  STAR TREK
  LOG ONE
  Alan Dean Foster
  STAR TREK
  The show that would not die . . .
  Back in 1966 Gene Roddenberry convinced
NBC-TV to give sophisticated science fiction a
try, and Star Trek was launched. Getting the show
on the air was a triumph in itself; keeping it on the
air was something else again. Toward the end of the second
season there were rumors of impending cancellation.
  Viewers passionately devoted to the series
deluged the network with letters of protest. Loyal
fans picketed NBC'S offices both in
California and New York. The Save Star
Trek Campaign one of the most phenomenal
expressions of viewer interest in the history of tv
worked.
  So Star Trek was back on the air for a third
season. Alas, however, many factors combined to lower
the program's ratings, giving the network the
ammunition it needed to cancel the series.
  But still the fans wanted more . . .
  Books about Star Trek were published, each one
selling hundreds of thousands of copies to the
faithful. Star Trek conventions all over the country
attracted thousands of fans.
  YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN...
  Spock's voice as he addressed the Guardian
was clear and precise: "I wish to visit the
planet of Vulcan."
  "TIME?" rumbled the Guardian.
  "Thirty Vulcan years past, the month of
Tasmeen, before before the twentieth day."
  "LOCATION?"
  "Just outside the border city of ShiKahr."
  By way of reply, the pastel mists that filled the
circular Gate started to swirl and boil, until
the blur of time pictures began to steady as the
Guardian locked in to the requested time line.
  Then, abruptly, the Gate was filled with a
view so familiar to Spock that it immediately relaxed
all inner tensions. A hot, dry, orange world
Vulcan!
  "TIME AND PLACE," the Guardian shouted,
"ARE READY TO RECEIVE Y."
  Suddenly Spock was running, running forward . .
. and he took that short, final leap into the time
portal . . .
  STAR TREK LOG ONE
  Alan Dean Foster Based on the Popular
Series Created by Gene Roddenberry A Del
Rey Book BALLANTINE BOOKS tilde
NEW YORK A Del Rey Book Published
by Ballantine Books Copyright A) 1974
by Paramount Pictures Corporation
  All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published
in the United States by Ballantine Books, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine
Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto,
Canada
  Library of Congress Catalog Card
Number: 74-8477 ISBN
0-345-25042-7-150 Manufactured in the
United States of America First Edition:
June 1974 Fourteenth Printing: May 1977
Cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes
  CONTENTS PART I
  Beyond the Farthest Star 1
  PART 11
  Yesteryear 71
  PART 111
  One of Our Planets is Missing137
  STAR TREK LOG ONE Log of the Shrship
Enferprise Stardates 5321 -- 5380
Inclusive James T. Kirk, Capt.,
USSC, FS, ret. Commanding transcribed
by Alan Dean Foster At the Galactic
Historical Archives on S. Monicus I
stardated 61 10.5
  For the Curator: JLETTER
  PART I BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR lAdaPted
from c" scrips by Samuel A. Peeples)
Veil of stars.
  Veil of crystal.
  On the small viewscreenthe image of the Milky
Way glittered like powdered sugar fused to black
velvet.
  Here in the privacy of the captain's cabin
on board the Enterprise, James T. Kirk had
at fingertip's call all the computerized resources
of an expandineae. organized galactic Federation in
taped and microfilmed form. Art, music, painting,
sculpture, kinetologv, science history,
philoso- phy the memory banks of the great starship
held enough material to satiate the mind of anv
civilised being. Satisfy and fulfill him whether
in the mood for matters profound or trivial,
fleeting or permanent, whether curious about the
developments of yesterday or those as old as time itself.
  Yet, now, in this particular off-hour, the man
responsible for guiding the Enterprise safely through
the multitude of known hazards and an infinitude of
imagined ones that lay strewn throughout space when he
could have devoted his thoughts to little things of no importance
and rested his mind chose instead to study a smaller
though no less awesome version of the same scene he was
compelled to view so many times from the commander's chair on
the bridge of the starship.
  His eyes strayed idly to the lower corner of the
screen. Gossamer thin threads of crimson and
azure marked a spectacular nebula of recent
origin the flaming headstone marking the grave of some
long vanished star, perhaps 3
  4 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  marking also a cemetery for a great, doomed
civilisation, caught helpless when its sun
exploded.
  Men m his position who would have deliberately
chosen to observe such a sight fell into three
categories. Pirst were those for whom natural
creation was too small Men who found universes of
greater magmtude within artists, poets, landscapers
and dreamers of hologram plays, sculptors in
metal and stone and wood.
  The second group would be that now dwindling but still
sizable number of individuals who also looked
inward but whose gaze was forever out of focus the
catatonic, the insane, the mad . . .
  The third and last asssemblage fell somewhere in
between, not quite artists, not quite mad. These were the men and
women who forsook the solidity of Barth, gave up
the certain knowledge of a definite sky overhead and
Inarguable ground underfoot, to ply the emptiness between the
stars. Starship personnel.
  James T. Kirk was a captain among such, a
leader of this kind which made him, depending on which
extreme you tended toward, either a frustrated artist
or a wellcomposed madman.
  He sighed and rolled over on the bed,
  temporarily trading the pocket-view of infinity
for the cool, pale blue of the preformed cabin ceiling.
  A visit to the Time Planet, where all the time
lines of this galaxy converged and who knew, perhaps those
of others as well, for men knew nothing of other
galaxies except what little they could see through their
attenuated glass eyes was their present
assignment. A pity that time lines did not choose
to make themselves visible to man's puny instruments of
detection. Only one race had found that secret.
  It hadn't saved them.
  A visit to the Time Planet was always interesting.
That wasn't its designated name, of course. But
popular conceptions had a way of overwhelming
scientific notation. He smiled slightly. There
were enough new shocks, enough running discoveries taking
place every time a new section of space was charted
to cause the once unbeliev
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 5
  able Time Planet to recede into the land of the
commonplace.
