turned the

wineglass in fingers that seemed to her capable of

crushing it, at a squeeze. She had never known a

man as powerful as this. Not even her father.

"It divides us. Makes us weak, makes us a

pack of

self-absorbed, self-interested"-she

groped for a word-"thrill seekers. The Just for

personal gratification overwhelms everything."

"We Klingons practice abnegation of the self

in service of the whole." He smiled. "Doubtless you

are more advanced than we."

"No." She shook her head. "It's you who are

the wiser." He sat back in his chair and studied

her. At length his shook his splendid black-maned

head.

"Moriah, Moriah. How long are you going

to let him do this to you?"

"He is strong," she almost whispered.

"Willhil. He's blind to what's happening here,

he's deaf to my words."

"An ancient Earther philosopher said there are

none so blind as those who will not see."

A tremor ran through the subterranean chamber, a

whisper of the song of sliding crystal plates way

off across the ocean floor. Such microshocks had

rattled the tableware on and off throughout the meal. Kain

held up a finger. "Listen. Do you not hear the

planet itself crying out for requital? You are not

deaf. Nor'are you blind."

She stared at her plate. "In three days the

Susuru launch their offensive. Maybe

they'll settle the issue."

Kain's lips curved in a bitter smile. "The

Susuru are peaceful folk, as you have seen-they have

no skill at bloodletting. We are mighty

warriors, but we are also few. The settlers are

violent criminals. They all have arms, and they have

no scruples about using them." He shook his head.

"All that is certain is that the seas of Island will

run red with blood." "What can I do?" She shook

her head, a desperate look on her face.

"It's his ship, his crew. I've sent

countless requests to Starfleet for support, but the

subspace delay is so great out here, and who knows

what his cronies in the military hierarchy might do

to cover up his insubordination." "You can act," Kain

said, and his voice rang with the steel of command. "You can

first master yourself comstop this self-pity and confusion. You

are stronger than that, Moriah."

She looked at him with huge and wondering eyes.

"Do you really think so?"

He nodded. "I know so. And after you have mastered

yourself-and only then-you can master the situation."

She bit her lip. "But I don't see what

I can do. Everything's so confused."

"Didn't your father teach you

self-discipline?" His voice was low. She snapped

her head back as if he had slapped her. "That's

better," he said. "Your spirit shines through your eyes.

When that. occurs, I can see the strength in you.

9

He rose. "The time will come when I can offer

concrete assistance, Moriah. But you must be

prepared to assist me in return."

She stood up slowly. "I can't do anything-that

is, your people and mine are enemies. At least on

paper."

"I will ask you to do nothing that isn't right, was he

said, and his lone eye bored through her like a

neutronium drill. "Everything I do, I do for the

good of this world, and the Susuru to whom it belongs."

She shook her head in confusion. He came

forward, extending a hand.

"Come. There is an observation port with armored

glass overlooking the bay. We can watch the fury

of

the storm spend itself on the rocks below and revel in

the wild power of this world."

He took her by the arms. For a moment she stood

there, quivering, seeming small and frail next

to him. Then she tore herself away.

"I-can't. I really must be getting back to the

ship."

She wore a communicator hung from a loose

elastic band around her right wrist. She flipped it

open. 6'This is Commissioner Wayne calling

Enterprise. was "Enterprise. Lieutenant

Kyle here, Commissioner."

"Lock onto my coordinates and beam me

aboard at once." "Yes, Commissioner."

Kain held his hands out to his sides. "Run

away, little girl," he said, almost gently."..."Run

away at the speed of light. You'll find you cannot

escape yourself."

So at e gave him a lambent look. She

became gold light, became a shimmer and a trill,

and then became nothing at all. He stood looking

at the place where she had been. Then he threw his

head back and laughed. It was not the polite laugh

he showed the Earthers hearty as it seemed to them. It

was a full-throated, Kfingon laugh, wild and

raw, like the roar of an elemental beast.

He heard the rasp of a boot sole on the stone

behind him. He turned. His aide stood behind him.

"Iuffoffia" Sogh n uqneHave, was he

snarled. (lieutenant Lu Kok Tak

what do you want. at

"Qeyn HoDo, waDI-CHILD, was she replied,

speaking his name and rank and offering the appropriate

salute. She was a tall young woman, who bore the

insignia of a senior lieutenant. She had a

straight nose and high, slanting cheekbones. Most

Klingons would have called her features

overfine-indeed, insipid. Kain

found her quite appealing. But then, everybody said he

had degenerate tastes, from long contact with Earthers.

Her name had the meaning-poetic and evocative

to Klingon ears-of They killed him. It hearkened

back to the upshot of a particularly glorious

episode in the long history of her clan. "The

monitors functioned perfectly," she said. "The

whole disgusting scene is recorded."

"maj, was he said, expressing satisfaction.

She stood beside the table, distaste twisting her face.

"You're still here," Kain said.

She reached out and picked up a plate. "Why do

you subject yourself to such insipid filth? Where is the

pipius claw, where the good serpent worm? The

thlIngan food?" She spilled the food

deliberately onto the white cloth that had been

laid across the table of native hardwood.

"Do you now find pale lerangan meat more to your

liking?" He looked at her. She took a step

back and set down the plate.

I "Lieutenant, you are an exemplary officer

and have made yourself highly useful to me. You are of the

lineage of t1heDon, my first captain, to whom

I owe a heavy debt of blood. Still, do not take

it upon yourself to presume too much upon my tolerance,

IuHoHta " his

She lowered her head, but her strong jaw worked.

Kain walked to her, put his hand under her chin, and

raised her face. "What?"

Her eyes blazed up at him. "Why do you

degrade yourself, catering to this foolish Earther

woman? She is no part of the plan."

He scowled. She did not give ground. "It is

my plan," he said. "It was my conception. It is

mine to implement."

"But-but what of your vengeance?"

Kain raised his head. "It, too, must wait."

Lu Kok Tak's dropped. For all that they were

bound by an iron discipline that knew neither mercy

norexception, it was unheard offora Klingon to place

anything in the way of revenge. Not even duty.

"But- was she began.

He walked to the far end of the table, turned, and

looked at her. "Who are you to talk of my

vengeance? Who?" The last word was a bark that rocked

her back on her boot heels.

"Do you think I do not know what Kirk has cost

me? When my- mission failed on Endikon, and my

party was discovered and trapped by the local

authorities, it was my captain on whom the bulk

of the bla equals fell. Your grandfather, Kledon.

A superior is responsible for the failures of his

underlings. Mine cost him his life."

He touched the scar above his missing left eye.

"I was permitted to atone by putting out my own eye

with a red-hot dagger."

The lieutenant stood listening with head bowed. She

had heard this story before. But a Klingon did not

interrupt her superior officer. Especially when

he was Qeyn, and when this mood was on him.

"That was the first debt I owe to James Kirk."

He dropped his hand to the kligat hilt. "And then,

two years ago, his allies on Capella Four

murdered QaSo, my brother, with this very weapon!"

"Then why do you delay, my captain?" blurted

Lu Kok Tak.

"bortaSo bIr jablu'DI-REHave

QaQqu" nay, was Kain quoted. ""Revenge

is a dish that is best served cold."" "My

grandfather is twenty years cold," Lu Kok Tak

said. "Your eye is twenty years gone. How much

colder must your vengeance be before you dine?"

Kain advanced and raised a hand. She still did not

turn away. Slowly he lowered his fist and walked

away from her. "There is more at stake here," he said.

"Much more. This planet is rich beyond imagining in

resources. Our empire is poor. Our enemies

are richer than we and more numerous. This planet is

not merely an instrument in my hands"-he made a

gesture first of scooping, then of crushing-"that I can

use up in the fulfillment of my vengeance and toss

away like an empty wrapper. It is a treasure,

which must be secured for the Empire. As for my

revenge-11

He turned to her with a smile. "It will come,

Lieutenant, it will come. But how much sweeter will the

destruction of Enterprise and her captain James

Kirk taste, when captain and ship have disgraced

themselves and their Federation by playing party to the destruction

of a colony of their own precious Earthers?"

FoRather DimaRather Mansur set up a table in the

observation dome atop the tower. They ate

to the accompaniment of a fabulous display of lightning,

lancing and pulsing overhead. "What happens if the

Susuru attack?" Sulu asked, nervously

eyeing the unattended sensor displays and control

consoles. "They wouldn't dare," Gita scoffed.

"We wouldn't, and they're not as good on the sea as we

are."

"it doesn't matter, anyway," Aileea said.

"There's always somebody monitoring the Command Center,

which is way below the waterline. That's where the house is

fought from." As she spoke she sidled over closer

to Kirk. She had put on a flimsy white

smock that came down to her hips for dinner. He was

both relieved and disappointed.

The meal was excellent, paced to the slow roll of the

sea. Gyros and computerized ballast. management

damped the rocking imparted by the waves, but did not

try to suppress it altogether. Discordians preferred

to live with the feel of the rhyt4ms of their ocean

home.

The soft, flickering amber instrument glow wasn't

romantic candlelight, but it would do in a pinch.

Kirk enjoyed the sense of easy camaraderie he

felt with Sulu. It wasn't something he experienced

often, except perhaps with Spock and Bones,

his two best friends. The invisible barrier of command lay

between him and the rest of his crew-even the bridge

complement. Not that Sulu paid much attention to him. The

helmsman spent most of the evening conversing with his

escort in whispers and giggles.

At one point Kirk noticed Aileea studying

Gita across the table with a curiously blank

expression. Her voluptuous friend was engrossed in

Sulu and didn't notice the scrutiny. Clearly

rivalry passed between these women as well as friendship.

Kirk suddenly reali2ed why Aileea had

seemed deflated by Gita's arrival She

assumed Kirk would make a dive for her old

friend's rather more obvious charms.

It's nice to know she cares.

He was awakened by almost being tossed from his bunk,

even though it was mounted on gimbals. He flailed

an arm, found the lamp mounted on the wall by the bed,

and flipped it on, Pulling on a shirt and

trousers, he staggered across the pitching floor and out

into the hall.

Aileea was already there, dressed in a light

robe. "I was coming for you."

"I guess the storm has caught up with us for

real," he said, as the hull reverberated

to a crash of thunder.

She nodded. "Come with me."

She led him up the circular stair, which seemed

to be trying to buck him off. The added gravity load

was only 20 percent, but with the storm rocking the ranch

house wildly it felt as if he had a

full-grown man strapped on his back and cackling

in his ear. Somehow he fought his way to the mess.

Gita and Sulu were already there, with the ports

unshuttered and the lights out. The sky was a

constantblaze of lightning. Black waves washed

over the deck and-reached black tentacles for the

uppermost cylinder. The float lurched in random

directions like a drunk trying to balance on a

medicine ball. "It's a little unnerving, isn't it,

Captain," Sulu said, "to know that if something goes

wrong we can't beam out of here because of the storm."

Kirk stared out at the storm. "You have a talent for

looking at the bright side of things, Mr. Sulu."

"I'm sure everything will work out fine, Captain."

Gjationo worries," Gita said serenely.

Aileea had been speaking into an intercom. Now

she came and stood beside Kirk. It seemed

natural to put his arm around her. She leaned against

him.

"Watch," she said.

The plunging of the float eased, even though the

waves rose up higher and higher. "to Captain,

we're sinking!" Sulu exclaimed. He gazed

wildly around, eyes agleam in the lightning glow.

"It's all right, Mr. Sulu. It's

intentional-I think."

Aileea nodded. "This one's too bad to ride

out. We're going under till it passes."

The water rose up in a black froth, seeming

to wash the pandemonium of the storm up and away. Then

they were floating in peace, surrounded by the weird

blue-fluorescing undersea life of Discord.

In time Kirk noticed that Sulu and Gita had

slipped away. He hugged Aileea close to him.

Then he kissed her hair and went away to bed

alone, feeling no end of virtuous, and a fool.

"Uh-oh," Aileea said. Her fingers stabbed at

the controls of her aircraft radio.

The storm had passed, leaving no trace. The

sky was dear, except for a few stringy clouds like

egg white trailed in hot grease. Waverider

Ranch had surfaced again, none the worse for wear.

Kirk had the option of beaming straight back up to the

Enterprise, but out of consideration for his

hostess he was making the long ride back to Discord

City with her. Aileea listened, her body taut,

then spoke into her headset microphone, too low for

Kirk to hear. She punched the computer keypad,

sucked her lower hp, and nodded. Then she puffed off

her headset and looked at Kirk. "Stilters in

small boats, attacking a Harmony harvest ship

forty klicks from here."

"What are you going to dor,

The banking of the aim-raft wings answered him.

6612m going to help. Those silly Harmonians

are the next thing to pacifists. The Stilters will tear

them apart."

She glanced at Kirk. "The storm is over,"

she said. "You can beam back up to your ship if you're

worried about your neutrality." She could not keep a

tincture of bitterness out of her voice.

"No. I should see this."

"You're armed," she said, with a nod toward the

phaser he wore at his belt. "Will you fightr

141 mlt9*

She showed her teeth and said no more.

In a few minutes Kirk could see the wakes,

white lines on blue, and then he made out the mass

of the seaweed harvester, and finally the Susuru

boats, circling like Orcas attacking a blue

whale.

"I've called the ranch," Aileea said.

"Gita will be here as soon as she can."

64 Sulu-was

"Will he fight?"

Kirk looked grim. "I'm sure he would, if

he had any choice. But he doesn't."

Aileea looked at him. "But you, as captain,

have the privilege of following your conscience and defying

your commissioner with impunity."

"Not exactly with impunity."

She shook her head. "It's a hell of a system

you live under." As she spoke she had descended

until the belly of the craft was almost brushing the

waves, which a fi-esh breeze blowing counter to the

current was whipping into a chop. A pink flash from

ahead-another. Aileea made an exasperated

sound at the base of her throat. "There go the

Harmonians. Missing again."

"You have lasers?" Kirk asked.

"A few. I put my trust in bullet

launchers. Lasers're energy hogs, and as much

energy as we've got access to, it's tough to make

it portable enough to make them useful."

She looked at him. "I suppose you've

solved that problem, with those phasers of yours. You and the

Klingons."

He nodded.

He goggled then, because they were c losing at a

fantastic rate with a small boat, from the fan

deck of which a pair of heavy machine guns were raking

the

harvester. From this angle it looked as if a

head-on collision were imminent.

Aileea flipped a cover up on the top of her

stick and rested her thumb against a button. Cross

hairs appeared on the windscreen in front of her.

She adjusted the bank of the aircraft and hit the

button briefly.

A snarl. The aircraft decelerated. Kirk

saw splinters fly white from the bow of the Susuru

boat. It instantly lost way and was settling by the

bows as Aileea pulled up her nose to flash

overhead.

"Chin Gatling," she said. "One down, five

to go." Then "Draft them all, anyway. They're

boarding !"

Kirk looked quickly and saw two of the boats

bobbing unattended, one to either side of the

tender's broad, flat stem. "No time to mess with

these fools," Aileea said. She zoomed a

hundred meters and hit the controls that changed the wing

aspect from horizontal to vertical. The verti

lost speed as if the air had suddenly gotten

thicker.

The aircraft vibrated. Kirk glanced out his

window and noticed a line of holes in the starboard

wing. "Those are-was

"Bullet holes," Aileea said, pivoting the

aircraft to face back toward the ship. "We're

low and slow. We're a good target right about now."

Before he could react to that good news she pressed

another button. Fire and smoke rippled

into Kirk's right peripheral vision. Explosions

fountained water next to the slab- sided hull of the

Harmonian vessel. A Susuru boat burst

through the spray curtain on its side and struck the

ocean upside down, plowing a great white furrow in

the water. "Strapped-on rocket pods,"

Aileea said. "Where're the other two boats?"

Kirk pointed. He opened his mouth. It took

him a moment to find his voice.

"Running," he said.

She nodded. "Good. Good boys.

They've got the idea." Like a giant predatory

insect the verti dropped its nose and swept

forward. Brown Susuru bobbed in the water ahead,

their ruffs matted miserably. Kirk tensed, fearing

his escort would machine gun the helpless beings in the

water. He wasn't prepared to sit still for that.

. But what am I going to do? he wondered. Stun

her with my phaser? She's driving.