  Kirk was a starship captain, not a historian.
So his prime interest in the Time Planet was from the
standpoint of its curious chemistry and even more
curious physics. The trip promised to be at
least as interesting as previous ones. But it was no
longer possessed of that special thrill.
  The remarkable view of the Milky Way in the tiny
screen was as complete a portrait of the galaxy as
anyone was ever likely to see. Few probes, even
unmanned ones, had flown further outside the
galactic rim than the Enterprise was now speeding.
Starships were too expensive to operate and too
scattered for Starfleet Command to waste them on,
say, just convoying experiments from world to world.
  That's why the Enterprise had swung wider than
its best course to the Time Planet, to enable it
to take readings and star-map this section of the galaxy's
fringe;
  Kirk flipped a switch on the tiny console by the
bed and was rewarded with the view out the starboard side of the
shipcoma view of almost unrelieved blackness. Here
and there were tiny dots of luminescence, dots which were not
individual stars, but rather distant galaxies some
vaster, some more modest than our own.
  Thoughts uncommon to most men raced through the
deepest pools of his mind as he contemplated that
yawning, frightening intergalactic pit. Someday, he
mused, someday we'll have engines that won't
burn out at warpmaximum eight or nine. Someday
we'll have engines capable of driving a ship at warp
ninety, or even warp nine hundred.
  Someday.
  Of course, the spatial engineers and physicists
were agreed that it was impossible for any form of matter
to travel faster than warp nine. Kirk thought that this
belief was simply a modern superstition. It had
also been said that man would never be able to fly or,
wonder of wonders, exceed the speed of light.
  An inship communicator buzzed insistently for
attention. Again. Kirk looked at it irritably,
then remembered that he'd blocked off the channel.
IQ effect, he'd hung out
  6 STAR TRBI-THAT LOG ONB
  a Do Not Disturb sign. He sat up and rubbed
his eyes. There was nothing for it but to answer.
  There vrere only two men on the starship who were
on permanet, round-the-clock call. Doctor
McCoy was one. He was the other. He opened the
channel.
  "Kirk here."
  "Spock, Captain."
  It was only a trick of aural mechanics,
true, but somehow the monotone of his
assistant
  commander seemed less distorted by intervening
kilometers of solid-and fluid-state circuitry
than the voice of anyone else on board.
  No, not completely monotone for now he
  heard a definite hint of puzzlement in
Spock's tone.
  "Captain, I hate to bother you dunag your rest
period, but we have encountered what appears to be a
unique and extremeb peculiar situation his
  That woke Kim up. "An extremely
peculiar situation" to Spock could be anything from just
mildly serious at best to imminent disaster at
worst.
  "Be Aght up, Mr. Spock." He flipped
the switch off, threw on his captain's tunic,
dilated the door, and headed for the badge double-quick.
  Behind him, the miniature glowing panorama of the
intergalactic gulf, forgotten, patiently
awaited his return.
  The elevator paused once, at Bedeck, where
Spock joined him. At the same time, the lights in
the lift car and in the disappearing corridor beyond began
to flicker. An an too familiar uneven yowling
sounded.
  "'General Alarm." He looked at Spock,
who replied to the unasked question.
  "Lieutenant Commander Scott should be the officer
of the deck, I believe."
  "tilde Why didn't he call me
direct?"'"
  ""He did not say, Captain. But I think,
if I interpret Mr. Scott's actions
correctly, that he did not feel qualified
to interrupt the Captain's rest period for a
phenomenon of as get undefinable proportions. He
left that up to me."
  Kirk considered that as the lift halted once more
at the last level below the bridge. Dr. McCoy
joined them.
  "Jim . . . Spock . . . what's
happening?"
  STAR TREK ONE 7
  Hiswere' don't know yet, Bones," Kirk said
honestly. 44allyou know as much as we do. Something that
SCOKY felt strongly enough about to sound the general
alarm for."
  Seconds later the doors split, and the three
walked onto the bridge.
  Helmsman Sulu was working busily at
the navigation station. Uhura glanced back and forth between
her communications console and Sulu. And from the
engineering station, SCOK looked up at their arrival
and let out a visible sigh of relied
  "Glad to see you, Captain. I wasn't ready
for makin" too many more decisions. Not considerin' the
nature of this thing, whatever it is."
  Spock went directly to his library computer
seat the control station for the brain and nervous system of the
Enterprise. As Kirk took his own place in the
command chair, he noted that the alarm system was still
sounding its howling warning.
  "That's enough noise, Mr. Sulu." Sulu
nodded. Lights and alarm returned to normal
status.
  '4Situation, Mr. SCOK?"
  Kirk was already studying the projected
vector-grid Sulu had thrown up on the main
screen. In a lower righthand quadrant, the white
dot of the Enterprise was moving rapidly centerward
too rapidly, Kirk thought.
  He envied the old sea captains of learns
ancient days, when a vessel's energy came only
from the blowing winds, envied a skipper who could feel
a change in his ship's speed through his feet.
Out here in black, uncaring vacuum, there was nothing
to push against, nothing to feel against you. Compared to a
rambunctious sea or strong gale, artificial
gravity was a poor stimulant.
  Man's senses only operated here artificially,
through enormous mechanical amplification and the only
waves one could get the feel of were in wave
mechanics.
  '4We've picked up speed, sir," informed
Scott, confirming Kirk's analysis of the
situation depicted on the screen. '4A great
deal of speed!"
  "Cut back, then, Scotty."
  "I've already done so, sir cut back twice but
we continue to gain momentum!"
  8 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  "Now don't get excited, Mr. Scott was
The question had to be asked, despite any damage that
might incur to the engineer's pride. was but have you
checked your instlucom mentation?"
  "Aye, Captain, checked, and triple-checked.
I'd prefer the instrumentation were off, than to have
to proceed with these readings. No sir, the
  information is correct." He gestured in the
direction of the vector-equals do.
  Kirk swiveled slightly in the chair. "Mr.
Sulu?"
  If anything, Sulu's expression was twice as
worried and half again as uncertain as the chief
engineer's.
  "She's not answering the helm, sirl We're was
he paused to check his own readouts, was two minutes
right ascension off course." He hammered at the
stubborn controls in front of him, as if that might
have some naturalising effect on the incredible information
coming in.
  "And drifting farther off every second, sir."
  "Mr. Spock."
  "Captain?"
  "tilde Do me an in tilde epth
computer-library scan on all Icuown major
stellar bodies in this fringe sector."
  "Yes, Captain."
  "And put it up on the big screen when it's
ready."
  There was a brief, quiet pause. Nothing moved
on the bridge except the white dot of the
Enterprise on the viewscreen. Then the
vector-grid was replaced by another, an overlay
star-map. Or rather, part of the grid was
replaced.
  Thre tilde quarters of the screen did not light
up with the light blue of completed mappings. It
remained maddeningly blank except for one large word
in yellow, a word Kirk had almost expected to see.
  IINB equals LORE-LDo
  A second later, information appeared beneath this first
disappointing word in the form of the legend.
  To Be Mapped No Accurate Data
Currently I bailable.
  "That's what I thought, Mr. Spock. But there was
a chance. Information comes into Starfleet's banks so
fast these days."
  "Evidently not fast enough, Captain."
  "No. Not fast enough. That'll do, Spock."
  STAR TREE:: ONE 9
  The uninformative star-map overlay blanked out
and the vector-grid dominated the entire screen
once more.
  "Captain?" The call came from the rear of the
bridge.
  "Yes, Uhura"...9"
  She seemed confused. "iCaptain, I've been
picking up strong, but very strange radio emissions
for the past two hours. Both source and
direction were at first far to the right plane of our
course. But since our position has been shifting the
source of emission and the course of the En" terprife
are lining up."
  Kirk considered this piece of news. It was not
especially foreboding. Not yet, anyway.
  "All right, Uhura, I'll keep it in mind."
He looked back at the screen. "At least there's
something out there."
  The white pinpoint continued to move
  purposefully across the grid, drawn by ...
what? He could reach out with a forefinger and blot the great
starship from view. At the same time he reached a
decision. While whatever was pulling them off course
had shown nothing that could be definitely interpreted as
a hostile action it was probably a natural
phenomenon anyway it still behooved them to put up some
form of resistance.
  "Mr. Sulu, stand by to back engines."
  "Standing by, sir." Sulu divided his attention
between the screen and his bank of controls.
  "Back engines."
  The helmsman's hands moved over the navigation
console, flipped a last lamb 180 degrees.
A slight far traveled through the bridge,
followed by a distant but distinct rumbling. Everyone
made an instinctive grab for the nearest solid
object. But only the c light jar gave evidence
of the tremendous stresses operating on the starship.
  Kirlc stared at the vector-grid intently. The
white dot slowed perceptibly, slowed ... but
continued on its new path, moving inexorably
forward.
  "Mr. Spock," Kirk demanded, "have you got
anything yet?" We'd operate a hellova lot more
effectively if we had some idea of what we
revere up against, Kirk thought.
  Spock had remained glued to the hooded viewer
of the computer readout. Now he looked up and over at
the captain's position.
  10 STAR TREK ONE
  "At this point, Captain, I can only say we
are headed toward an unknown object probably
  natural, probably of at least planetary
mass that is generating a remarkable amount of
  hyper-gravity. Hyper-gravity more concentrated
than any we have ever encountered."
  "Well, if there's something like that out there," and
Kirk gestured at the screen, "that can put out that
kind of pull plus radio emissions, why
aren't our evaluative sensors picking it up?"
He rolled his fingers against one leg. "Open the
forward scanners all the way, Mr. Sulu, and
close off everything else. Divert all sensor
power forward."
  "All of it, sir?"
  "All of it."
  There was a moment's rush of activity as Sulu
hurried to comply with the order. It left them
uncomfortably vulnerable to anything that might choose
to sneak up on the ship from any direction but ahead.
But what could be sneaking around, out here on the galaxy
rim?
  The screen flickered. The vector-grid
vanished. l3'ctending from the left side of the screen
two-thirds of the way across now was the
  outermost arm of the Milky Way. A distant,
ethereal packing of rainbow-hued dust. The other
third, except for a few scattered, lonely spots
of brilliance, was black with the blackness of the
intergalactic abyss.
  But iDo the confer of the screen . . .
  ID the center, something was taking a smooth,
crescent-shaped bite out of the Lowing star-mist that formed
the arm. Something spherical, small but
growing. A globe of nothingness that was obscuring star
after star.
  No, not entirely nothing. now. As they moved
nearer, a distant, faint flint gave evidence of a
solid surface. Pascinated, Kirk and the rest
of the bridge personnel stared at the unknown, dark
wanderer. They tried to define, pin down,
regulaffize its maddeningly elusive silhouette.
  Uhura finally broke the silence.
  "Captain, that's definitely the source of the
emissions. They've changed considerably since I
first detected them. And they've also grown much stronger
since we've moved close."
  "Pipe them over the communicators, Uhura.
Don't keep it a secret."
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 1 1
  She hit a single control. Immediately the bridge
was filled with a shrill, piercing electronic hum.
She smiled apologetically and reduced the deafening
volume. As the sound became bearable one thing was
instantly obvious to the lowliest ensign. That whine was
too wild, too powerful to come from an artificial
source. It was as natural an extrusion of the
object ahead as a solar prominence or a man's
arm. It was definitely At the product
of a constructed beacon or station.
  Everyone listened to the alien hum as the outline on
the viewscreen continued to grow, eating away at the
distant star-field.
  "Mr. Scott, ready your engineers for a
maximum effort."
  "Aye, sir." Scott turned to his direct
line back to englneering.