She passed over the swimmers without a glance,

flying toward the harvest ship itself. A gun battle

raged on the deck. Several figures lay still or

kicking on the open afterdeck. Others fired

automatic weapons from the stern and a tangle of

machinery amidships, attacking the tall

superstructure forward. Kirk thought he could count

at least twenty figures in the boarding party. Not

all of them had the attenuated oddly proportioned

outlines of Susuru.

"This is bad," Aileea said. As she came

alongside the ship she was pivoting again,

clockwise, so that her gun bore along the

vessel's beam. A rush of Susuru was just

crossing the afterdeck. Several quick pulses of

Gatling fire swept them away. . Kirk

wasn't watching the carnage on the deck.

He was watching Aileea's face. He saw no

pleasure there, no exaltation-merely a

drawn-back grimace, as if she were doing something

necessary but unpleasant.

The ship stopped and hovered. From amid the

metallic tangle a pale flash. The windscreen

starred between Aileea and Kirk. Kirk ducked as

metalcrystal flakes showered him like snow.

"Surrender, you stilt-legged idiots,"

Aileea snarled. "I've got the drop on you!"

More shots reached out for them. An incautious

Susuru blasted away at them from the rail aft.

With apparent reluctance Aileea twitched the nose

that way and blew him apart with a short burst.

"'allyou don't like killing them!" Kirk said,

shouting over engine whine and gunfire.

"'ationot It's not a challenge. It's just sad."

She tweaked the collective for her left and right

engines, making the aircraft dip and bob. She

searched for clear targets. Muzzle flashes winked

among the machinery. Aileea fired a burst

amidships, spinning a cloud of debris into the air.

"No," she said angrily. "I can't just shoot up

the ship at random."

She reached behind her seat and came up with a

stubby machine pistol with a curved feed device in

front of the handgrip. "Forgive me for what I'm

about to do," she said. The aircraft darted forward and

dropped onto the afterdeck. The engine noise whined

down the scale as Aileea dove clear of the

aircraft, hit the deck, rolled, and came up

shooting. Kirk twisted in his seat. A pair of

Susuru in the stem dropped their own machine

pistols and dove over the rail. He already knew the

aircraft wasn't bulletproof. It was,

however, an excellent target. And even if no one

wanted to shoot at it per seeacom it was still big and in the

way. Kirk jerked open his own door and threw himself

down on the ubiquitous fiber mat that covered the

deck.

Aileea ran toward the amidships jumble. A

pair of Susuru stood up and opened fire on

her. Screaming, she held up her weapon and swung

it side to side,

spraying them. The one on her right went down under

repeated hits. The other threw his piece down and

fled. Bullets gouged the matting by the heel of

Kirk's right boot. He didn't know who was

shooting at him. Under the circumstances, he didn't

care. He tried to spring up.

Unaccustomed gravity staggered him. He got to all

fours and scrambled forward.

He started to lunge into an alcove surrounded

by comfortably solid-looking housings. A brown

furry figure blocked him-a Susuru clutching

some kind of short two-handed gun. It shied away and

started.to point the weapon at Kirk. He punched

it in the nose. It collapsed onto the

backward-angled knees of its forelimbs, covered

its snout with its hands, and began to cry.

Kirk stepped back. What the hell am I

doing Jwe? He felt like a bully.

Bullets from somewhere cracked past his head. He

dove willy-nilly into the machinery, managing

to avoid running into any more lurking foes or busting

a shin on anything. He ducked under a foot-thick

conduit and took stock of the situation.

Aileea was rampaging around the metal jungle

somewhere. He heard her hollering and shooting. Shots

were still cracking off in various directions, bullets

striking metal and tumbling off with nasty little

supersonic-edged whines. He felt the weight of the

hand phaser at his belt, longed to draw it; he was

at the mercy of anyone who stumbled across him. But

he, did not dare draw a weapon unless

he was prepared to stun anybody he saw with a gun,

Aileea included. And he was unwilling to drop her

and allow the Susuru to take the ship by default.

It was a strange sensation, tasting of copper in his

mouth like the trace-element tang of Discordian

food. He was Kirk, the fearless starship captain,

always in the first party to beam down into the unknown, always the

first to seize control of any situation. And he

couldn't do a thing. Enforced passivity made him itch

all over, as if he had been sprinkled with tiny

metal shavings.

Nor was he impartial as he should have been. He

ached to do something for Aileea. She was obviously good

at this. And the Susuru's morale was just as

obviously not good. But a lone woman, however

formidable, against twelve or twenty well- armed

foes was not sane odds. Sooner or later the

Susum were bound to get bold, or lucky.

A noise like a giant pillowcase ripping. A

ringing boom, and a ball of yellow flame rolled up

above the portside rail aft. Then Gita's

verti roared overhead, residual smoke drooling

from the rocket at pod with which it had just exploded one

of the Susuru boats moored at the harvester's

stem.

Kirk heard shrill despairing yips. Then he

heard heavy muffled thumps as Susum began

to toss their weapons out on the mat. He saw one

step out with hands clasped over the small of its back

in an unmistakable sign of surrender. "You can come

out, now, Captain," he heard Aileea call.

"It's over."

Frowning, he emerged to find the green-haired

Discordian herding Susuru into a disconsolate

huddle under the wing of her aircraft. Blood

streamed down the right side of her face. His heart in

his throat, he started forward. "You're shot," he

said.

"No. Just clumsy. I banged my head on a

flange."

"So what happens now?"

"We don't make a practice of feeding

prisoners," Aileea said. Kirk's eyes got

bleak. "So first we get Gita and some boats out

to pick up survivors from the boats I sank, and

then we find some scow to ship these critters home

to their pals in." and'allyou just ... let them go?"

"As I said, we don't want to feed them." She

grinned. "Besides, it drives their High Command

insane, figuring out what to do with them. Their

morale's shaky enough without survivors coming back

to spread tales of defeat."

"You don't hate them?"

She looked at the prisoners, sad slumps of

dejection. It was impossible to imagine them offering

anybody harm again. "But they killed your father," he

said, not because he wanted to reopen a wound, but because he

could not fathom how this young woman, so passionately

devoted to defending her sense of self, could not want

vengeance on those who had aggressed against her and hers-

Her response caught him completely

by surprise. She spun toward him, bringing up her

machine pistol one-handed. Her face was twisted into the

purest look of rage he had ever seen.

Too stunned by her abrupt betrayal

to respond, he watched as her finger tightened on the

trigger, saw the muzzle flare dance, and felt

impacts along his rib cage. But they were feather

pats, shockwaves from the mini-sonic booms the

bullets made in passing. Beside Kirk's right

boot a patch of deck glowed pink and vanished.

Kirk wheeled. A young Klingon with an ensign's

emblem on his sash and blood streaming down his face from

a gouge on his cranial crest staggered back

with half a dozen holes in his chest. A

phaser dropped from his hand. He clutched at himself and

collapsed to the deck. "You know who killed my father,

Captain?" Aileea called. "It was them. The

ridgeheads, the Kofirlar. For forty years we fought

the Stilters. For forty years we always beat them.

They never hurt us so badly that we really felt the

sting. "Now these Klingons have come, and everything has

changed. They're promising the Stilters the means

to wipe us off the planet-if they can't get you to do the

job for them." She ejected the spent magazine

onto the deck. "Now we have somebody to hate."

"AH, Emu," Chekov was sighing when Kirk

returned to the bridge. The young ensign had just

returned from his own leave rotation on the surface and

was, regaling Lieutenant Kyle with his

adventures. "They stuffed me with beef stroganoff

and wodka until I could barely move. And the women

-- -- Kyle gave him a skeptical look.

"What were they doing giving all this away? I thought that

lot were fanatical laissez-faire capitalist

types."

"That does not mean they don't know how to'be

hospitable," Chekov said. "They wanted me

to tell them stories and more stories of life in the

Federation, and the strange and wonderful

planets I've seen."

"And they didn't present you the check when you

left?" Chekov shook his head. "It was walue for

walue," he said. "They said the entertainment I

gave them more than paid for my room and board."

"Rum lot of capitalists, if you ask me."

"Bah. Don't talk to me of capitalism.

We Russians inwented capitalism."

With a sigh of satisfaction Kirk settled

into his command chair. He was back where he belonged.

The temperature was normal, the gravity was

normal, and the very light didn't make him itch as

if he were receiving a lethal dose of radiation. There

were plenty of unpleasant ramifications of the encounter

he'd been embroiled in earlier to ponder. He would

ponder them later. Rij now he was filled with the rather

foolish elation of once more having been shot at and

survived. He nodded to Chekov at the

helmsman's station, then looked at his communications

officer. "Lieutenant," he said, "you're looking

especially radiant today."

"Why, thank you, Captain," Uhura said.

"Is there something-different-about your appearance?" --

She turned her head to display an orange flower

behind her ear. "Jason gave it to me,

sir.- It's called a passion bloom." "Well,

it's hardly regulation, Lieutenant-but under the

circumstances I suppose we can overlook it."

"Thank you, Captain."

"Status report, Mr. Chekov."

"Captain, all systems are fully

functional. We have no personnel in the brig. As

of this moment, we have one hundred and seven crew

taking shore leave on the surface of the planet,

including Mr. Spock, who is at a deep-sea

research station in the southern hemisphere, near the

oceanic trench the human colonists call

Hellsgate Rift, and Mr. Sulu, who is-was

"In capable hands, I know, Ensign. What about

Commissioner Wayne?"

"She beamed aboard at twenty-three seventeen

ship's time last night, sir. She remains on

board-was

"Captain," Uhura said, "I'm receiving a

coded subspace communication from Starfleet. It's

directed to your personal attention. I-I'm

getting one for Commissioner Wayne, too." "Forward

hers to her quarters, Lieutenant," he said.

"I'll take mine'in the briefing room. And

kindly pass the word for Mr. Spock

to beam up as soon as compossible."

"Yes, sir."

Concern made Admiral Douglas Satanta's

prerecorded face heavier than usual.

"Captain, Deputy Commissioner Wayne says

you've been refusing to carry out your orders. She's

been raising seven kinds of hell with StarfLeet

Command. She's got Commissioner Hightower camped out

on the front steps of the Federation Council.

"You may not realize just how powerful

Interspecies Affairs has gotten. Starfleet

has been receiving a lot of heat recently, about

so-called human 6cultural imperialism" and

domination of nonhuman sentients. Hightowees been

capitalizing on that to increase his own power-and

Wayne's his fair-haired lass. The two of them

are making you out as accomplice to the rape of the

Susuru. And the Council's buying it."

For a moment he just looked out of the screen. Kirk

felt a crawling sensation at the pit of his belly.

There were few things in this universe Douglas

Satanta was afraid to confront. Even the truth.

"I don't know what you're doing out there, Jim.

I'm sure it's what you think best. But it's past

the time for that now. "A fleet of

transports just left this Starbase. Its commander

has orders to bring back the human colonists from

Okeanos. If you don't have them ready to leave at

that point, he has orders to bring you back in

irons."

He spread his big, capable hands. "Jim,

I've done all I can to run interference for you. But

it's out of my hands now." The screen went blank.

Kirk sat back in his chair and stared at it for a

long time.

"That's the trouble with feeling as if you're on top

of the world," he finally, said. "It's always a sure

sign you and it are about to swap places."

He got up and walked back to the bridge.

Uhura was working her console again. "Captain, a

message from the surface. It's the Susuru

leader, sir."

He waved. "Main screen, Lieutenant."

The face of Swift appeared. "Captain," he

said, 66 your delays have become insufferable. You

clearly

intend to take no measures to remove your people from

comour world."

Kirk took a deep breath. "Lead Walker,

I have told you I would take no action

until you and the Discordians had gotten together at the

negotiation table. At this point, it's you who's doing

the delaying."

The Susuru made a chopping gesture, inward

toward its keellike breastbone. "There will be no

negotiation. There must be an end. Therefore, I have

ordered my forces to prepare to launch

nuclear-tipped rockets at the Discordian

cities when my deadline expires, two days

hence."

"No," Kirk said softly.

The ears tipped forward. "I beg your pardon,

Captain?" "No. You are not going to do that. Because if

you do-if you try-I will blast every stick of your

military equipment that's bigger than a rifle

into slag. I'll sink your ships. I'll ground your

aircraft. I'll bring your'commerce to a halt."

Swift's ruff stood on end. "Captain, you

cannot-was "Oh, but I can," Kirk said, leaning forward.

"Just try me, Swift."

"I invoke the Prime Directive!" the

Susuru said. "You cannot intervene."

Kirk smiled. "It won't fly, Swift. You

invited us in here. You insisted that we come and involve

ourselves in the affairs of your planet.

Indeed, you said we couldn't refuse, because your

enemies were our people and therefore our responsibility.

Yes, the Prime Directive exists, Lead

Walker, and it exists to prevent starship officers like

me from interfering in the affairs of planets like yours.

But guess what? You waived it when you asked us in

here. his

"This is an intolerable breach of our

sovereignty!" "No, it isn't. If you want

to see one, though, make one move I can even

possibly interpret as leading up to a nuclear

attack on the Discordians. Kirk out!"

He sighed. "What else could go wrong?"

The turbolift door hissed opcn. "What is

going on here?" the voice of Commissioner Wayne

demanded.

"I should know better than to ever ask that question,"

Kirk said.

"What?" Wayne said, coming forward.

"Nothing, Commissioner."

She smiled. "I take it you've heard the news

from Starfleet?" she said. Her cheeks were flushed,

her eyes glittered with triumphant malice.

"I have."

"So now you will naturally comply with your

orders." Mr. Spock stepped onto the bridge.

"Captain, I understand you summoned me."

"Yes, Mr. Spock, I did. I just received

two disturbing pieces of news."

He saw Wayne frown, perplexed. "First, I

am informed that Starfleet has dispatched a fleet of

transports to remove the Discordians. I'm to have

the colonists ready to depart by the time they arrive."

A flicker of concern passed over the aquiline

face and was quickly suppressed. "Perhaps that should not

surprise us, Captain."

"Perhaps it should not. Second, the Susuru have just

announced that they intend to wage nuclear war upon their

neighbors."

"We cannot certainly permit that, Captain."

"I've already made that abundantly clear

to Lead Walker Swift."

"What did you tell him?" Wayne asked. Her

eyes were strangely bright, and her cheeks were

flushed.spock looked at her intently.

"I told him if he tried it, I'd phaser his

war machine into the middle of next week," Kirk

said. "He seemed to get the message, but he

wasn't happy about it."

"So you continue to intervene on behalf of the

intruders," Wayne said.

Kirk stared at her, momentarily unable to believe

what he'd heard. "Commissioner," he finally

managed, "what exactly are you saying?"

"That you'll do anything to help the invaders against the

native people. Simply because they're human."

FROM THE DEPTHS

"The use of nuclear weapons is strongly

proscribed by the Federation," Spock said.

"As your captain's friends down there love to tell

us, this isn't the Federation. You have no right

to intervene."

"But we are here acting as representatives of the

Federation," Kirk said. "If the transport

fleet arrives to discover we have permitted the

inhabitants of Okeanos to use nuclear weapons

on one another, you and I will both be sharing the wrong

end of a capital court-martial for genocide." .

Her answer was a defiant head-flip, clearing red

bangs from her eyes. "The issue would appear to be

moot," Spock said. "Lead Walker has

achieved his objective. Starfleet has sent a

transport convoy to remove the Discordians."

Wayne drew in a deep breath. Her

shoulders sagged as she let it out again. "You're right,

Mr. Spock. It was the principle I was concerned

with."

Kirk and Spock exchanged glances.

"Captain," Wayne said, "I'm beaming down

to the people at lanet surface. There are matters I

need to attend to."

Kirk spread his hands. Wayne left.

The bridge crew stared at Kirk.

"Captain," Uhura said hesitantly, "was the

commissioner actually saying she might let the

Susuru use nuclear weapons?"

"Either that or we're both hallucinating,

Lieutenant." "Captain," Spock said,

"Deputy Commissioner Wayne has begun to behave

in a most erratic manner."

"You've noticed."

The irony was lost on Spock. "I have taken the

liberty of reviewing the commissioner's records.

They

seem unduly cursory. She does seem to have

left behind her a string of c omplaints for high-handed and

impulsive behavior. In all instances, however,

she was found to have acted correctly."