  "Davis, Gradner, get off your cuffs! The
captain's going to be wantin" some work out "o ye
in a moment his
  "Mr. Sulu," Kirk continued, "stay on these
back en- gines."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Mr. Spock," and Kirk tried not to sound
desperate, "anything yet?"
  "Sir, I've had the computers working since we
first ens tered the peculiar gravity-well, but I
hesitated to offer an opinion on preliminary
sensor data alone. Now that we have achieved
visual confirmation, I no longer hesitate."
  Spock's eyebrows shot way up, which
surprised Kirk For Spock that was an expression
of
  astonishment equivalent to an audible
gasp from a human. Something unique was surely in
the of fflng.
  'It is a negative star-mass, Captain,
Spectroanalysis confirms finally ninety-seven
point eight percent probability that the object
ahead of us is composed of imploded matter. Every
reading on material composition records in the
negative."
  "Great! That means we're headed toward an
immensely powerful aggregation of nothing?"
  "That is rather more colloquial than I should put it,
Captain, but it is effectively descriptive."
  12 STAR TREK LOG OF
  Sulu chose that moment to interrupt with additional
happy news. "Captain, our speed is increasing
agl"
  That did it. "All engines, full reverse
thrust!"
  There was a long pause as another jar and a following
rumble ran through the Enterpnse. Then Sulu looked
up from the helm. He didn't appear panicked he
was too good an officer for that but he was clearly
worried.
  "It's no good, sir, we're stiDo faring toward
it."
  "Mr. Scott," said Kirk tightly,
'hvhat's the matter with those engines of yours?"
  "There's nothin" wrong with the engines, sir," the
chief engineer replied evenly. "They're coin' their
best, sir, but they're badly overmatched. They're
designed to push ... not puBut against a
gravity-well as deep as this! I'm not sure we
could pus free now if we had ten times the power."
  Kirk looked back at the screen, where the
negative stellar mass now an but fined the forward
view. blotting out the last visible stars. With the
decreased distance, more of the surface had become
visible. Dull black in color, it was pockmarked
with ancient craters uneven and clearly, inarguably
dead. Occasionally a startlingly bright bolt of
electrical energy would arc between high points on the
surface, leaping from crag to crag like a stone
skipping over a pond.
  To be visible at such a distance the bolts must have
been enormous.
  "How much time do we have?"
  Spock replied easily, evenly, without looking
away from his viewer. "impact in ninety-three
seconds, Captain. Ninety-two . . .
ninety-one. . ."
  Stunned silence suddenly filled the bridge. It
had all happened so fast. One minute they revere
in minor difficulty, experiencing some strange,
slight course defection, and then
  No one saw the strange expression come over
Uhura's face. She flicked a long nail against
one earphone, then the other. No, the instruments were
working properly, an right
  "Captain, I'm picking up a new signal.
Listen."
  She moved delicate fingers over the console.
  The drone of the dead star filled the bridge. But
sound
  STAR TREK LOO ONB 13
  ing over it now was a second, distinct whine, almost
a wailing cry. More importantly, the sound was
clearly modulated, obviously emanating from an
artificial source. It faded in and out at lonely,
regular intervals.
  "Forty seconds, Captain," intoned Spock.
For all the excitement he exhibited he might as
well have been reciting the time left on a baking
cake.
  " -- irty-nine . . . thirty-eight . .
.??
  Inside, Kirk was fuming. Time, time . . . I
They couldn't go forward and they couldn't go back. That
left . . .
  "Mr. Sulu!"? he barked abruptly.
"Flank speed ahead! Declension thirty
degrees."
  "Ahead, sir?"
  "MOVE IT, MR. SULU!" The
helmsman moved. Maybe the hyper-gravity
helped.
  "We've got one chance at this point. That's
to make a safe orbit. After that? we can figure out
a way to break away at our leisure. I need more
than thirty seconds for that."
  Sulu moved rapidly at the controls. His
body became a soft, fleshy extension of the
Enterprises navigation system. Like Aladdin, he
had only to present his wishes in comprehensible form
and the electronic genie would handle the details.
  But would it have enough ability to counter the titanic
black demon sucking them forward to destruction?
  Kirk stared at the screen? now wholly occupied
by the shape of the dead star. E their bid for orbit
failed? no one would ever know it. The death of the
Enterprise wouldn't even be recorded by an
idle astronomer on some distant planet as a tiny
flash in far space. The massive gravity-well
of the negative mass would swallow light as well as
life.
  ""Nine seconds," came Spock's calm
voice. Only a slight rise in pitch betrayed
any hint of anxiety, excitement.
"Eight....seven...."
  It was absurd Kirk thought, holding tightly to the
command chair! That wouldn't prolong his life by the
minutest fraction of a second. But his hands continued
to grip the unyielding metal nonetheless.
  An electrical discharge thousands of kilometers
in
  14 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  length lit the screen for an instant,
impossibly close. Then, it was gone and so was the
  blackness. Ahead once again lay the friendly,
fluorescing mists of the galaxy, and the honest darkness
of open space.
  But Kirk knew this vision of escape was
illusory. A second later Sulu confirmed it.
  "No breakaway, Captain. but insertion
  accomplished." He sighed in visible relief.
"Details of orbit to follow. Well have
a low perigee, damn low, but was he smiled, "not
low enough to drop us out of orbit."
  "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"
called Scott.
  "I beg your pardon, Mr. Scott?"
  "Nothin", Spock, nothin'."
  "I beg your pardon again, Mr. Scott, but you
definitely said something, not nothing." Scott gave
him a pained look, and Spock suddenly
  comprehended.
  "Ah, I see. The use of nonreferential
archaic terminology served to audibilize the
otherwise inexpressable emotions you felt at the
moment."
  "So would a punch in the scoot, pointy-ears!"
warned the chief engineer.
  "Is that a further audibilization?"
  Kirk looked away so they wouldn't see the
broad grin spreading across his face.
  "Give up, Mr. Scott, you're fighting a
losing battle."
  "Aye, Captain," acknowledged Scott
disgustedly. "I've an easier time communicatin'
with a number-four automatic welder!" Then he
too smiled, but only briefly. Current
thoughts were too serious.
  "Speakin' of which, Captain, if eve don't
need the power right now, it'd be a good thing for the engines
to go on minimum, aver all the time they spent
puttin' out maximum reverse thrust."
  "Yes, of course, Scotty. Mr. Sulu,
compute the minimum drive we need to hold this
orbit without falling and feed the data to Mr.
Scott for issuance to engineering."
  "Yes, sir." Moments later, "Ready,
sir."
  "Fine, Lieutenant. Now activate rear
scanners and put our stern towards the mass."
  There was a wait while the view in the big screen
  STAR TREK LOG ONB IS
  seemed to rotate. Actually it was the ship that was
changing position and not the universe. The star-field
was gradually replaced by a fresh picture, a
view of the ebony sphere turning slowly below them.
  "Mr. Spock, final orbit confirmation?"
  "We are holding this orbital configuration
easily, Captain. Effectively standoff has
been achieved."
  "Good. Steady as she goes, then, Mr.
Sulu."
  "Aye, aye, sir." The lieutenant couldn't
keep an admiring tone from creeping into his voice.
Kirk glanced away, slightly embarrassed.
  Dr. McCoy observed the captain's reaction
and grinned. No one had noticed his arrival on the
bridge. They had all been, to say the least,
otherwise occupied. For his part, McCoy had kept
quiet. He had had nothing to say that could have been of
any help, and the situation when he had arrived called
for anything but a dose of his dry wit.
  Now, however, some idle conversation might have its
therapeutic values. He had a degree in that, as
well as in medicine.
  "If its pull is so strong, Jim, how do we
ever break out of its grip?"
  "What? Oh, hello, Bones." Kirk turned
his chair a little. "One thing at a time. If we'd
known Neat we were heading for soon enough, I'd have at
least tried a cometary orbit. But by the time we knew
for sure what we were up against, it was too late."
He looked over at the library console.
  "But you're right it's a question we'll have to deal with
eventually. How about a slingshot effect, Mr.
Spock? Have we got enough popover to break out at the
last sew and? We can run on maximum
overdrive for the necessary time. We'll have to dive as
close as possible to the surface before pulling out,
to make maximum use of the gravity-well's
catapulting power. If we don't make it,
we'll end up so many odd-sized blobs on the
surface. Don't for- get, Bones, it's
attractive force increases exponentially as we
near the actual surface."
  Spock didn't answer the opening query right
away, instead stayed bent over the viewer and continued
to work.
  16 STAR TREK ONE
  "You'll need some time for the computations to go through,
Captain. Power, orbit, proper distance from the
stellar surface, angle of descent, crucial
altitude Information is still coming in through our sensors
at a tremendous rate. Our knowledge of hyper-gravity
is woefully slim. This is the first time a starship
has been so close to a negativo stellar mass.
At least, the first time one has been this close and
survived.
  "There are too many variables at this point for hasty
calculation. I can't give you an answer yet."
  "AU right, Spock. Set the computer on the
problem. We'll loam as we orbit.
We've nothing else to do, anyway. Starfieot will
go crazy over the data."
  As if on cue, Uhura broke in.
"Excuse me, Captain, but I'm picking up that
secondary signal again. We lost it temporarily
when we powered into orbit, but I've got it back."
She paused. "Or else it's got us back.
Nine seconds north inclination, dead ahead and
closing fast."
  "Is it . . . ?" he began, but Uhura
guessed the question.
  "No, Captain. We're coming up on it, not
vice-versa. Still, I wonder."
  "The universe is full of coincidences,
Lieutenant. How soon till sensor contact?"
  "It should be on the screens in a minute,
Captain."
  Everyone on the bridge turned full attention
to dhe Hefting view in die main screen. For long
moments There was little change in dhe picture. Then
a faintly luminous jumble of tiny lines appeared.
It began to increase rapidly in size.
  Even at This distance it divas easy to see chat
the object was an artificial construct and not a
natural body. But there must be something wrong
with The sensors. It was too far away to appear so
large.
  "Can we slow enough to match orbits, Mr. Sulu,
wI0hout dropping beyond the safe range?"
  Sulu fumbled wiationh the navigation computer. "Have
the answer in a second, sir." He paused.
"Yes sir, no difflculty, sir. We have a
respectable margin."
  "Then put us alongside as we come up on it."
  The object grew speedily until it dominated
die viewscreen as the dead sun had before. Sulu
had to reduce
  STAR TREK BY ONB 17
  perspective twice to keep the entire shape in
full view. Suddenly there was silence on the
bridge when it became apparent what the shape was.

  The starship was beautiful.
  AU the more so in contrast to the stark dead giant that
held them trapped in this isolated corner of the
universe. The huge Enterprise was an
insignificant spot, a parasitic white shape
alongside it.
  "'A thousand cathedrals an thrown together and then
they added star-drive," whispered an awed
McCoy. "Tossed an together and lit like a
Christmas tree."
  "Can it really be a starship?" murmured Uhwa
softly.
  Spock's reply was equally hushed. "The
probability is . . . considerable."
  Vast arches and flying buttresses of
multicolored metal and plastic soared up and out,
racing in and around metallic spirals and
pyramids. Here and there. gracefully den
  signed yet massive metal pods nestled at
regular intervals amid cradling arms of silver and
gold and iridescent blue. Faery arms of spun
alloy.
  The race that had built this vessel was a race of
artisans as well as engineers, poets as well as
shipwrights.
  ""Bring us in, Mr. Sulu. Mr.
Sulu?"
  The lieutenant seemed to shake himself awake.
"Aye, sir." He touched controls. and the
Enterprise responded. The intricate gleaming
tapestry began to move closer and then past them.