"By Commissioner Hightower?"

"The records do not say. I would estimate the

probability as high."

He seemed about to continue. Kirk held up a

hand. "Spare me the exact percentage, Spock.

I'll take your word for this one."

Spock nodded imperturbably. "If you will not be

needing me, I should prefer to return to the research

station. Dr. Arkazha claims she has something of

great interest to show me in the region of the

Hellsgate Rift."

Kirk waved a hand. "Go, Spock. Might as

well gather ye rosebuds while ye may."

Spock cocked an eyebrow at him and left.

Kirk rose. "Uhura, contact sickbay," he

said. "Pass the word for Dr. McCoy to meet me

in my quarters immediately, if you please."

41 She refuses to let me examine her,

Jim," McCoy said. He stood with his back to the

bulkhead and his arms folded, beside the niche which contained

the model of the Constitution. "Since she's a

civilian, I can't insist."

Kirk paced. "What about her medical

records?" "She has no organic condition which

might account for her increasingly irrational

behavior," McCoy said. "Her

psychological records were not downloaded in the

ship's computer."

Kirk stopped and stared at him. "Isn't that

unusual, Bones?" "Not really. She's a highly

placed civilian official.

It's considered an invasion of privacy for the

likes of you and me to be prying into such confidential

information."

Kirk grimaced and went back to pacing. "I'm

just a country doctor, Jim," McCoy said, "and

not a headshrinker by any means. But I can offer a

possible explanation."

"Shoot."

"Now, this can't leave this room; I'm way

outside my field, and it borders on the

unethical to diagnose a patient I haven't

examined. You can't take any of this as constituting an

official opinion-was

Kirk made a chopping gesture. "All right,

Bones."

"To me, Commissioner Wayne seems to show all the

sips of being an abuse survivor who never dealt

with the fact."

Kirk frowned. "You mean her father-was "Was an

overweening old bastard. Imagine what it

was like growing up as his kid?"

"You actually think he beat her?" "I can't

say, Jim; I didn't examine him, either. As

another utterly unqualified guess, I'd say

it's damned likely. But systematic

psychological abuse leaves scars that are just as

deep, even if they aren't as visible."

"Why hasn't all this surfaced before?"

McCoy shrugged. "Maybe it has, Jim. But

probably not in such a severe manner."

"What do you mean?"

"She's under enormous stress out here. A virgin

planet, a previously unknown alien race in

conflict with human settlers-to her it seems a

textbook example of the sort of abuses

Interspecies Affairs was created to correct. And

she at eels both a strong psychological

identification with the Susuru, and a strong antipathy

toward the Discordians."

"Don't I know it."

"Then there's the Klingon presence to complicate

matters. More to the point, there's you and Kain."

Kirk looked at him sharply. "Explain yourself,

Doctor." "I'd say the poor child finds herself

caught in a conflict of father figures.

Combined with all the other stressors, it's causing her

to come apart."

Kirk stared at his friend. He felt his face grow

warm. "But I keep telling you I'm only a year

or two older-was McCoy shook his head.

"Doesn't make a bit of difference, Jim.

You're the man in command, and that's not just a matter of the

color shirt you wear. You're a strong man, a

strong personality type. You stamp your mark on

any situation you come in contact with. You press all

her daddy buttons at once. "And so does this

Klingon devil Kain."

Kirk took a deep breath. "If this is

true, why has she been entrusted with so much

responsibility?"

"Good heavens, Jim! The Federation can't

discriminate against someone simply because of the way he

or she was raised. Child abuse isn't as prevalent

as it was a couple of centuries ago, but it still goes

on. It isn't her fault; she's obviously a very

intelligent andcapable woman, who deserves the chance

to rise as high as her abilities will carry her."

"What about the fact that she hasn't dealt with her

past? Assuming that all of this bears any relationship

to reality." "I warned you this was all liable

to be spun sugar and moonshine, Jim."

"And that's never stopped you before, Doctor.

McCoy started to glower, then turned it into a grin

that vanished as quickly as it had come. "And I

won't let it stop me now. Dealing with a history of

abuse is a highly personal matter, Jim.

It's not something anyone outside you can force;

intervention is just flat counterproductive."

dis"...But she's vulnerable."

"Everybody's vulnerable, one way or another.

Can't hold it against us."

"I guess not." Kirk stopped, stood staring

down at his model sailing ship, as if imagining

himself riding its decks, through seas less poisonous

and strange than those of Discord. "Besides, it's all

academic now, anyway, from what you tell me,"

McCoy said. "She's got what she wanted."

Kirk reached a finger to touch the rigging. "Yes."

He turned to the doctor. "What would it take

to get hold of her psychological records,

Bones?"

"A request from me to Starfleet, countersigned.

by you as the captain." The seams of his face deepened

in a frown. "Jim, a request like that won't look

too good on your record at a Court of

Inquiry. It'll look like some kind of petty

revenge for her going over your head to Starfleet."

"Send it anyway. Might as well be hanged

for a sheep as a lamb." He snorted a laugh.

"Haven't you always wondered just what that expression

means?"

"Good thing Spock's not here," McCoy said

gruffly. "He'd probably tell us."

Kirk started for the door. McCoy hung back.

"Do it, Bones," the captain said. "I just have to know.

Even though there's nothing more she can do."

"And so we've won, Captain Kain,"

Moriah Wayne said. She sat by the great

hardwood table in the

Klingon's underground chamber. She was speaking

somewhat too brightly, like a chattering bird.

"Starfleet's sending transports to take the

colonists off Island. We've got what we

wanted."

Kain stood beside the table with one arm folded across his

chest, the other elbow propped upon it, the palm

cupping his chin. He studied Wayne with his single

eye. Then he shook his head.

"Moriah, Moriah," he said sadly. "How

you disappoint me." "What?" she cried.

"Surely you're not that naive, to believe you've

bested James Kirk so easily."

She jumped to her feet. "But he'll have no

choice! There'll be an admiral with the fleet.

He'll make Kirk obey-or relieve him."

"Kirk has slipped the noose before," Kain

said, "time and time again. What makes you think he

won't do so this time? He's a hero to the warmongers of

Starfleet. Do you really expect them to act against

him?"

In her agitation Wayne kept walking several

steps one way, then several steps the other. "But-was

Kain shook his head. "This will end as so many

similar episodes have ended-with more Earther perfidy.

Another helpless native race beaten down

by human arrogance, another planet falling victim

to human greed. A piquant irony, don't you

think-that your human-dominated Federation favors even

its outlaws over the natives they exploit.,,

She covered her face with her hands and pulled them

slowly downward as if trying to scour away

self-doubt. "Not again. Oh, Earth Mother, I can't

let it happen again."

"The men of Starfleet stick together. It's just a

fact of life." "He's going to get

away with it, isn't he?" Kain smiled. "Not if

you don't let him."

Yeoman Robison nodded politely as

Commissioner Wayne stepped off the transporter

stage. She walked purposefully around the control

console to where he

stood. I

"Can I help you, Commissioner?" he asked

cautiously. He was a properly respectful young

man, but he wasn't about to let any civilian,

no matter how top-lofty, go poking at his board

without due authorization.

She smiled a warm smile-thrilling, even.

Smiling like that the commissioner was really something to look

at, not at all the dragon scuttlebutt made

her out to be.

"Why, yes, Yeoman. I felt a strange

kind of dislocation as I beamed up-something like nausea.

I wondered if everything was adjusted right."

Of course it was, but he looked the slide

controls over again, just to make sure.

"Well, Commissioner," he said, trying not to sound

too condescending, "the fact is you can't feel much of

anything in the dissociated state-was

Concentrating on his console, he did comn

see the commissioner bring her hand out from behind her hip and

press a small gold tube to the side of his

neck. And then he didn't see anything at all.

Her heart in her throat, Wayne stood watching

the young man in the red shirt. Surely it hadn't

worked, surely he was still awake- She waved a hand

in front of his face. His eyes did

not move to track the motion, nor did he blink.

He did not seem to breathe.

It was as she had been told to expect. The

"ur, a spiny rock lizard from a little-visited world

of the Klingon Empire, produced a neurotoxin that

had the property of putting all its victim's

physical processes on hold. She had one

hundred seconds; then the handsome young yeoman would

begin to function again, with no memory of any

interruption-or of the preceding few minutes.

Being careful not to come in contact with the youth-she

couldn't bring herself to believe entirely in the toxin's

effectiveness-she manipulated the controls, locking

the transporter beam onto the first set of

coordinates she had memorized. She had no

experience of working a transporter unit, but the

steps were simple and she had committed them to memory.

Her father had made sure she kn ew how

to memorize things, quickly and infallibly.

She energized the beam. A trill, a sparkle,

and a dark metallic cylinder squatted on the

central disk. She left the console and jumped

lithely onto the platform to bend over the cylinder and

press a relay. A red light glowed alive on

top of the cylinder. Unreadable characters began to flicker

green on a small panel beside the pilot light.

Making herself breathe slowly and move without haste,

Wayne returned to the console and set the controls

to a different set of coordinates. Plenty of time,

she told herself. Nothing tofear. Nothing in the world.

She pressed the button once more. The cylinder

turned to light, wavered, and vanished.

Moriah Wayne shuddered. Then she composed

herself and walked quickly from the transporter room.

Yeoman Robison blinked and shook himself.

"Whoa," he said. "I must've been daydreaming

there." He rubbed his eyes. "Just zoned out there for a

moment," he told himself aloud. "Good thing

Lieutenant Commander Scott didn't wander in

to check up on me."

From his seat in the glassed-in control room

poised above the fusion bottle that provided power

to Harmony, Sonny Puleomua was

talking to his cousin Hannes in Storm. "No,

there's been nothing exciting going on around here

except for the visit by the space people. Didn't even

know they'd been here myfnobody tells me anything,

and I was onshift, and anyway I heard they were being

shown around by some of those snotty Discord City

types. I'll tell you one thing-hey!" The

readouts on his panels had gone crazy.

Interference lines crackled over his cousin's face

on the telephone screen. "What the hell's going

on here?" he demanded. "My displays are all

dancing around like spackle bugs in swarming season!"

He broke off, half rose, and leaned forward

to stare through the observation window. "There's some kind of

yellow light flickering down on the floor," he

said.

Something dark and heavy-looking had simply

appeared next to the foamed-cement containment bottle.

"Holy Mother Eris!" he exclaimed. "What's-was

"Captain!" Ensign Chekov exclaimed.

"Our sensors are showing something that cannot be!"

Kirk sat up straight in his chair. "What is

it, Ensign?" "I'm, detecting what looks like a

thermonuclear explosion of approximately

one-half megaton in the city of

Harmony!"

SpocKnowledge sAT iation THE cABOUT-IATION that had

been lent him in Deep-Sea Research Station

Five, anchored at a depth of five hundred

meters beneath the Southern Ocean, not far from

Hellsgate Rift. He gazed at a computer

monitor. In his hand was a control. To the twitching of

his forefinger screens full. of data flashed by his

eyes as quickly as cards being dealt from a bottomless

deck.

The things Mona Arkazha had shown him were

fascinating, from a scientific viewpoint. From one

perspective Discord was a violent world, but from

another its energetic ecosystem produced a

dynamism among its life-forms that was unparalleled

in the galaxy, to his extensive knowledge. And he was not

prepared to totally discount Arkazha's hints of some

greater discovery that she was not yet ready to share with him.

But the information he was scanning had nothing to do with the

undersea life of Discord.

It had nothing to do with native life-forms at

all. Or. so he was coming to believe.

The door opened. He glanced up.

Two Vares, a man and a woman, stepped quickly

into the room and split to stand flanking the

door. Both were Micros; each pointed a machine

pistol at him. In the doorway stood Mona

Arkazha. The gray bulk of a Grunt loomed in

the passageway behind her.

"I fear I must ask you to surrender your hand

phaser, your communicator, and that marvelous

tricorder of youp, Spock." Spock looked from

her to the Micros. Their reaction time was quicker than

his, he knew. They handled the firearms as if they

knew how to use themand were ready to. Resistance was

therefore illogical.

Deliberately he unfastened his belt and laid

it across the end of the desk he was working on. The nearer

Micro moved away from the wall, sidled to the

desk, snatched the belt, and danced back, being

careful to stay out of Spock's reach should he be

inclined to try anything melodramatic. Which, of

course, he was not.

"You not long ago broached the subject of trust,

Doctor," he said. "It would appear that you were

demanding of me something that you yourself did not merit."

Was that a ripple of pain across the amphibian

features? He had a hard enough time reading the facial

nuances of normal humans. He had no idea

what hers might signify. "Soon we will

find out who has kept faith and who has been

faithless," Arkazha said. "In the meantime, you must

come with me."

comreports seeing possible survivors-was

"comfloating debris at twenty-one forty-one north,

fifty-five thirty west-was

"commy God, it's gone, the city's just ...

gone."

Kirk closed his eyes. Sulu was back at his

station, monitoring surface traffic. The picture

it painted was far from complete, but it showed Kirk far

more than he cared to know. "What about Mr. Spock,

Sulu? Any chance of beaming him up yet?"

"Negative, sir. The storm has settled right

over the research station, and it shows no sign of

breaking up. It's not safe to try to use the

transporters."

Kirk thought of the few terrible times he'd seen the

results of interference in a transporter beam, and

his stomach did a barrel roll. Spock was his friend

as well as his first officer. The situation was not urgent

enough to demand that Kirk risk doing that to him. Yet.

The transporters were working overtime as it was,

trying to bring the Enterprise's current

leave rotation home as quickly as possible. He had

as yet no idea of the source of the blast that had

destroyed Harmony and most, if not all, of her

three- quarters of a million occupants. The

ship's computer had reviewed his last exchange with

Swift exhaustively and confirmed the Universal

Translator routine's rendering of his words He

had clearly been referring to fission weapons, not a

fusion device. And the destruction of Harmony had

unmistakably been accomplished by a runaway

fusion reactions hydrogen bomb.

So he didn't know that the war for Okeanos had

escalated catastrophically. But on general

principles he wanted to get the Enterprise's

strayed sheep back in the fold with all deliberate

speed.

Especially since it seemed increasingly certain

that five of his people would never be coming back.

Fortunately most of the crew had at least begun their

leaves in Discord City, where the first contact had

been made. Discord Citians-the term

citizens made them cranky-did not get along

all that well with Harmonians. The crew members

who made contacts elsewhere had mostly gone

to Storm or Serendip or Qara-Qitay.

But five had apparently wound up in Harmony.

Kirk listened to the broadcasts from volunteer

rescue flights and boats in part to learn as much as

he could about what had happened, in part to see if there

was any way Enterprise could help the survivors.

But mostly it was against the chance, thin as a

monomolecular line, that some or all of the five had

managed to survive.

"Captain," Uhura said, "a call coming through for

you from Discord City."

"Put it on, Lieutenant."

The face of Aileea dinAthos filled the

screen. Kirk managed a strained smile.

"Aileea, let me say-was

"Captain Kirk," she said, as if she hadn't

heard. "How could you?"

Her image flickered. An electric storm

squatted on top of Discord City, too. It

wasn't the same as the one over Deep-Sea

Five, a whole world away.

"What?" he askedeautterly confused.

"I know that you're a statistea'b in spite of that

I thought you were a good man. Now I know otherwise."

41What are you talking about, Aileea? What

have I done?" Her cheeks rode up and

turned her eyes to jade crescents. "Is this how

it's going to be? You're just going to deny knowing that someone

beamed down from your ship and sabotaged the Harmony

power plant?"

"What?"

"Our power plants are linked together by data

networks," Aileea said, "so that in case of disaster

at one the others will at least know how it came about.

The instrumentation at the Harmony bottle showed

interference of the same pattern caused by your

transporter-beams right before the blast."

She drew a breath. "Also, the chief

technician on duty at the plant was talking to a

relative by phone at the time. He spoke of

interference, then of something metallic-looking appearing

in a flicker of yellow

light-,,

A tear ran down her cheek., "Why, Jim?

Why?" He raised his hands and opened his mouth. It

took all his will to force out words.

"Aileea, you have to believe me-it wasn't us."

The intercom chimed. "Transporter room

to bridge,," said Mr. Scott's voice.