  Under Sulu's skillful hands, the Enterprise
drifted
  18 STAR TRER t tilde ONB
  deeper into the tangle of alien crossbeams and
spars. He adjusted speed and they drifted towards
what seemed to be a major pod.
  "It's got to be a starship!" McCoy
muttered. "But, Aesculapms, the size of it!"
  "True, Bones," Kirk agreed and then
gestured, "but it seems that neither size nor beauty
renders it invulnerable. Or maybe to something else,
it wasn't so beautiful Look1"
  As they continued their inspection, it became clear that
despite its massive bulk, some time in the past the
alien ship had undergone stresses and strains of as
yet unknown but undeniably powerful origin.
  Arches and soaring spans of binding metal were torn
and scorched bent unnaturally in some places,
sliced in half in others. The huge pods
exhibited the most obvious, ominous signs of
disaster. They were lined with rows of odd,
hexagonal-shaped ports. All were cold, dark.
  Dead.
  Every pod was damaged. There were no
  exoeptions. The metal floated easily in
space, bloated with ruptures and tears. Deep
gashes split one pod like a chrome
grape.
  "She was probably pulled in like we were,"
murmured Kirk. He didn't voice the
attendant thought. Had this total destruction taken
place before the alien starship was gathered in by the
negative sun's gravity or after?
  And if the latter, why? More importantly, how?
  Two surprises from outside were enough for any one
station, but Uhura was destined to get yet a third.
Idly adjusting receivers and amplifiers, she
suddenly threw the sound of the secondary signal the
signal that came from this dead enigma into the bridge
again.
  But it was different now. More of a stutter than a
moan. And while there were no reasons, no facts
to support it, everyone sensed that the strange call was
now more urgent, more insistent than before.
  "Confirmation, sir, final," she said excitedly.
'1 though! that signal was coming from the alien. Not only
is there no longer any question about it, but somehow the
transrnitter, at least, has reacted to our
presence! That's the
  STAR TRER LOG Ours
  only reason I can think of to explain this sudden
change in broadcast pattern."
  "I have secondary confirmation, Captain," added
Spock, his eyebrows rising again, "and I should
agree. But it isn't possible. That ship is
utterly, unequivocably, dead. All
life-support sensors read negative. All
ship-support sensors read the same. No energy
is present. Temperaturo on board the alien is
identical to that of open space absolute zero. I
have no reason to even faintly support the contention that
there is life aboard . . . biological or
mechanical."
  "Also, there is no evidence of any stored energy
capable of generating these radio emissions. I read
only a slight magnetic flux probably
normal for the vessel's metal."
  "Yet you reconfimn Uhura's readings that the
signal is coming from the ship?"
  Spoclc seemed reluctant to restate his
position, but, "A have no choice, Captain. That
is likewise what the sensors read."
  "That doesn't make sense, Mr. Spock."
  The science offlcer's reply was drier than
usual. "We find ourselves in complete agreement,
Captain. Yet," he paused briefly, "that is
the case."
  "You're positive?"
  "Probability ninety-nine point seven,
Captain."
  "Ummmm." Kirk leaned back, drumming a
mildly obscene ditty with his fingers on one arm of the
command chair. Pursuing a confessed paradox was going
to get them nowhere. Better try another tack.
  "Can you identify the design of the ship or its
composition, Mr. Spock?"
  ""Negative to both, Captain," Spock
replied after a glance at the computer readout. "The
readings I have so far on the alloy itself barring
actual analytical confirmation from a specimen of
same indicate a material both harder and lighter
than any registered in the ship's library. As for the
design, it is not a recorded type." He
hesitated, glanced back at the readout.
  "Something else, Mr. Spock?"
  "Also, Captain, silicon dating or the
vessel's spectra in
  20 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  dicates Ohat it has been floating in orbit
here for . . ." he checked Ule computer figures
one last time, "dis . . for slightly more and not less
than three hundred million terran
years."
  There was a concerted gasp from the bridge personnel
Everyone's attention was drawn back to the screen.
Back to The delicate arches, to tile dreamlike
design alien in bodh pattern and function to the
solid, prosaic shape of the Enterprise.
  "if should clink, then, chat that precludes our
chances of finding any survivors aboard," Kirk
murmured.
  "I couldn't have put it better myself, Captain,"
agreed Spock.
  "I just know that it's beautiful," put in Uhura,
halfdefiandy. "To have put such grace and perfection
of form into somedung as functional as a starship I
wish I could have known the race that built it."
  "Beauty may have nodling to do with it,
Lieutenant," suggested Spock conversationally. "The
design may merely conform to Their own
  conceptions of spatial dynamics."
  She turned back to her instruments, an
  expression of distaste coming over her perfect
features.
  "I might have guessed you'd say something like that,
Spock."
  "Don't give it a Thought, Uhura,"
chipped in McCoy quickly. "According to his own system
of spatial dynamics, Spock probably finds
your form purely functional, too. Don't you,
Spock?"
  Sulu grinned, and even Kirk was distracted enough
to ernile.
  Spock's reply barely hinted at mild
distress. "It is very easy to tell when you are
joking,
  Doctor which is most of the time. It is when your
statements make absolutely no sense which is most
of the time."
  While The byplay continued behind him, Kirk let
his attention drift back to the picture of the alien
starship. He envied the long-dead commander. And yet
there was a hint of unease back of all The
admiration.
  What could have happened to so totally destroy such a
magnificent vessel, with all its unknown
potentialities and
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 21
  abilities? Certainly it must have possessed
defensive powers commensurate with its size. "A
civilisation advanced enough to build such a craft
three hundred million years ago! Man
wasn't even an idea then in the mind of nature,"
he murmured.
  "A second or two in the span of eternity,
Jim," McCoy commented, switching abruptly from the
silly to the sublime.
  Sometimes McCoy's comments grew wearisome, even
annoying. But when he was right, he was the rightest person
on the ship.
  Kirk sighed. "All right, Spock. There's
got to be an answer to this. You read no power from the
vessel now. Any indication what its power source
might have been?"