"Just a minute, Scotty," Kirk said aside,

"1-was "Captain, we've lost track of

our people remaining on yon planet. We cannae

beam anyone else aboard!" "We-we find

violation of the sacred rules of hospitality

repugnant," Aileea was saying. "But you have a

preponderance of power and we must protect ourselves.

Therefore, we have taken those of your people who remain upon

our planet into custody, and relieved them of

weapons, communicators, and other items that might

enable you to trace them. Even as we speak they are being

dispersed across all of Discord."

"Aileea?"

"Your people are now our hostages. There will not be

another Harmony." She vanished.

"Take the offensive," Moriah Wayne said.

"I beg your pardon?" Kirk said.

"It's time to crack down, Captain. You have

enor- 2 1 5

mous firepower on board; isn't it time to use

it? If you're concerned about preserving the lives of

these criminals, then try destroying some of the

property they hold so dear. Discord City might

be a place to start."

He looked at her. The regular bridge crew

was gathered in the briefing room to assess the

situation. It was bad. Few survivors

of Harmony had been located, and some forty-one

Enterprise crew members remained unaccounted for,

including the five almost certainly lost in the

explosion. The prevailing mood was shock, but

grief and confusion and fear were beginning to vent in

spikes of anger.

He tried to shallow an anger spike of his own.

"Commissioner, this is no time for jokes."

"I'm not joking," the commissioner said lightly.

She alone failed to share the grim mood. She

seemed elevated, almost manic. "You tried coddling

your precious human settlers, and look where it

got you."

"We don't know what's gotten us here,

Commissioner," Sulu said.

"We're not even sure where 'here" is," added

Dr. McCoy. "We don't know who set the

bomb, or why."

"What about the Discordians' charge that someone

beaming down from the Enterprise placed the bomb?"

Uhura asked. "Yeoman Robison was on duty

at the time," said Scott' "He swears nothing was

transported down at all. Sean's a good

lad-I trained him on the board myself. And you must

admit, someone beaming a bomb down to the

planet would be a wee bit hard to miss."

"The one thing we do know," Wayne said, "is that the

self- proclaimed Discordians have taken members

of this drew hostage." She leaned forward and

propped her arms on the table. Her eyes moved

from face to haggard face.

his, I'm surprised," she said quietly. "Where

is the military outrage, the fury at the fact that

your comrades-in-arms have been treacherously

imprisoned by their hosts? I'd think you'd all have

blood in your eye. Are you willing to let these people do

this to you?"

"No." All heads turned toward the head of the

table; it was Kirk who had spoken. "No, we cannot

let them do this to us. No matter what we may have

felt about the Discordians, as a group or

individually, we cannot tolerate having our people held

hostage. I refuse to tolerate it."

"What can we do, Jim?" McCoy asked.

"I've already told you what to do," Wayne said

airily. "Sooner or later, you p eople are

going to have to start listening to me."

"Confound it, woman, hasn't there been enough

destruction already?" McCoy exclaimed.

"There's a bigger problem," Kirk said.

"How can I attack a city without risking more of my

own crew? We don't know where they're being kept."

"Isn't it past the time for niceties like that?"

Wayne asked. "A strong commander knows when to,

write people off and get on with the campaign' his

""He jests at scars that never felt a

wound,"" McCoy quoted bitterly. "You speak

of military matters very confidently for a woman who

knows nothing of the military beyond the fact that she

doesn't like

"If that's strength," Kirk said, standing up, "then

I am weak, and proud of it. I write no one

off, Commissioner, until I see the body, or

until the danger to the living becomes too great

to press the issue-and even

then, I'll find a way to get back and perform a

rescue if I can. Lives must sometimes be

expended, yes. But no life is expendable. his

"So you will take your customary action," Wayne

said. "Which is to say, nothing. his

"I will act when I find a sensible action

to take." She nodded, as if pronouncing judgment.

"Then it's on your head," she said, and left.

"Now what. was that supposed to mean?" McCoy

asked.

Kirk strode down the corridor and headed for the

transporter room. There was no easily discernible

purpose to be served by the trip-Sulu's sensors

couldn't locate Spock or the other hostages from the

bridge, so there was little chance of detecting them down

there. But at just this moment there was nothing he could

accomplish on the bridge. At least the movement was

action, of a sort.

Besides, something was nagging at him, from the "back of

his skull. He had the notion that a trip to the

transporter might jog it loose from his

preconscious.

Thus distracted, he turned a comer and bumped

into a strikingly lovely young woman. He stepped

back. "Oh, excuse me-I'm very sorry-was Then

he noticed she was a Klingon. He snatched for his

hand phaser. She was faster. He saw a flash of

red. Then black.

"DR. ARKA-ZHA," Spock said, "your

course of action is entirely illogical."

Down and down the submersible went toward the center

of the planet-or at least the molten mantle. The

depths of Hellsgate Rift were a black more

absolute than space. The Rift embraced no

stars.

Mona Arkazha piloted the craft herself. She

respected her captive greatly. She did. not

want another to witness what she hoped-and thought-would

happen.

"You cannot hope to defeat the Federation in an open

confrontation," Spock continued. "Yet by your very

actions you are mobilizing the full might of the

Enterprise-and, eventually, of the Federation itself comagst

you. I do not understand what stands to be gained."

"Then consider what stands to be lost. If we

fight, we die- but we die both proud and free.

If we give in,

we stand to lose freedom, pride, our homes.

We lose the right to control our biological

destiny. We become again the helpless property of a

compassionate and caring state-too compassionate to kill

us, too caring to let us walk among its people, who

might be offended at our strangeness. Is that

logical, Spock?"

"While life remains, so also does the

possibility of altering circumstances for the better."

She showed him teeth. "We have you captive," she

said, "and life remains."

"What will you do with us?"

"Care for you. Indeed, make plans

to make restitution to you, if we can-for we know what

has been done is unlikely to be the. work of any

who were guesting among us. You are victims, and we will

not bide from the fact."

"if your intention is to care for me, why is it necessary

to convey me to the bottom of a tenthousand-meter-deep

trench?" "Because, Spock my friend," she said with her

eyes gleaming, "there's something down there that you must

see."

Rather to his own surprise, Kirk came back

to himself lying on the deck. Voices bounced off the

walls of a confined space and into his ears and made his

head seem to bulge. Familiar voices.

Unfortunately.

In the normal course of events, if he were

strolling through his ship and happened to bump into a

Klingon, who shot him, he would have to figure that was

it. But this clearly wasn't it, unless he was destined

to spend his afterlife in a place that also harbored both

Moriah Wayne and a pack of surly Klingons.

He refused even to contemplate the theo-

logical ramifications of that, and decided he must

be alive. It wasn't a fact he was

necessarily happy with. He knew somehow that he

hadn't been out long, which meant the phaser

had been set on the lightest possible "stun." But

the crude calibration of Klingon weaponry meant

he'd still taken a pretty hefty jolt. His head

felt as if somebody had drilled holes in both

temples to see if there really were little men in there or

what, and his stomach felt as if the little men were

actually in it-bouncing on a trampoline.

He turned and vomited. "I'm sorry you did

that, Jim," Moriah Wayne said. "It's going

to get a little close for you, locked in here with it."

He looked at her blearily and tried to get

to his feet. He was in a small storage compartment,

he realized. The flower of Klingon femininity who

had stunned him caught a fi/l of his shirt,

hauled him upright, and slammed him up against the

wall. She pinned him there with a forearm bar across the

throat. "How come," he managed to choke out, "all

the good-looking women I meet this trip wind up not

liking me?" She pressed harder. His vision started

to red out. "I am Senior Lieutenant Lu Kok

Tak," she said. "I want to kill you, but my

captain reserves that right for himself. You cost him his

captain, his eye, and his brother."

"I didn't mean ... to do those things," Kirk

gasped. "But ... you can tell him that ...

he's really starting to get me ticked." She raised

a hand to strike him. "No, Lieutenant,"

Wayne said sharply. "You are not to hurt him."

Lu Kok Tak gave her a look as if she'd

like to take a

crack at her. But she stood back and let

Kirk go. He slid down and landed on his tailbone

with impact that sent sparks shooting up his spine

to fountain up behind his eyes like sparklers.

He looked at Wayne. "Adding treason to your

long lists of accomplishments?"

"You're the one who's playing the traitor,

Jim," she, said. "You've ignored your orders.

You've refused to do your duty. It's fallen to these

people to try to set things right." "Klingons aren't usually

the first people I'd look to for setting things right," Kirk

said. "But if your definition of that includes murdering

three-quarter's of a million people, I guess then

it's right up their alley."

"I did that," she said. "My conscience is

clear. It needed doing. They were no more than cancer

cells."

It seemed to Kirk that there had to be something to say

to that. But his knees gave way beneath him, and he just

barely- stopped himself from hitting the deck with

his face. "We'll have plenty of time to discuss this

later," Wayne said. "Right now we have to go."

"Shall we leave a guard?" the Klingon woman

asked. She obviously did not like the taste asking

Wayne for orders left in her mouth.

"No, Lieutenant Lu. Too obvious.

Besides, just look at him." She laughed. "He's

helpless."

The lieutenant nodded curt agreement. Wayne

went out, followed by Lu Kok Tak and her two

male Klingon escorts. None of them troubled

to cover Kirk.

The door closed. A moment later Kirk saw

a red glow and smelled hot metal. They were welding

him in. He should have leapt to his feet and done

something

heroic and decisive then. Instead he huddled in

a miserable heap and let them do it.

Moriah Wayne turned away from the Mingon who

was kneeling to weld the door with his phaser. "When you

finish sealing him in here, take your men and rejoin the

others, Lieutenant Lu. If there's trouble on the

bridge I'll call you." Lieutenant Lu

Kok Tak stared at that pale throat and longed

to crush it. To endure the usual Earther

pronunciation of her name was bad enough. Lu was

grossly overfamiliar-the child name her grandmother called

her by before she was even blooded as coma hunter in the

cold hills of Klingon. The lieutenant knew

nothing of the commissioner's antecedents, which was as much as

she cared to. Merely by looking at her-her

carriage, the way she moved-Lu Kok Tak

knew that Wayne possessed muscle mass greater

than the norm for Earther women, both denser and

heavier. She had also clearly received some rudiments

of instruction in what passed for hand-to-hand combat

among the terangan. Lu Kok Tak could have cared

less. She considered herself, unarmed, the equal of a

male Earther warrior comif not his better. One of

their pallid flabby women was beneath her contempt. But

the lieutenant must let her live, for now. Not for this

arrogant Earther's sake, but out of obedience

to Kain. "It shall be as you wish," she said huskily,

and thought about dishes best served cold.

Moriah Wayne tried to effect the same

swagger when she stepped onto the bridge that Kirk

always

had. It was her bridge now, and she needed to let

these thick- skulled military types know it in a

hurry. She walked to the command chair and

sat down. The bridge crew began to glance at

her, uneasily and without friendliness.

"Mr. Sulu," she said, "lock main phaser

banks on the nearest Discordian city."

He ignored her. "Mr. Sulu," she said

sharply, "didn't you hear me?"

"I heard you," he said, looking straight ahead.

"Why aren't you obeying my orders?"

"With all due respect, you're not entitled

to give orders. Ma'am."

"I am assuming command, Mr. Sulu. Now do

what I say 61 No."

"Mr. Chekov," she said, "relieve Sulu of

his position. Security, escort Mr. Sulu to the

brig."

"Nyetea"...Chekov said. "Get someone else to do

your dirty work, lady Cossack."

She twisted in her seat to look at the two

security men who stood flanking the door.

"Security," she said, "what's the holdup? We

have a mutiny here."

"Security," Sulu said crisply, "please

remove Commissioner Wayne from the bridge."

The two men in red shirts started forward. Wayne

thumbed a button on a unit she held

concealed in the palm of her right hand.

'the turbolift doors opened. Klingons burst

upon the bridge. The security men wheeled. One

clawed for his phaser and was shot down himself before he

got the weapon clear. The other launched himself at the

man who had stunned his partner and grappled with him,

trying to wrest the weapon from. his grip. 224

Lieutenant Lu Kok Tak stepped from the

lift, saw the two struggling, and fired her phaser

at them. Both fell. Sulu had taken

advantage of the distraction to enter a quick code

sequence into the helm. Then he jumped up, reaching for

his own phaser. The Klingon lieutenant caught the

motion from the corner of her eye. She spun toward

him, dropping to one knee. His beam whined over her

head and splashed against the turbolift door. Hers

dead-centered his chest. He dropped. "Hikaru!"

Uhura cried, jumping to her feet. There were half

a dozen Klingons still standing. They covered the entire

bridge with their phasers. Uhura stayed where she

was. The Klingon lieutenant reached back and

pulled the manual override next to the

turbolift. This disabled the elevator and made it

impossible for hostile parties to reach the bridge.

She smiled. The Earthers did some things

right. A Klingon ran to the helm and stabbed at

buttons with his finger. Then he turned and snarled

syllables at Lu Kok Tak. Her lips writhed

back from her teeth. "The yIntag has locked the

board!" she exclaimed. "The controls will not

respond."

After the absolute blackness of descent the vent

seemed to glow like an irregular red sun. Arkazha

reached out and flicked off the interior lights, leaving

the submersible illuminated only by the fitful dance of

instrument displays and the vent's sullen glare.

"Now, Spock," she said, "open your mind."

"Why should I comply with your wishes, Doctor?"

"Because it costs you nothing. Because if you do not, a very

great wrong will be done. Because if you do not, your ship and

your captain might be in danger."

She leaned close. "And because if you do not, you will

spend the rest of your life wondering why I brought you

here," He stared at her in the darkness. Then he

nodded. Placing his hands on his thighs, he closed his

eyes and shut himself completely off from her, the tiny

instrument-crowded compartment, the awful impending sensation

of billions of tons of water pressing down from

overhead.

Then, having walled away distraction,

he willed his mind to open to what might come.

And then he began to scream.

KiWs BoDy was a bag of wet sand. He

got it upright again mainly by some form of levitation he

didn't know he'd mastered. Those Klingon phasers

must have more of a kick to them than he'd ever realized.

But he was coming out of it, slowly. He even had a

plan now. All he needed was the energy to put it

into action"

Which at the moment was like saying that if he had a long

enough lever and a proper ftdcrum, he could move

Discord. The only part of his body that had any

energy at the moment was his chest muscle where the

Klingon had shot him. That kept twitching, as if it

were a wild animal struggling to escape the rest of

him and live free roaming the passageways of the

Enterprise.

He took stock of his situation, which in

circumstances like this was always a mistake and

depressing but something he felt compelled to do. So

Kain had been up to some skulduggery all along; that

was not

exactly a surprise. The big question was what.

He still didn't have an answer to that one.

And Moriah ... He squeezed

shuteahis eyes, which made yellow sparks dance behind

them. Moriah, Moriah. He had found much in her

to admire ... in the beginning, at least. She had her

principles, her convictions. He respected her

obduracy because it was not much different from his own. He

had even loved her, or at least made love to her.

That episode seemed distant and unreal now, as if

it had happened in a dream, or to someone else. And

maybe that's because I don't want to accept that I

made love to ... something ... that could do what she

did.

He jacked his eyes upward, toward the overhead.

There was the outline of an access panel. His road

to freedom. If he could just convince his still-numb

limbs to get him there. "Levitation," he croaked.

"That's the secret."

A waver in air, a spill of gold. A new

Klingon stood on the bridge next to the helm.

He was of medium height, with black hair hanging

lank from his cranial ridge. In the breast pocket

of his tunic he wore a sheath of serpent-worm

skin, to protect, the fabric from wear by his light

stylus and other small instru- ments.

There was that about him which said he was coma computer

technician.

Watching from the main viewscreen, which in turn showed

him sitting in his hide-covered chair in his underground

command post, Kain nodded in satisfaction. "You may

relax now, Moriah," he said. "Q'reygh will

figure out how to unlock the fire-control

console long before the other terangan have discovered

anything is wrong."

The technician nodded and smiled at Wayne.

He was so impressed with her that he kept nodding and

smiling at her until Lu Kok Tak reached out from

behind and rapped him smartly on the ridge with her

fingertips. He whined a peevish complaint. Then he

knelt before the helm, unfastened the front panel,

and got down to work.

With a grunt and a heave, Kirk pulled himself up

through the hole in the overhead. His spasm of effort

knocked over the spare linen bundles he'd piled

up to stand on. Fortunately they didn't make much

noise.

For a moment he lay there sucking air through a gaping

mouth like a beached raft dodger, with his feet dangling

into the compartment. I've got to lose some weight. I

won't even make Bones nag me about it this time.

By centimeters he wriggled the rest of him up

into the Jeffries tube. Then he lay there

and devoted some time to the existential pleasures of

breathing. His head began to clear. He began to feel

less as if his entire body were one big funny

bone barked against a table edge.

He called into his mind the blueprints he and

Scotty had devoted so many hours to on the journey

out from Starbase 23. He had a rough idea of how

to get to the bridge already. But he needed reinforcements

in a hurry, and Security was not much use to him right

now. That competent witch IuHoHta' would have been

sure to seal the bridge. And there were only so many

burly security types he could jam in the access

ducts and air vents with him.

No, he told himself. I don't need them

anyway. This is still my ship.

"Helpless," he croaked. "I'll show you who's

helpless." Painfully but determinedly, he began

to crawl.

Spock raised his head and snapped his eyes open

like shutters. Arkazha tensed, not knowing what

to expect. He lunged forward for the controls. She

wrapped thick- skinned arms around him. He

struggled. She held him. The very surprise of the

fact calmed him slightly, returned him to a

semblance of himself.

"Must-go," he said, as if he had to wrestle each

word to get it out. "They-told me-there wasdanger.

Must-see."

She hesitated a moment, then let him go. He

lurched to the front of the tiny craft, bent almost double

in the cramped space, then folded himself into a space

meant for a being half his size. He looked

ludicrous with his knees up around his pointed ears, but

Arkazha felt no humor. She had too good an

idea what he was going through.

He set the craft onto a heading and turned on

the autopilot. Then he flung himself from the

pilot's seat to huddle against the bulkhead with his arms

wrapped tightly around his knees. "I first felt

them in my dreams, as I slept in Deep-Sea

Five," she said, settling herself beside him. "I thought

I was going mad. Then I went into Hellsgate, and

my head filled with the voices. I have no gift for

telepathy, though, so I could never make more of them

than a terrible pressure in the head." Spock

didn't answer. His eyes were squeezed shut.

His lips moved, though no sound came out. She

bent an ear hole near his lips and thought she heard

the ghost of a whisper "I-amSpock. lam a

Vulcan. lam alive. I am Spock.

She touched his forehead. It was as cold as the

viewport, through which no amount of insulation could keep

the lightless; depths from sucking heat.

Whether he heard her or not, she couldn't tell.

Maybe she wasn't talking to him, truly.

Maybe she spoke for her own benefit.

"One thing I knew-they mean no harm. They

cause pain by the strangeness of their thoughts. You are

strong-you will endure."

She took his head in her arms and cradled it against

her rubbery breast. In that way they fled through the

depths, him reciting the mantra that would perhaps

return his selfhood to him, her crooning an

ancient Russian lullaby in a cracked and

quavery voice.

Wayne sat in her chair of command with Lu Kok

Tak on one side of her and a giant Klingon

brute on the other, the picture of absolute

authority. She felt wonderful. At last things were

to be set right on Okeanos, and it was all her

doing-with plenty of help from the magnificent

Captain Kain and his crew. These Klingons could be

a fairly coarse lot, she had to admit. But she

could clearly see the innate nobility in them.

Kain, on the other hand, was bearing the delay

with far less 1 at race. He was slumping,

frowning, and drumming fingers on the arm of his chair when

the lumpy tech sat upright with a cry of compItally

It's done!"

Kain bobbed his head. "Excellent.

Lieutenant?" Lu Kok Tak jumped for the

helmsman's station.

She'd been itching to fire a ship's main

phasers her whole life. "The city Storm is right

below," Wayne said. "Lock phasers onto a main

governmental building."

"Commissioner," Uhura said scornfully, "the

Discordians don't have large governmental

buildings.v) "Oh. Well, then, find a

suitably large and impressive building,

centrally located."

Lu Kok Tak was already doing that. She had a

magnified overhead view of Storm up on the big

screen, relegating her captain to a smaller side

display. The picture scrolled this way and that as she

spun the trackbalI mounted on the console, looking

for targets. The tip of her tongue protruded from

her mouth in concentration.

"Lieutenant Uhura," Wayne said, "open a

channel with Storm." She smiled. "I

think it's only fair to warn them what's in store."

"They won't answer," Uhura said.

"Try anyway." She pointed her thumb at the

Klingon who stood beside her-her!-command chair.

"Or I'll have him shake you by the scruff of your

neck."

Tht big KI'-INGON growled. Uhura

turned toward her panel. "Here's something," Lu

Kok Tak said. She had found a circular

building, which by its appearance might be either a

freshwater storage tank or a sports arena.

Either way, it was a reasonably imposing target.

"Commissioner, I'm getting no response,"

Uhura said. "Then broadcast an

all-frequencies warning! Get the people out now."

The bridge crew, including Sulu, who was

reluctantly returning to consciousness, stared at

her, wondering why she was suddenly so filled with

compassion for the gene-altered human settlers.

"Maybe she's killed her limit," muttered

Sulu. It earned him a gouge in the ribs with a

truncheon from one of the two Klingons who stood

flanking him.

Lu Kok Tak had succeeded in locking on to her

target. With a triumphant cry she

slammed the heel of. her hand down on the firing

switch.

Onscreen, beams of light suddenly lanced the

large round structure. Metal glowed cherry red.

Metal vapor swirled up like steam.

"What are you doing?" screamed Wayne. "I

didn't give the order to fire!"

The Klingon lieutenant gave her a lethal

look and then a Can-I-kill-her-now? look to her

real commander onscreen. Kain gave her back a

minute shake of his head. She shrugged and depressed

the switch again.

"Forgive her, Moriah," said Kain. "She is

youngher natural exuberance has the better of her."

Wayne frowned and fidgeted in her seat. She was

disappointed; she had expected better discipline

than this from the Klingons. But she supposed no race

was perfect. A third blast from the phaser banks.

The structure exploded in a ball of rapidly

expanding gas. Then all that was left was a circle

wound, blue water ringed by white-glowing metal.

Wayne found herself leaning forward eagerly in the command

chair. She made herself settle back. "We'll

wait a few minutes," she said, "give them time

to assimilate it. Then we'll destroy

another building."

"I'm looking," Lu Kok Tak reported.

"See that your impatience doesn't overwhelm you

again," Wayne said. The Klingon ignored her.

Minutes passed. Behind Kain Klingons were

visible moving purposefully about. Wayne didn't

know what they were doing- nor did she care. She was

paramount here, this was her moment. She would show those

arrogant mutant bastards what power was!

"Commissioner," Chekov said, "the city is

break-+ UP- at 9 She glared at him. A

command to beat him unconscious quivered on the tip of

her tongue. Then she thought about what he'd actually

said.

"What on earth are you talking about, young man?"

He pointed to an auxiliary screen. A view of

all of Storm filled it. As she looked at it, the

fringes seemed to melt away before her eyes.

"What's going on?" she demanded.

Lu Kok Tak uttered what Wayne thought was a

curse. "I do not know. But look!" On the big

screen an entire block of buildings pulled

away from each other. A skyway fell into the water

with a splash. A long oval building submerged,

trailing broken catwalks like seaweed.

"It's unbelievable," she whispered. "What are

they doing?" "if you'd actually paid attention to the

Discordians," Uhura said, "you'd know. Every

house, every business, almost every building on Discord

is a ship. You can't threaten these people this way,

Commissioner. They just pull up stakes and leave."

"Well-shoot them, Lieutenant! Don't let

them get awayP1 Lu Kok Tak locked

phasers onto a large oval

building. It promptly vanished beneath the waves,

leaving nothing but a boil of bubbles.

"I'm trying," the lieutenant said, gritting her

teeth.

Gurg was a Klingon rating whose MOS was being

big and ugly, a task for which nature had generously

equipped him. He stood right up next to the command

chair, phaser in hand, intimidating these Denebian

slime-devils-who-walked-like-men with scowls from

brows that didn't so much beetle as battleship.

He was a man who loved his work, and he was an artist

at it.

His eyes were fixed ahead. With the science station

unmanned, the whole bridge complement was in his forward

field of vision-an Earther design feature a good

thlIngan could appreciate, at least one

who thought a bit more profoundly about such things than

Gurg. Gurg was more the direct experiential

type.

Of course, no one else was paying any attention

to what was going on behind them either. As a consequence

Gurg was the only one who wasn't surprised when

a phaser beam flashed from the Jeffries-tube

access panel next to the inactive turbolift.

Gurg was too busy being unconscious then. Kirk

had chosen to drop him first because he was the only

hostile on the bridge with a weapon actually in hand.

His next target was the lieutenant, who was already

spinning to draw her own sidearm. She was fast as a

leopard. She was smart, too. As she came around

she took a step to the right and went to one knee,

to spoil her enemy's targeting solution. James

Kirk was no slouch in the reflex compartment either. But

he was still fuzzy from being stunned himself; in his haste

to get off the first shot he overcompensated

slightly. His blast struck the biceps

of her weapon arm. The phaser dropped from her

fingers. She was a blur of motion, flying forward at

him. Before he could squeeze another shot her boot

scythed around and kicked the phaser spinning from his hand.

While this was happening, the Enterprise's

bridge crew was not exactly idle. Perhaps

inside-irrationally-they had been expecting something like

this. Their captain had a habit of coming through for them,

usually in the face of the wildest odds.

Lieutenant Uhura stood up abruptly. The

Klingon standing watch over her communications station

gaped at her impertinence. She kneed him in the

groin. As he bent double, she seized his head by the

hair and dragged his face down to meet her other

knee coming up. Then she let him go. He staggered

backward, trying to clutch himself in two places at

once. He backed into the technician, who was standing

there looking befuddled.

Ferocious Klingon instinct took over. Still

clutching himself with one hand, the guard half turned and

began striking savagely at what he took for his

new antagonist with the other. The tech wailed and

fell on his rump.

Sulu pivoted and plucked the truncheon from the

inattentive fingers of the Klingon on his left.

Snapping his hips back the other way, he drove

its heavy brass head into the solar plexus of the

Klingon to his right. Turning back again, he stopped

an overhand right to the head by whacking the Klingon hard

on the inside of the attacking forearm. Then

he slammed the trun- cheon upsid e the Klingon's

head. The Klingon went down. Senior

Lieutenant Lu Kok Tak had Kirk trapped

in the cramped Jeffries tube. She was firing

knees into- 2

him, trying to crush his groin. He had his hips

turned to the side, absorbing the blows on the great

muscle of his thigh. It felt as if a giant

aborigine of Taurus 11 was pounding him with a

stone-headed club.

He managed to get a boot up and give her a

desperate shove to the midriff. She reeled back

three steps and caught herself. Before she could start

forward again Kirk was on her, fists up, left

side ad-con" vanced.

She kicked at his groin. He got his hip in the

way. Screaming with fury, she struck at his face.

She could only use her left hand; her right still

dangled like a sock still wet from the laundry. He

deflected the blows with raised forearms. She cocked

her hand to strike for his eyes, fingers clawed. He

snapped his left arm straight. The jab caught her

right on her fine, narrow-bridged nose and broke

it. Lu Kok Tak straightened, eyes

wide, blood pouring down her upper lip. The

slimy Earther had actually hurt her"

About then the slimy Earther caught her with an

overhand right to the jaw. Bone crunched. She fell in

a graceless sprawl. Kirk looked around, trying

not to shake his right hand. It felt as. if someone had

exploded a bomb among his metacarpals. He was

just in time to see Sulu batter down the Klingon he

had poked in the belly with his own stick, and suddenly

the bridge was clear of functional enemies.

"Toucht!" Sulu cried.

"Aren't you getting your martial arts confused,

Mr. Sulu?" Kirk asked. "I'm sure real

escrimadores don't yell "touchd" when they

hit somebody."

Sulu showed teeth in a feral grin. "I don't

know

what they say, Captain. The videos don't

cover that-was "Captain," Uhura cnied, "the

turbolift-was

Kirk wheeled in time to see the turbolift door

close. The manual override switch had been

thrown the other way. He moved swiftly to his

command chair and hit the intercom button with his good

hand. "This is the captain speaking. Red

alert. I repeat-red alert. All hands to battle

stations. This is not a drill. I need all

available Security to the bridge immediately. We

need many sets of passive restraints."

He paused and glanced around the bridge. "AU

hands be on the lookout for Commissioner Moriah

Wayne. She may be armed and must be considered

dangerous."

He glanced around the bridge. Anger smoldered

in his belly, a feeling of violation.

"And as for'you, Captain Kain Kirk turned

to the side screen.

Only to see the Klingon shimmer out in a haze of

transporter-beam glitter.

Kum woKED AT his bridge crew. They were

all standing over the vanquished Klingons, lost somewhere

between daze and triumph.

"Don't we all have jobs to do?" Kirk asked.

"We're at war here, people. Attend your stations.

Make it march."

Everybody dove for his or her station at once.

Kirk ignored the brief resulting confusion, seating

himself in his chair as if nothing had happened. He

kept his right hand well away from everything.

"Mr. Sulu," he said, "shields

up. I want a lock on that battlecruiser

immediately. If she energizes her weapons you have

permission to blast her without warning. 99 641es,

Sir!,.

"Lieutenant Uhura, find me the channel

Ms. dinAthos called on earlier. I want

to talk to her at once."

"Aye, sir."

The- turbolift door opened and S "

ecurity came tumbling onto the bridge, bristling

with phasers and belligerence. "Officers," Kirk

said without turning, "the fight is over-here, at least.

All that remains is the cleanup phase of the

operation." Security began to shackle the

unconscious Klingons and carry them out. A sturdy

man with curly blond hair and a blond woman,

surprisingly petite for a Security officer,

helped a bloody-faced Senior Lieutenant

Lu Kok Tak to her feet. Her hands were bound behind

her. She swayed, and glared at Kirk. "It was

luck that let you beat me," she spat. "Luck

alone!" He started to toss off a flip line about it

really being all those years trying to beat Finnegan

back at Starfleet Academy. Then he checked

himself.

"It wasn't luck," he said in a quiet

voice. "Don't kid yourself. This is my ship,

Lieutenant. You never had a chance."

He waved his right hand in the air. It made him

feel as if somebody were hacking at its bones with a

white-hot saw. "Normally, I'd feel compelled

to apologize for hitting a lady. Somehow I get

the feeling you wouldn't appreciate the gesture."

She spat Klingon gutturals at him and tried

to writhe free. "Reichert, van Pelt," Kirk

said, "take care with that one. She's a handful."

The diminutive van Pelt gripped the

Klingon's left arm just above the elbow and squeezed.

Lu Kok Tak stiffened. "We know just how to handle

her, Captain," van Pelt said sweetly. The

two hustled the lieutenant out. "Sensors report

only a skeleton crew on board the

battlecruiser, sir," Sulu said.

com"...Where did the dewils go?" Chekov asked.

"I don't know, Mr. Chekov," Kirk said.

"But I have a feeling we'd better find out soon."

"I have Ai-Ms. dinAthos, Captain,"

Uhura reported. Kirk took a deep breath.

"Put her on."

Aileea's face filled the screen.

"I've heard of your attack on Storm,

Captain." She shook her head. Tears flew from

her cheeks like drops of rain. "I don't know how

I could have been so wrong about you!"

"Ms. dinAthos, your plant was sabotaged

by Deputy Commissioner Wayne, who, acting on her

own and in flagrant violation of Federation law,

beamed a Klingon explosive device next to the

fusion bottle in Harmony. She then apparently

beamed a party of Klingons aboard the Enterprise.

They took temporary command of the bridge and opened

fire on the city of Storm. They have now been

subdued, the Enterprise is back under our control,

and-damn, Just a moment."

He hit the intercom button. "Engine room."

"Scott here, sir. What's going on up there?"

"Pandemonium, Mr. Scott. Send four armed

men to secure the transporter room at once,

please," "I'll go more'self-was

"You'll do no such thing, Mr. Scott. I need

you right where you are. We may be needing full warp

power at any minute." "I'll have the drives alf

warmed up," Scott said cheerfully, "and purrin"

like a happy kitten."