  "No, Captain. There is apparently something
new and undetectable at work here, capable of
avoiding even the most delicate sensor pickup.
But this far from any star with a planetary system, it
goes without saying that they possessed some form of warp
tilde rive. A most efficient one, beyond doubt,
judging from the size of the craft."
  Kirk continued to study the vast alien ship. As
usual, the sudden flash of insight that would solve
all and make him appear the most brilliant
spacer since O'Morion didn't occur.
  He had no business ordering what he was about
to order. Every second should have been devoted
to extricating the Enterpnse from its present perilous
position. Still, the lure of the incredible vessel was
too strong to ignore. He hesitated. At least
he could make one last check.
  "Mr. Spock, how is the computer coming on the
computation for a slingshot course?"
  Spock consulted his viewer. "It appears it will
take some time yet, Captain, for all the variables
to be considered and an optimum program to be
devised."
  That settled it. He rose and spoke firmly.
  "We'll board her, then. Scatty, Bones
you'll come with us. Life-support belts, of
course. Lieutenant Uhura, you're in command.
Sulu, have the transporter room stand by."
  "Yes, sir," Sulu replied as he moved
to notify the trans
  22 STAR TRBX L tilde ONE
  porter chief. The four officers were already heading
for the elevator.
  "Captain," said Spock, "may I inquire as
to your reasons for boarding the alien?"
  "Nothing extraordinary, Mr. Spock. We have
the time. Curiosity. Plain old ordinary human
curiosity."
  ""That is what I thought. However, if that
expression of exclusivity is intended for my
benefit, Captain, you ought to know by now that it's
misplaced."
  "Why, Spockl" McCoy exclaimed, rising
to the challenge, "don't tell me that you're
subject to an emotion like curiosity!"
  "Your evaluation of the phenomenon is typically
inaccurate, Doctor. Curiosity is a
natural, logical function of the higher mind not one
of the baser emotions."
  "That all depends on how you choose to
  interpret it," McCoy countered. "Now . . ."
  The argument divas continuing full force as they
entered the transporter room. Transporter
Chief Kyle was at the console, waiting for them. The
console itself emitted a barely audible hum, an
indication that it was prepared and ready to perform its
usual functions.
  Kyle had also removed and checked four
  life-support belts from the nearby lockers.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scott buckled
them on, each double-checking his own and then throwing the
activating switches. Each passed before Kyle's
console for a last, mechanical check.
Kyle's voice read out the results.
  "Captain ... check. Commander Spock ...
check. Lt. Commander Scott ... okay. Lt.
Commander McCoy ... check." He looked up.
"All belts operational, Captain"
  "Thank you, Mr. Kyle."
  "If you'll take your places, sirs...." A
lime-yellow aura now surrounded each man a
comforting, vital field put out by the life-support
belts. They stepped up into the transporter
alcove and took their places on four separate
transporter disks.
  "Ready, Captain," warned Kyle.
  "Ready, Chief," Kirk replied, then
grinned. "Try not to materialise us inside any
solid objects, hmmm?"
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 23
  Kyle essayed a slight grin at the old
joke. Safety overrides on ad transporters
made such occurrences quite impossible.
  "Effnergize, Chief," instructed Kirk.
  Kyle carefully brought the necessary levers up,
keeping a watchful eye on the vast array of
monitoring instrumentation. A familiar,
part-musical, tinkling hum filled the
transporter room as the alcove was energised. The
bodies of the four men slowly diffused, as if seen
through squinted eyes in early morning . . . until
they became four cylinders of multicolored
particles glowing on the platforms.
  Kyle hit a switch, drew the four levers
rapidly down.
  He was alone in the transporter room.
  Pour pillars of speckled fire appeared on the
cold surface of the largest pod of the alien starship.
The pmars faded quickly, to be replaced by the
frighteningly fragile figures of three humans and a
Vulcan. Bach stood bathed in soft lime-yeBow
light.
  Spock was the first to survey their harsh surroundings.
They revere standing next to one of the huge, dark,
hexagonal ports. Just beyond the port was an
enormous, gaping hole, a black pi* fringed with
torn, twisted metal clawing at empty space.
Clear indication that whatever cataclysm had
ruptured the skin of the pod had come from within.
  As soon as everyone had recovered fully from the
effects of transporter dislocation, they began
to move toward the forced opening. AU paused
briefly by the dark port. Spoclc ran the
thin force-field of the life-support system under his
heel over the black, glassy surface.
  "The six-sided shape of the port suggests a
similarity to the natural designs of certain
terran insects. The honeycombs of bees, for
example, where the individual bee cells
possess a similar shape. Such a similarity
is, naturaUy, purely superficial. To read
any possibilities into it would be unreasonable."
  Kirk knelt and tried to peer Trough the thick
glass which wasn't necessarily glass, or
thick. In any case, it was like staring at an onyx
mirror. If anything remained inside the pod,
they'd never get a look at it this way.
  24 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  Engineer Scott was standing near one of the torn
flanges of metal, running his hands over it. He
had his face so close to it that the force-field over his
nose was nearly touching
  "Would ye look at this, nowl" he whistled in
surprise. His lifebelt radio carried the eerie
disembodied sound to his companions.
  "What is it, Scotty?" Kirk rose and
moved toward him from the unrevealing port.
  "It's this metal, sir. I don't know
much about terran insects, but I do know metal. This
stuff wasn't cast or rolled or flextruded.
And it's got a faint but definite graze, like fine
grains in good wood." He looked disbelievingly
at Kirk.
  "I'm willin' to bet, sir, that this metal was
made by being drawn out into long, very thin filaments and
then formed into required shapes. There's layer on
layer on layer of "em right here in this one small
section. Like laminating in plastics, only on a
much finer scale." He tapped the metal
silently.
  "The way a spider spins its web," Kirk
mused.
  "If you will, sir," continued Scott. "Such a
method of metal formin" even with our own alloys
would make for material far stronger than anything
known."