"Excellent., Kirk out. Ms.

dinAthos, I apologize for putting you on hold,

as it were."

She blinked moistly at him. Then her eyes

narrowed to jade slits. "If this is some kind of

trick-was

Kirk nodded and gave her a big, happy

smile. "You've caught me, Colonel

dinAthos. All these Klingons you see being carried

out of here have kindly

agreed to pretend to have been bloody, battered, and

stunned to help me fool you into thinking we were

innocent. But you, clever woman that you are-you saw right

through me."

"I wish I could believe you-Jim," she said.

"But at well, we've been talking to your people. We

heard what you did to the people of Gamma Trianguli

VI, how you destroyed Vaal, their protector,

so that they would be forced to struggle to survive, to learn

suffering, sickness, and death-all for their own good.

What can we expect of you?"

"I am getting awfully tired of having that

goddamned tyrannosaur head with the horn on top

thrown in my face. So I got a little pompous in

the heat of victory, made a silly speech. The

thing was trying to eat my ship, damn it!

"I'm tired of fooling with you people, too. I am

delivering an ultimatum, and I want it spread

across the land. I want my people back, and I want

them now. Otherwise I'm going to start blasting every

scrap of weaponry that Mr. Sulu's sensors can

find. Starting with those Koman ship-killer

missiles you just in- stalled back at the old

homestead. Do I make myself clear?"

"Captain," Uhura said abruptly, "there's a

call-was "Please don't interrupt,

Lieutenant. I'm in the middle of some good

old-fashioned, overbearing gunboat diplomacy

here."

"But, sir-it's Mr. Spock!"

"Put him on."

Spock's face appeared in place of

Aileea's, looking haggard. Or maybe it was the

light. A jumble of readouts and instrumentation framed

him.

"Captain," he said, "I have just spoken to the

true aboriginal inhabitants of this planet."

"The Susuru?" Kirk asked.

"No, Captain. I havt been observing for some

time that the Susuru seem curiously maladapted for

life on this, their putative hoineworld.

They seem to have evolved as savanna browsers. The

question that springs to mind is, how did that happen, on a

planet where the vast preponderance of the surface is

cov- ered by water and what little dry land exists is

mountainous?" Kirk made a go-ahead motion with his

hand. He regretted it promptly. "And the answer

is?"

"They did not. They arrived here shortly after the

human settlers did."

"Now who told you this?"

The image changed into ... what? "I see

what looks like a r6d hole cut in a black

piece of paper, Mr. Spock. Do you care

to enlighten me as to what on earth it is?". "Nothing

on earth, Captain, but at the bottom of the

Helisgate Rift. It is a volcanic vent.

The intelligent indigenes, of Discord are

colonies of microorganisms that have grown up in

the Venus-like conditions surrounding these deep-sea

vents." "And you ... talked to them."

"I communicated with the vent-forms through telepathy,

a form of mind meld. I found the experience ... quite

harrowing." "I can see how you might. Such

intelligences would be even more alien than the

Horta-was

"Much as I would like to, I have no leisure

to reminisce at the present time, owing to another

matter of which they informed me."

"Which is?"

"Th."

It lay as if wedged at the bottom of the trench,

a

shadowed, vaguely triangular mass, ominous for

no reason he could put his finger on. He leaned

forward and squinted, as if that would do any good.

"I can't quite mak e out-"

"Captain!" Chekov sang out. "It's a

Klingon battlecruiser!" "No, it's not,"

Sulu said. "It's bigger. Much bigger." It was,

Kirk said. Instead of the attenuated turtlewith-wings

shape of the classic Klingon mayDuj, this ship was

a gigantic blocky arrowhead, its nose and

wingtips truncated at blunt angles. It gave

an impression of terrible strength. "She's huge,

was Uhura breathed.

Sulu was staring at his board as if in horror.

"Captain, I can't find her! She must mass a

quartermillion tonnes, and she doesn't so much as

twitch a needle."

"Consider, Mr. Sulu-she lies at

the bottom of an enormous mass of water-water with

an extraordinarily high metallic content. She

is surrounded by ten-thousand-meter metal walls, not

to mention. a powerfully fluxing magnetic field.

She is not invisible commerely hidden with great

skill."

The intercom chirped. "Captain, this is

Satterfield from Engineering. We've secured the

transporter room. Ve found Zellich and

Tenney drugged and taped up behind the transporter

control station. There's no sip of the commissioner."

"Well done, Mr. Satterfield. Call

sickbay to collect Tenney and Zellich. Stay

down there with your party, and stay alert for anyone beaming

aboard."

"Aye-aye, sir."

McCoy came onto the bridge. "It never

rains but it pours," Kirk said.

"You can say that again. Jim, what's been going

on?

244 -

There I was in my office, minding my own

business, reading The Farmer's Almanac, and

suddenly there are bells ringing and lights flashing and people

running all over the place, and my

sickbay starts filling up with moaning Klingons."

He stopped to glare at Kirk's hand. "What in

the devil's name happened to that? You haven't been

hitting people with your bare fists again, have you?"

"You know I've always been a fool for a pretty

face, Bones." McCoy started to make a

snappy rejoinder. Then he saw the screen and his

jaw fell slack. "What in the name of heaven is

that?"

"Nothing in the name of heaven, Bones. It's the

latest mark of Klingon battlecruiser. Though

maybe they'd be better off calling this one a

dreadnought, come to think ofddit."

Columns of bubbles began to rise around the dark

bulk. Veils of silt swirled around it.

Sulu's eyes bugged out. "Whatever you want

to call her, Captain, she's coming up!"

Soupm cAmm wELL through the water at the

bottom of Hellsgate Rift. Spock and

Arkazha clearly heard the rumble and clatter as the

great warship began to rise. Spock raised his

head. "We are close by the vessel," he said.

"Clearly, there is only one possible course of

action." "You comare absolutely right, my friend,"

Mona Arkazha said. He turned his head

to see her pointing his phaser at him. "Mona,

why?" he asked. She shot him. He slumped.

Ignoring the outcry from the communicator screen, she

tucked the phaser carefully into its holster and did the

same with his personal communicator and tricorder.

"I know you are not unconscious," she said, lifting

him under the arms as if he were no heavier than a child,

"merely immobilized. You are far more durable than

a normal human."

She propped him like a doll. against the after

bulkhead. He stared at her with eyes that had no

choice. "Understand that what I do is not a

sacrifice," she said. "What I do, I do for

myself You and your friends are welcome to share in the

fruits-if any."

She turned her face to the video pickup.

"Captain Kirk, one to beam aboard. I trust you

can lock on your friend's communicator?"

"Mr. Sulu's trying," Kirk said. "The

storm has broken up over your head, but the same

factors that hid the Klingon from us are making it tough

to lock him in."

"We've got him!" Sulu sang out.

Kirk nodded. "Are you sure you don't want us

to beam you up, too, Doctor? The big

boy is taking it slow now, so he doesn't lay

himself open on a jagged metal outcrop, but in half

a minute or so things are going to get mighty

uncomfortable down there."

She smiled. "I'll be fine, Captain."

She turned, bent, and kissed Spock on the

forehead. Then she climbed into the pilot seat and

took the controls. "Anytime you are ready,

Captain."

Her instruments began to fluctuate madly. The

lights dimmed, and she heard the strange song of the

transporter behind her.

"Farewell, my friend," she whispered, bleeding

power to the impellers. A great roaring rose around as

the vast warship engaged its impulse drives. The

slow irresistible surge of displaced water shoved the

little craft back, dangerously close to the deadly

canyon walls.

She played jets and vanes expertly to keep

clear of

sharp metal buttresses that seemed to reach for

her. The roaring grew louder as she oriented the

submersible. The canyon filled with a hideous

blue-white glare. She applied full forward power

and sent herself hurtling toward Uviathan.

Dr. McCoy was standing by the transporter

platform to catch Spock when he appeared and

toppled bonelessly forward. Nurse Chapel stood

by with a gurney. She helped McCoy maneuver the

immobilized Vulcan aboard.

Qeyn HoDo waDI-CHILD settled himself into his

captain's chair. The thrill of impending battle

sang in his veins, the rush all true Klingons

found more addicting than any drug. Moriah

Wayne stood at his side. He paid her no

attention. "Get me Kirk!" he shouted. "I

want to watch his face as he dies!" And he threw

back his head and laughed. He felt a tremor

run through his ship. He frowned. If they had kissed

a wall, his helmsman would kiss his kligal. He

had not waited and worked and forborne so long to have his

wild ride ended before it fair began.

"What was that?" he snarled.

"Captain," his instrument officer reported, "a

small undersea craft seems to have rammed us near the

outboard starboard impulse drive nozzle. There

was no damage."

"So one of your Discordian friends decided to make

a final heroic gesture." He reached up.

Moriah's pale hand slipped into his

black gauntleted one. "It was futile, as all

such ultimately are."

Wayne snuggled happily against his powerful

biceps. "Not all of them," she said.

He laughed again.

"Captain Kirk," said the handsome mustachioed

face on the screen. "We meet again. Prepare

to die."

"Bold words, Kain. Can you-back them up? Or

are they as hollow as your professions of peaceful

intent?" "My intent has always been peaceful,

Captain. I see you looking skeptical.

Well, hear this I shall not know peace until you are

dead. I am about to kill you. Then I shall be a

peacemaker indeed."

He swept his arm around. "Behold my ship,"

he said, "five years in the building, at a yard so

secret the Federation had no inkling of its

existence-until eight of our months ago. Then we

caught one of your robot probes skulking about.

We had to assume the facility was compromised."

He smiled. ""Our discovery of this world was a

gift of Destiny, Kirk. It enabled us to bring her

here and conceal her at the bottom of the sea, where you would

never find her with all your sensors and

spycraft, while the finishing touches were applied."

"Since you seem inclined to talk, Kain, just what

is that monster?"

Kain laughed. "She is a prototype

battleship, Captain. I helped design her

myself. When we have destroyed you, she and 1, she will have

proven herself worthy to spawn a long line of

warcraft."

He fingered his long jaw. "Monster, you called

her-and you spoke truly. I have the discretion of naming

this vessel. I have held off doing so, since it. is

most propitious to name a ship on the very brink of

battle, that she may be christened in enemy blood.

am a generous man. So I shall honor the

superstitions of your friends and allies.

"I name her bIQ-A'VEQ1ARGA, Great

Demon of the Ocean. Or, to be

succinct-Leviathan.

"The Devil in the Sea."

"Coming to kill you. Phasers fire!"

Five thousand meters of water still lay above

Leviathan. No matter; the water molecules in

the path of her phaser beams simply ceased to exist.

The weapons bored twin holes through the

water and leapt toward space.

Enterprise's shields coruscated. "Phaser

banks charged, readyj and locked on, Captain,"

Sulu said. "One-quarter impulse power, Mr.

Chekov. Hold her in this orbit. Mr. Sulu,

hold your fire."

"But, Captain-was Sulu looked back over his

shoulder. "I said, hold your fire, mister! Let

him waste his charge boiling water. I want our

banks to be full when he breaks the surface."

"The power of those weapons is unbelievable!"

Chekov breathed.

"I'm not sure our shields will hold long enough,

sir," Sulu said.

"Sure they will, Mr. Sulu. All you need is

a little faith. Engine room!"

"Scott here, sir."

"I need more power to the shields, Mr. Scott."

"We're already running at red line, sir. If

I give ye much more, the dilithium crystals may

blow out altogether. And then it's good-bye, warp drive."

"It's good-bye, warp drive, if he punches

through our shields, too. Not to mention everything else.

Give me more power, Mr. Scott!"

"You've got it, Captain."

"He's approaching the surface, sir!" Sulu

sang. "Five hundred meters and counting."

"He's coming fast, sir," Chekov said. "On

my mark, mister-wait for itl"

"Our shields, sir!" Sulu exclaimed.

"Here he comes!" cried Chekov.

"All phasers fire, Mr. Sulu!"

Red beams stabbed downward from the Enterprise

to drench Leviathan in deadly glare. "Captain,

our shields are going," Sulu said.

"Hold her steady as she goes, mister. Keep

firing." The shields went down. One Mingon beam

missed the Enterprise altogether. The other bit into the

strut that connected the central engineering hull to the

starboard warp engine pod. Kirk grimaced in

physical pain as he heard the shriek of metal

sublimating away into space, transmitted through the

fabric of the hull.

"Steady!" he commanded. Sulu turne d a strained

pale face to him.

The Klingon beams winked out.

"Their batteries are exhausted, Captain!"

Chekov exulted. "Keep hammering them, Sulul

Freed of the crushing weight of water Leviathan

accelerated quickly to hypersonic speed,

splitting Discord's sky with a scream. But she could

not move fast enough to escape the searing caress of

Enterprise's main battery. Her shields flared,

flickered, and fell.

Enterprise's beams touched the bare metal of

Leviathan's hull. Her armor was thick and tough,

but it simply vanished in puffs of superheated gas

at the touch of those energy lances. The twin beams

stabbed deep into the giant warship's guts.

"Captain, sensors show his phaser bank

accumula- 2 5 1

tors approaching full charge," Sulu

reported. "Our shields are starting to come back, but

they won't stand up long to what he's mounting."

"Full power to impulse engines. Get us around

the planet, Mr. Chekov."

Again Leviathan's phasers reached for them. The

shields immediately began to flicker. Energies leaking

through made Kirk's hair stand on end.

"Mr. Scott, forget about the shields. We

need more impulse.power now!"

The chief engineer didn't even bother to protest.

"You're the captain," he said, and gave the orders

to his people. And then they were around the world's edge, and her

blue limb cut off the enemy's beam.

The bridge crew cheered. "Belay that noise!"

Kirk snapped. "We haven't won anything but

time."

He stared at the image on the main

screenDiscord belying her name, looking utterly

serene. Unreal to think that death lurked behind its

placid face, that a killer used that face as a

blind. Unreal unless you thought about what the planet was

really like, as opposed to what it looked like from way up

here. "First things first. Mr. Chekov, shape us a

new orbit around the planet at comuse your

imagination. It won't do to come around the world on the

same trajectory he's seen us in. He's

liable to greet us with a spread of disrupter bolts."

The turbolift hissed open. "Jim," he

heard McCoy say, "I tried to stop him." --

"Really, Dr. McCoy, your concern is

misplaced. You would be better advised to tend the

captain's hand."

Kirk spun. "Spock! Are you all right?"

"Naturally, Captain. My indisposition was

no more than momentary." He walked to the science station

and bent over the panel as if he'd just stepped away

for a drink of water. Kirk had actually forgotten his

broken hand until Spock mentioned it.

Then it began to throb like Discord thunder. He let

McCoy call Nurse Chapel back up from

sickbay to dress his hand while he listened

to damage reports. To his relief he found that

no one had been killed or injured. There was

substantial damage to the strut, but not enough

to seriously compromise its structural integrity.

Or so the damage-control detail hoped.

"What about shields?" Kirk- asked.

"Virtually nonexistent, Captain."

"Mr. Scott, get me my shields back."

"There's only so much I can do, Captain.

We've got one dilithium crystal cracked

already. I've got a team replacing it-was "No

time. Shields, Scotty."

He punched off and looked around the bridge. "The

question is, how badly did we hurt him?"

"We hurt him, Captain," Sulu said. "I

saw enough to know that much."

"But the next time he hits us," Chekov said,

"he's liable to finish us."

Kain smelled smoke on Leviathan's

bridge and frowned. He had heard screams when the

Enterprise's beams struck home. It took a

lot to make a Klingon scream.

Screams and smoke-not good. Damage reports

showed he had taken heavy losses in lives and

metal. But Leviathan had both in profusion.

""It's stranget" Moriah Wayne said.

"I'm really surprised, but I wasn't

afraid."

"If you were a Klingon," he said, not hiding his

contempt, "lack of fear would be a given, not a

virtue."

He found himself oddly pleased at the way her

face crumpled, as to a blow. Then he gave his

attention to more important matters.

"Vang," he called.

"Captain," his tactical officer replied from the

weapons console.

"What is your assessment?"

Vang paused. He hesitated to offer opinions

to a man with Kain's reputation, either as a

tactician or as a man possessed of a

dangerously unpredictable temper. One time at which

Kain's temper was absolutely predictable,

though, was when his orders were not obeyed instantly and

fully. "Enterprise is wounded," he said

cautiously, "but remains a dangerous foe."

"Fagh!" spat Kain, dropping his hand

to the kligat hilt. Vang recoiled. "You're as

vague as an Earther. Tell me something I can

use, damn you!"

"We can wait, using impulse power to remain

stationary relative to the planet surface, and let

him come to us. We outgun Enterprise, Captain.

We can put that advantage to good use-was

He let his words trail off as Kain leaned

forward, a dangerous shine in his eye.

"You are advising us to sit passively and wait?

What are we, Susuru, that we fear to seize the

initiative? Is this the best you have to offer,

Tactical Officer? Perhaps you would prefer to watch

the final battle from outside the ship-without the

encumbrance of a suit."

Wayne gasped and clutched his arm. Vang

turned ashen. "When-when the time comes to close, we

should rush upon them as rapidly as we can," he said.

He rushed the words from himself, fearful of saying them, but

more fearful of holding back. And then what he dreaded

most to say "Response times for Federation crews

are ... consistently quicker than our own. We can

negate that advantage if we can dictate the

instant at which the engagement begins, and then get

close enough that our greater firepower can quickly

overwhelm our foe."

Kain smiled. "I begin to believe you can think,

Vang. Well done."

He leaned back and patted the commissioner's hand.

"Be patient, my dear. Soon you will have the

pleasure of watching James Kirk die."

"WHERE is HET" muttered Sulu.

"If only we could see through the planet."

"And if wishes were horses," McCoy said,

"then beggars would ride."

"Oh, but we can, Doctor," Spock said. The

glow of his board cast satanic highlights over his

face. McCoy blinked. "We can? Can what?"

"We can see through the planet."

"Why, that's absurd."

"Fortunately it is not. I am detecting a

clear neutrino track." He pressed a

button. A dot appeared, seemingly making its

way slowly across the ocean of Discord. "The trail

of Leviathan. As even you may be aware,

Doctor, most neutrinos lack both, mass and

charge, and can pass through the core of a planet

unimpeded."

"How is it possible that Leviathan's emitting,

Spock?" Kirk asked. "She must be

equipped with neutrino baffles just as we are."

"Was, Captain. Computer, bring up the

images of Leviathan captured during our firing

pass."

"Affirmative." In slow motion Leviathan

boiled out of the sea and hurtled into the air. Energy

beams flared like linear suns. "Generate and display

a graphic of structural damage detected

prior to contact with our phaser beams."

The image lost substance, became a schematic,

and rotated level, then side on. A red spot

appeared at the stem. "Impact damage

highlighted," the computer said. It was being good today.

Probably because Wayne wasn't present to take

offense.

"Now highlight the neutrino baffle on the

outboard starboard impulse drive."

A blinking yellow circle appeared around the

dot. "Mona Arkazha did not die altogether in vain,

it would appear," Spock said softly.

"I'll say she didn't! Plot an intercept

course, Mr. Chekov. Mr. Sulu, arm all

forward photon torpedo tubes. Mr. Scott,

how're repairs coming on those shields?"

"We've got enough to hold him off a wee

bit, sir," came the reply, "if he shines

nothing on us hotter than a flashlight." "We'll

try not to give him the chance to do more than that," Kirk

said.

"Just how do you propose to do that, Jim?"

McCoy demanded. "Appeal to his better

nature?" kirk bit the tip of his thumb. "No,"

he said after a moment's consideration. "Cheat. Mr.

Sulu, what's the status of that battlecruiser?"

"Shields are up, sir."

"How many aboard?"

"Before their shields were raised, sensor readings

indicated twelve individuals, all

Klingon," Spock said. "Two on the bridge,

four in engineering, and six manning phaser and disrupter

batteries. Inasmuch as the shields rendered their

transporter beams inoperative at the same

instant they blocked our scanners, it is logical

to presume the number has not changed."

"How long till we come in line of sight of

Leviathan?" "Twelve hundred twenty-one

point seven seconds, Captain." "Excellent.

Lieutenant Uhura, broadcast a message to the

Dagger. They have three minutes to lower their shields

and stand by to be boarded. Security, I

want six men with phasers and body armor in the

transporter room in two minutes." A moment's

hesitation. "Make sure they're volunteers. This

could get hot. Mr. Chekov."

"Aye, Captain?"

"Take over weapons control. Plot a

photon torpedo launch. When Leviathan

appears around Discord, I want them there and waiting

for her. Mr. Spock will continue to monitor her

neutrino track; if she changes course, inform

me at once and recalculate launch time and

trajectories accordingly. Understood?" "Aye,

sir!"

"Captain," Uhura said, "the Klingons are

responding ... are you sure you want to hear this?"

"The standard abuse?" She nodded. "I'll take

your word for it, Lieutenant."

He rose. "Mr. Spock, you have the con.

Unless the Dagger surrenders in-one hundred

fifty-one seconds-I want you to open fire on

her with a phaser banks, and continue firing until her

shields 90 down. Then cease fire. Understood?"

"Captain-was He stiffened. "Understood, sir."

"What about me, sir?" Sulu asked.

"Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, "you're a

would-be swashbuckler. Care to try buckling on A

swash for real?" "Would 1, sir!"

"Then follow me."

He turned to go. McCoy blocked his path.

"Jim," the doctor said, "have you lost your mind?"

"Probably. Now please excuse me-we all have

an appointment with Leviathan, and we don't want

to be late."

Kirk held his arms out to the side as Sulu

fastened the clamshell polymer armor vest around his

chest. It was crowded in the transporter room the

six security volunteers, Reichert and van

Pelt among them, gathered by the platform in a knot

of tense readiness they were all trying not to show; Dr.

McCoy and Nurse Chapel standing by with emergency

medical equipment; Mr. Scott himself at the

transporter controls. "Bridge to captain,"

Spock's voice said from the bulkhead speaker.

"We have taken the Klingon vessel under fire."

6'Well done, Spock. Keep pouring it to them

until they agree to lower their shields-or until

we batter them down." He turned to Scott.

"Remember, Mr. Scott-the very instant her

shields drop, beam me and Ensign van Pelt

onto the bridge. Then beam Sulu and his

party into her engine room. Then stand by to beam aboard

prisoners and any casualties."

"I'm ready, Captain," he said, refraining from

pointing out it was the third time Kirk had issued the

identical set of orders. "What about the Klingons

at the weapons stations, Captain?" Sulu asked.

"They're split into two groups of three. We

can isolate them in place, and I can't spare the men

or the time to secure them. The art of the cutting-out

expedition is the art of the possible." "Jim, this

isn't your job, was McCoy said pleadingly.

"StArship captains are supposed to command They're

not supposed to go haringoff on boarding parties with.

cutlasses in their teeth." Kirk laughed. "I'm

leaving out the cutlasses this time, Bones. Come on,

Doctor. All the years we've been together, you should

know by now I always beam across. I'm too old

to change now."

"Jim, adolescence has to end sometime. Even

yours." "Whatever phase of life I'm in,"

Kirk said, "my main concern right now is seeing that it

lasts longer than the next sixteen and a half

minutes."

"Captain, her shields are weakening," Chekov

reported over the intercom.

He glanced at van Pelt. The two stepped

onto the transporter stage and drew their phasers.

The security woman's looked huge in her dainty

fist.

"Kirk here. I'm standing by."

"Her shields are down-was

Before Chekov finished the Enterprise had gone

away. In its place the Klingon bridge took

form, cramped and dark " And crowded; a third

Klingon, a portly lieutenant with a fringe beard,

stood talking to the slight Captain-Third who sat

in the command chair. A warrant sat at the helm.

Three faces turned toward Kirk and van

Pelt, their beards surrounding toothy Os of

surprise. Three red flashes lit the cavelike

bridge.

Kirk gazed down at the three slumped

Klingons and

let out a slow breath. He felt a strange

sense of anticlimax. "Nice shooting,

Captain," van Pelt said,- moving forward to make

sure their victims were actually stunned and not

shamming.

"You're no slouch yourself," Kirk replied,

aware that she had fired twice to his

once. Well, she was the professional security

person; he was just a starship captain, as Bones

keptbbpointing out.

His communicator chirped. He unhooked it,

whipped it open. "Kirk here." ,

"Captain, this is Sulu. Engine room

secured, sir." Feeling acid in his gut, Kirk

asked, "Anybody hurt?" "Herring's down,

sir. He doesn't look good."

"Have Mr. Scott beam him back at once.

Keep me apprised of your situation. Kirk out.

Enterprise, give me a time check." "Nine

hundred twelve point seven seconds until

contact, Captain," Spock replied.

"Let me know if Leviathan changes course.

Kirk out." He snapped the communicator shut and

tried not to think of one of his people injured. It could be

worse, he knew, but just now that answer reeked of

self-justification. He sat in the captain's

chair. Van Pelt stood up from wrapping

restraints around three hairy sets of Klingon

wrists and stepped away from the captives, who were

beginning to stir and make seismic noises deep in

their bellies. She took out her own communicator

and hit the transmit button twice. The

Klingons glowed and disappeared in Enterprise's

transporter beams.

"What about the weapons crews, sir?" she

asked. As if in comresponse, a blast of Klingon

vocables came from the intercom. Kirk grimaced.

"Captain," Spock

reported, "the Klingons remaining on board the

Dagger have activated anti-intrusion screens. We

can neither beam boarders into those positions, nor beam

their occupants out."" "All right," Kirk said,

"my move." He snapped up a cover beneath his right

palm and depressed a rocker switch. A

klaxon. sounded.

"All compartments are now sealed by vacuumproof

blast doors," he, said, "with mutiny locks

activated. We should be thankful for Klingon

paranoia, Ensign. Nobody can move from his station

now-weapons stores and even service access

panels are locked out."

And that, he reflected, is one reason I was able

to take my ship back single-handed. Like the ancient

Japanese, the Klingon made an ideal of total

obedience; and like the ancient Japanese, they were

kidding themselves. Assassination and revolt were routine

means of advancement. If a superior was not

capable of protecting himself against the ambitions of his

underlings, he was clearly unfit to hold his position.

The warrior who supplanted him, with or without

confederates, was deemed his rightful successor.

Repugnant as the system was to Federation

morality, it worked in its way. But it produced

certain inefficiencies. One of them was that

unrestricted access to any part of a vessel did not

exist in the Klingon service, no matter how

severely that complicated damage control or even

routine maintenance. It therefore had not occurred

to Lieutenant Lu Kok Tak that Kirk might be

able to find a way out of his cell-or onto the

bridge. Naturally, it hadn't occurred

to Commissioner Wayne either. You underestimated me,

Moriah, he thought with a twinge. Again.

He pressed the intercom switch. "Attention,

all Klingon crew," he said. Klingon officers

all spoke English-advanced education was an

important mark of caste distinction among

Klingons. If the ratings didn't understand, their

officers could translate. "This is Captain

James Kirk, USS Enterprise. I am now

in command of this vessel. I am ordering you to put down

your weapons and surrender."

"Nevert" a voice shouted back from the speaker,

ragged with rage. "It is Lieutenant Vokh who

speaks, and I cast defiance in your pale face.

We shall die at our stations. And we shall take you com.with

us, tera'ngan.

"If that's the way youwant it," Kirk

murmured. "I know you can fire the weapons from up

here, Captain," van Pelt said, "but what about

sabotage?" "Good question, Ms. van Pelt. The

answer is, they'll have to cut their way in, which'll

take them a while."

"And we don't know how long a while, sir."

He shrugged. "No. So we'll just hope it's

long enough He studied the controls. They were labeled in

Klingon script, of which he had only minimal

command. It didn't matter. He wasn't as

obsessive about Klingon naval architecture as

Scotty was, but he had a good grasp of the layout

of a battlecruiser's bridge. Just as the Klingon

boarding party had known how to operate the Enterprise.

He checked the weapons systems. Phaser

banks were full and ready to fire. The two forward

photon torpedo tubes were loaded. Once they were

gone the tubes were useless, but as long as he did not

exceed performance norms-or take

damage- Kirk could

fly and fight the Klingon vesseJ. at At I

least until the Klingons in the'various weapons

stations figured out a way to cause mischief.

it took them just over ten minutes., The clock

display on the, Kliagon tobtic4l, display

showed one hundred eleven seconds wbm a purple

light began to blink on the arm of the captain's

chair.

"What does that mean, Captain?" van Pelt

asked. "I don't know," Kirk said, -- at but

I suspect nothing good. A roar of triumph

burst from the intercom "Qqpla? We have breached the

photon torpedo locker. We will now manually

detonate the torpedo and take you with us

to oblivion, Kirkl" "Are you sure you wan

play it this way, Vokh? It'll take you a

couple of tes yet to get the cover off the weapon's

manual override panel. By that time, your ship is

liable to be a plasma cloud anyway."

A pause. "Do not make sport of me,

Earther."

"Nothing could be further from my mind,

Lieutenant." He opened his communicator.

"Kirk to Enterprise. Mr. Scott,

begin beaming the boarding party aboard, commencing with Mr.

Sulu's group."

Seconds passed like eons. Kirk watched the

main screen, on which hung the image of Discord.

He was on the night side now. The planet was a

black disk. at At thirty seconds to contact

van Pelt shimmered out.

"Lieutenant Vokh," Kirk said over the

intercom, "this is your last chance to drop your intrusion

screens and be beamed to safety."

"Prepare for death, Earther."

"I have, Lieutenant."

He pressed a button. The Dagger's shields

snapped

on. He was cut off from rescue now-alone with the

Kfingons and their bomb, waiting for Leviathan

to rise with the sun in a handfWill of heartbeats.

"Captain," Spock's voice said, "are you

sure the course you are following is wise?"

"No, Mr. Spock. It's just the one that gives

us-or at least the Enterprise-the greatest chance of

survival."

And Eris struck the limb of the world alight.

"PHOTON TORPEDOES AWAY,

CAPTAIN," Chekov's voice

reported.

"Very good, Mr. Chekov. Reload and prepare

to engage on my command."

"Qeyn HoDo waWch, was Vang exclaimed,

46 sensors detect a vessel about to come into line

of sight!" "'He's early to our appoin tment,"

Kain said, tapping gauntleted fingertips on the arm

of-his chair. "All weapons lock-on." -- The

helmsman goggled at his panel. "IFF

transmissions received. She's taj, Sir! Her

shields are up." "Why has she changed orbit?"

"Perhaps she's managed to engage the Earthers,

Captain," Vang said.

"If that's so, I'm surprised she hasn't

been blown out of space-Enterprise could take her

at one swallow. Lock phasers on to her, and

keep an eye out for Enterprise. I smell a

trap."

Mang actually turned a startled glance back

at his captain, then obeyed. A moment later he

yelled, "She's locked on to us!"

"Open fire."

The Dagger's screens lit up like Federation Day

fireworks. Beyon i d the glare splash of

Leviathan's phasers against them Kirk

could see the monster herself, black and huge.

"Captain," Spock said from the Enterprise,

following the hijacked battlecruiser at a range

of ten thousand kilometers. "Jim. The Dagger's,

screens can withstand the force of Leviathan's main

batteries for no more than twenty point two

seconds."

"Don't I know it, Mr. Spock," he

replied, watching the shield- strength indicator bar

drop steadily toward zero. "Mr. Scott."

"Standing by, Captain."

Kirk's own phasers were blasting away at full

power. The display showed Leviathan's screens

straining to stand off the little cruiser's comparatively

puny weapons. Enterprise's first pass had wounded

the monster. But did we hurt him enough? The

indicator hit bottom. The fireworks on the big

screen went out.

"Now, Mr. Scott."

Kirk saw the whole front of the bridge begin

to glow red before his eyes as Leviathan's mighty

phasers reached for him. "Any time now, Mr.

Scott," he said.

"And now, Earther," Vokh's voice bellowed from

the intercom, "we all die!"

James Kirk felt a familiar twisting

sensation. He winked out of the captain's chair a

millisecond before an intolerably bright phaser

blast tore through the

bridge and reduced it to dissociated subatomic

particles.

"Be my guest, Lieutenant," Kirk said as

he materialized on Enterprise's transporter

stage.

"Qapla"!" Vang exclaimed as Dagger

blew up. "Success!" Moriah Wayne

clutched Kain's right shoulder. He scowled. "You

fool," he said, "we've just destroyed one of "

our own ships! Can't you see it was just a diversion?"

"Sensors indicate a vessel approximately

ten thousand kilometers aft of the wreckage of taj,

sir," the helmsman reported.

"Our shields still hold," Kain said, leaning

forward with a predator's smile. "You've bought yourself

a few seconds more to breathe, Kirk, no more. All

weapons lock on."

And Vang shrieked, "Photon torpedoes

incoming!"

Kirk appeared beside his own command chair in time

to see the remnants of the nebula that was all

that was left of Dagger fading from the screen. To its

left shone the three miniature suns that were

Enterprise's photon torpedoes, about to strike

Leviathan.

"Captain," reported Sulu, back at his own

station, "Leviathan has locked on to us."

66 All weapons fire, Mr. Sulu."

His earlier mention to Sulu of the nautical

adventure novels he had grown up loving

reminded Kirk of the blasphemous prayer of the

fighting sailor of rag wagon days. "For what we

are about to receive," he intoned, "dear Lord, make us

thankful."

Shields crumpled like wet tissue paper. A

beam lanced the living-quarters saucer through and through.

What it touched flared and vanished, bulkheads

scarcely less readily than human beings. It

cut upward, out, grazing the bridge'and 'sending the

atmosphere shrieking forth in a gale. It was common

bridge discipline to keep loose objects off the

bridge, against just such an eventuality. When it

came, it was astounded how much stuff had managed

to find its way there anyway papers, lightweight

computers, light pens, Kirk's favorite coffee

mug-and Sulu.

With a yell he sailed toward the hole that yawned

into blackness. Chekov just managed to catch him by the

legs, hug his boots to his chest, and cling.

And the photon torpedo spread hit.

One missed entirely. The second spent itself

overloading Leviathan's shields, leaving her

hull unprotected. The third missed the bridge

by mere meters and'ate its way along the centerline

of the ship, destroying the central warp drive tube

and the inboard impellers to either side. The torpedo and the

secondary explosions in its wake killed a

quarter of Leviathan's crew in less than half

a second. The final hit struck into the starboard

wing of the blunt arrowhead that was Leviathan. It found

the locker for the starboard photon torpedo tubes and

set off a chain reaction that simply ripped that

side of the ship away. Leviathan hurtled toward

Enterprise. All systems were failing fast. The

three hits had snuffed over four hundred lives,

and secondary ex losions continued to at p rip

at the mighty warship's guts. She was dead already.

But like the prehistoric monster her name and bulk

suggested, it took Leviathan a while to die. And

as she died, she struck back with demonic fury.

Leviathan and Enterprise passed each

other on nearly reciprocal orbits a mere

five hundred kilometers apart. In contemporary

terms that was broadside to broadside.

Leviathan's shields were gone, but her phaser

batteries were almost intact. Their awesome power

burned through Enterprise's remaining screens in

seconds. As the great ships passed, they clawed

each other's sides like beasts. Enterprise struck

Leviathan's bridge a glancing blow. The heat

of its passage sent random hyperspeed jets of

vaporized metal spurting away from it; one of these

caught Vang in the chest and threw him back,

burning. The upper part of him, arm still outflung in a

final macabre gesture, was sucked out the Me in a

black cloud of his own blood.

The same gas jet that killed the tactical

officer severed Kain's left leg just below the knee.

Ignoring the gush of blood, Kain seized

Moriah Wayne around the waist and, thrusting with all

his strength with his good leg and the raw end of his stump,

won through the afhatch a heartbeat before the armored

emergency panel slammed shut.

Depleted by being fired at Dagger, the charges in

Leviathan's phaser banks went first.

Enterprise's armament was weaker, but it

rang hell through the compartments and passageways of the

doomed ship before it'too winked out. Bleeding clouds

of debris and condensed air, the combatants hurtled

away from each other, around the world named Discord.

Eris, watching, laughed radiation. She was a

cruel goddess.

As part of her upgrade at Starbase 23

Enterprise had received a new system for rapid

sealing of breaches, as long as they weren't too

severe. When the computer detected a loss of

integrity a field sprang inffbeing, surrounding the

bridge with an airtight bubble of force. The

occupants could continue to breathe-as long as power kept

being supplied. Miraculously, none of the bridge

crew was hurt. The rest of the ship was not so lucky.

Kirk paid only enough attention to damage reports

to form an accurate assessment of his ship's fighting

capacity.

"Scotty," he said, "get us some shields

back."

Down in Engineering,, Scott's face was bright with

sunburn from the backscatter of the beam that had

ravaged his section. There were tear tracks in the

grime on his cheeks. "Our main reactors are

gone, Captain," he said. "So're

twenty of my bonny wee men and women.

Evidently y'think I'm a miracle worker."

Twenty dead in Engineering alone. Kirk

briefly closed his eyes. Don't think about it.

Ifyou reckon the butcher's bill now, you'll never

have strength to do what remains to be done.

"Evidently I do," he said hoarsely. "Don't

make me out a fool, Mr. Scott."

Leviathan circled Discord like a moon whose

face was gouged with glowing wounds. On one-quarter

impulse the Enterprise shaped orbit to intercept.

"This is Enterprise calling the Klingon vessel

Leviathan. Enterprise calling Leviathan. his

"I am here, Kirk." A laugh. Snow

flurried across the

main viewing, screen, and then there was Kain, a

bloody gash on his cheek and his patch ripped away

to reveal the pucker of pink scar tissue where his

left eye had been, huddled in the emergency

bridge with a handful of his officers. There was a crude

pressure bandage affixed to the stump of his leg. It

was already black with blood.

Commissioner Wayne stood behind him, the green gown

she had been wearing tom in an almost artful way, her

hair in theatrical disarray. She looked

entirely beautiful-and entirely mad.

"I am not so easy to kill as you expected,

eh?" "I didn't expect this to be easy,"

Kirk said in a full voice. "And it hasn't

been. But I don't want to kill you, Kain.

I'm calling on you to surrender. If you do, you and

your crew will be treated honorably."

The Klingon thrust himself up from his chair and

balanced on his surviving leg to shout, "Do you think

you can escape me so easily, Kirk?"

Kirk ignored the outburst". "I also call

upon you to surrender the person of Deputy Commissioner

Wayne." He moistened his lips. "She will be

returned to the Federation to stand trial on charges of

treason and genocide."

Wayne put back her head and laughed. It was a

jarring, wild sound.

"It's you who's fighting the Federation, Kirk!"

she shrilled. "It's you who's the outlaw rebel.

We serve the cause of peace and justice-was

Kain wheeled. The kligat flew from his hand, a

glittering wheel. It struck Moriah Wayne in

the pit of her stomach. Blood erupted. She

doubled over and collapsed into a mewing knot of pain.

"I grew tired of her yapping," Kain

said, "and she

had served her purpose. She comwas only a

means to an end, Kirk-only a means to strike at

you."

Kirk's eyes narrowed. Almost he gave the

order to open fire. It was like opening his flesh with a

knife to speak instea d. "Give it up, Kain.

What point is there in continuing this-this carnage?"

"Honor. Revenge.

Words. his

Kain pointed to his raw socket. "You cost me

an eye. Is that mere words? You cost me my

bond-brother as well. How, oh, how do you

explain that away?"

"Kras was your bond-brother?"

"He was."

"I'm-sorry. I didn't know."

Kain stared at him in white-faced fury. "Almost

twenty years of my life I devote to stalking you,

to planning the perfection of my revenge-for this? So you

can say you're sorry?" He raised his hands above his

head. "Phasers-was "comfire!" James Kirk

yelled.

Beams of destructive energy struck both

ways. Enterprise's shields, kept in

place by little more than Lieutenant Commander

Scott's raw will, held for a handful of

milliseconds. It was all they needed to.

Captain of the First Rank Kain, his crew, and

Leviathan all became a giant ball of

plasma that glowed like a sun and quickly dissipated

into nothing.

"IT sntmrims the limits of credibility,"

Spock said, "given the immensity of space, that

two sets of political refugees of utterly

different species, coming from entirely different

directions, should happen upon the very same previously

uninhabited planet within a few short years of

each other."

The Enterprise circled Discord, not whole, but

patched up enough to make it back to Starbase 23 for

repair. Some injuries would take longer to heal-the

seared and broken crewfolk in McCoy's

overloaded sickbay and the holes in the entity that was

Enterprise that the dead had left behind. Alongside

the starship orbited the transport fleet and its

escort, Enterprise's sister ship USS

Potemkin. A steady stream of lighters passed

back and forth between planet and fleet, storing up

provisions for the long journey to come. "Come

now, Mr. Spock," Kirk said. "Surely

stranger things have happened. Like-was

He held his hands up from his lap, apart, as if

holding open a book. Everyone else on the

bridge turned to stare at him. Silence stretched

long and loud.

"Well, ah," Kirk said, "anyone else who

thinks of one, feel free to jump right in."

"Well, it happened this once, anyway,"

McCoy said, "Gand the odds be damned. Maybe

this will make you rethink your belief in the omnipotence

of that precious logic of yours, Spock."

"A single anomalous event is as likely

to make me forswear logic, Doctor," said

Spock, "as the apparent success of a voodoo

doctor in making a seriously ill patient rise

up from his deathbed is to make you trade your medical

tricorder for a rattle and beads. Although"-and for a

moment Kirk could have sworn he was almost at risk of

smiling-"now that I think if it ... "Don't say

it!" McCoy said. "Don't even say it."

"Captain," Uhura said, swiveling from her

console, 46now that it's all over, I can't help

feeling sorry for Commissioner Wayne."

"A tragic case," Spock said.

An investigation had been launched back in the

Federation. Commissioner for Interspecies Affairs

Hightower had been a close friend of the late

Councillor Cornelius Wayne. He had

taken the councilloes brilliant but unstable

daughter under his wing. He had also, it seemed,

expended a great deal of effort covering for her.

Or maybe he was covering something darker, something

deeper, New evidence about the councillor himself was

coming to light, tales of violent outbursts which his

enormous influence had kept hidden for years.

Staff from the Wayne household on Jotunheim

confirmed that the councillor had brutalized

Moriah mentally and physically. Perhaps he had done

more than that. However much Hightower had known about

Cornelius Wayne's maltreatment of his

daughter, his efforts on behalf of his friend and his

prot6git had bought the commissioner nothing but trouble.

Moriah's defection had turned the spotlight of

scandal full-bore on the Commission for

Interspecies Affairs. A great many

irregularities were being illuminated. Two

traditional foes of Starfleet-Wayne senior and

Hightower-were in the process of being utterly

discredited. Kirk got no satisfaction

from the fact. The whole thing made him feel sad and

sordid. He would be happy to put Discord and its

memories behind him.

A call for Kirk came from the surface. He

accepted. Aileea dinAthos smiled from the screen.

69 How're the repairs coming, Jim?"

"Good enough for government work," he said, "though I

doubt you feel that's a very high standard. How about down

there?"

"We'll endure the loss of Harmony-we've

learned a lot about enduribledful over the years.

Storm is coming back together, but it's taking on a

whole new character and will probably wind up having a

new name ... the market decides that, too, in a

way." "How do you feel?"

"Relieved and happy and scared and sad, and somehow

kind of empty," she said. "It's hard to think about the

war being over after all these years."

"You'll miss the excitement, won't you?" A

shy smile and a nod. "I'm afraid so. That's one

reason Vares tend to look down on what I've

done for a living most of my life-it gets to be hard

to do

without. No matter how much we think we hate it,

when we're away, we start feeling a

craving for it."

Kirk looked thoughtful. How he'd feel when he

no longer got to command a starship ... was something that

didn't bear thinking about. "Sufficient unto the day

is the evil thereof," as Bones would say.

"The funny thing is," she said, "I still can't

hate the Susuru. I won't make excuses for

them ... but it's easy to see why they were always

afraid of us."

The Susuru were afraid of everybody. For

excellent reasons.

Kirk never saw Swift nor'any of his Five

of Fives again. He didn't inquire too

closely into what had happened to them. The Klingon

captives taken aboard the Enterprise had been

contemptuously straightforward about their intention of

enslaving the Susuru and looting their planet, just as

soon as they'd served their function of baiting the

Empires worst enemy to his destruction.

Swift's successor as Lead Walker was a much

younger Susuru named Wise, which Kirk hoped

wasn't overly optimistic. Whether he lived up

to the name or not, Wise was much more forthcoming with information

than his predecessor. The Susuru had begun as a

peaceful, mainly agrarian people. Over what

seemed to Kirk an enormous period of time they had

developed a technical civilization, including

limited spaceflight. Then had come invasion by a

race of beings with only one discernible agenda

to exterminate all other intelligent life in the

universe. Three times had the Susuru started

fife anew on an uninhabited planet. Three

times their tormentors had found them and destroyed all

but a few who managed

to win free. The final time, somehow, the Susuru

had developed warp drive-or acquired it from

somewhere; the Lead Walker either didn't know or

didn't care to say. They had spent years

traveling through space, hoping to put enough light-years

between themselves and their enemies that they would never be found.

Then the warp drive broke down. In two hundred

years of sublight travel, the first marginally

habitable world they had been able to reach was Discord.

They didn't like it there-but they didn't have any

choice. They were horrified, half a local year

after their arrival, to find they were sharing the planet with a

race of backwards-built, hai " riess

bipeds. Naturally, the Susuru tried to destroy

them. Alien beings were a menace. If they could, they

would destroy the Susuru. The problem

was, the Susuru weren't very good at war. And the

Discordians wouldn't fight fair, and come onto the

land in bunches so they could be conveniently

eradicated. They made the Susuru come after them in

boats. The veldt-roving Susuru hated the sea.

They didn't like the Klingons, either, when the Empire

stumbled across them. But they were easy marks for

experienced operators like the Klingons. Their leaders

were hungry to consolidate power over their own people and

rabid at the prospect of being able to purge the

planet of the hated intruders. Even if the

intruders happened to have arrived first. And the Klingons

promised to do it all with a minimum of muss and

fuss, no down payment, easy monthly terms. The

Susuru were not the first race to bite on that one.

Kirk sadly doubted they would be the last.

"The strangest thing," "eea said, "the hardest thing

for me to get used to, in a way, is that, just because the

Susuru were willing to fight for Discord, it never

meant they liked it here. They just hated us worse

than they did the planet." "And now the Federation is

seeing to resettling them," Kirk said. "They'll still

have to learn to put up with neighbors. But at least

they'll be living on a comfortable planet."

Discord's true natives, the

colony-forms that inhabited the Venus-like

microenvironments of the volcanic vents at the

bottom of Hellsgate, had no objection to the

Susuru and the Vares continuing to inhabit their world. Quite

the opposite They were able telepathically to perceive

everything that occurred on Discord, above and below the

sea, and they found the colonists of both species

entertaining. But the Susuru had had enough of the world they

called Island and had taken the Federation up on its

offer of a ride out. "I wonder if they'll

adjust," Aileea said. "Do you care?" She shook

her head. "No." And he laughed a little and shook his

head, because he found her answer mildly appalling and

incomprehensible. And yet he knew she was a warm

person, willing to risk her life for a friend and extend

the hospitality of her childhood home to a near

stranger, one whose possible goals might include the

disruption of almost everything she held dear. She's a

complex one, that's for sure. "You're staying a few

days yet, aren't you?" she asked. "A few days

only," he said. "We're going back with the first

transports."

"Well, I know Hikaru wants to spend a little

more time with Gita before you go. And Jason and Uhura

wanted to visit the ranch. Why don't we

make an expedition of it, do some diving, teach you some

more about our local wildlife." A smile stretched

itself slowly across his face. "You know," he said, "I

think that might be just what the doctor ordered."

"Speaking of doctors," Aileea said, "why

don't you ask that marvelous Dr. McCoy along?

He's been working himself to death, and there's nothing more he

can do for your wounded now. My aunt Maritza's a

surgeon in Serendip. Maybe she could teach him a

thing or two." And maybe I'm not so eager to put

Discord behind me after all, Jim Kirk thought.

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