  Spock had his phaser out. The brilliant beam
of the tiny weapon lanced across space and sliced free
a small segment of the metal. Spock caught the
sample before momentum imparted by the phaser could shove
it away, examined it closely.
  "Lighter and stronger than anything we have now," he
whispered, echoing an earlier reading."
  Then he looked in turn at McCoy,
Scott, Kirk. "If this can be analysed,
Capta tilde his
  "And duplicated," Scott added.
  "I know, I know," Kirk admitted. He
didn't want to put a damper on their enthusiasm
he felt pretty much the same but they were in no
position to get carried away by any discovery.
  "Providing, however, that we're not trapped here
ourselves, for some other unfortunate starship crew
to stumble across a hundred million years from now."
  STAR TREK LOG Of 25
  Stepping back along the graceful metal beam that
emerged from this section of the torn pod, he moved
to get a better view of the rest of the alien vessel.
Staring upwards he scanned the fronds of the metal
jungle, eyed the other shredded and shattered
pod-shapes.
  - Nearby, one thin soaring arch, as delicate as
the finest
  example of the wood-carver's art, dangled
crookedly, distorted by mmnaginable stresses in the
far-distant past.
  "Look," he instructed the others. "Every pod every
one. Notice any similarity?"
  For a change, McCoy was the first to reply.
  'they've all been burst open, Jim. Funny
there doesn't seem to be an intact one on the
entire ship. Maybe on the other side, but . .
."
  "Aye," acknowledged Scott, "and all from the
inside, too. But we already saw that."
  almost have been some accident," the doctor added,
"to get every pod."
  Spock replied without looking, choosing instead
to speak while studying the ruins of the ship.
  "Accidents seldom operate according to a system,
Dr. McCoy. The destruction here is too
regular. too obviously managed for 'accident"
to be given as cause. No, I believe we must
give serious consideration to the alternative
possibility that the crew of this vessel
voluntarily destroyed her and, incidentally, perhaps,
themselves."
  Leave it to Spock, thought Kirk, to voice what
all of them were thinking but none could say.
  They stood there four insignificant animate
forms, on the skin of a starship tens of millions of
years in advance of anything their own civilisation could
produce and considered what threat might be
serious enough to prompt her crew to suicide.
  Dwelling on morbidity brought no answers.
Kirk started off toward the beckoning black cave
and the others followed, striding with the aid of
belt-gravity across the smooth hug. Without breaking
stride he brought out his communicator, flipped the
cover back.
  "Kirk to Enterprise.",
  6'Enterprise," came the prompt reply.
Kirk was grati
  26 STAR TREK LOO ONE
  fled. That gal would make a fine captain someday.
"Uhura speaking."
  "Lieutenant, are you still receiving radio emissions
from this vessel?"
  "When did you develop telepathy, Captain?"
came the startled reply. "A was about to can down when
you checked in. It ceased broadcasting the moment you
stepped aboard."
  Kirk considered this.
  "Whatever machinery is stiDo somehow operating on
board this craft, Captain was theorized Spock,
"is also sensitive." Kirk nodded agreement,
spoke into the communicator again.
  "Thank you, Uhura. Inform Chief
Kyle to lock on with the transporter and be ready
to yank us out of here on a second's notice."
  There was a pause while Uhura relayed the necessary
inform at ion .
  "Expecting trouble, sir?"
  'Otto, Lieutenant. But we're going to try
and enter the ship. There may be surprises other than
finicky radio transmissions, something of a less
indifferent nature."
  Another pane, and then a second voice came
over the compact speaker.
  "Kyle here. Don't worry, Captain,
I've got all four of you right on frequency. And
I'm not budging from this console until you're all
back on board."
  Kirk smiled. closed the communicator.
  "Sounds like the chief," smiled McCoy.
Another few steps had brought them to the edge of the
gaping, metalfringed cavern.
  Kirk spent a long moment examining the dim,
shadowy interior. Clearly nothing was alive here.
He swung lightly over the edge. Scott
followed. McCoy stepped aside and gestured
inward.
  "After you, Spock."
  "Why. Doctor, don't tell me that you, a
man of science, are afraid of the dark?"
  "Very funny, Spock say, that wasn't intended
to be no, that's impossible. Vulcans don't
joke."
  "Joke, Doctor?" Spock's expression was
unreadable.
  STAR TREK L tilde 0 tilde 27
  "Oh, well," McCoy sighed. "Hope
springs eternal."
  He followed the science officer into the abyss.
  They moved slowly, carefully down the wide
passageway. If necessary, the glow of their
life-support belts would have been sufficient
to see one another by. As it developed, that glow
wasn't needed.
  Faint light issued from long panels of
translucent, polyethylenelike material inlaid
in the walls of the airlock for such it clearly was.
Or had once been. Both air and at least the outer
lock had long since departed the air by natural
forces, the lock by apparently unnatural ones.
  Spock studied one of the lmnmescent panels.
He couldn't see a tube, a bulb, or a strip
beneath it. The light seemed to come from the plastic
material itself, but he couldn't be sure.
  "Something in the ship is stilt somehow, generating
power that our sensors were unable to record, Captain.
Or else there are other devices that somehow generate
their own power as these light panels seem to do."
  "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,
Spock. It's a darnnsight easier than moving with
only belt-light to see by."
  They continued deeper into the tunnel. Eventually
they came up short against what appeared to be a
solid wall of metal. It blocked further
passage very thoroughly. Initial inspection
produced nothing but disappointment.
  It was Scott, who first noticed the slightly
brighter stream of light up near the "ceiling." Sure
enough, the metal there was bent. Some titanic force
had wrenched at the very structure of this inner lock.
  "Some kind of emergency shutoff seems to have been
in action here," Scott guessed. "Energy was
operating on a tremendous scale. It would have had
to be, to bend this alloy like that." He nodded up at the
revealing gap.
  "This passage is big enough for one of the
Enterpriso's shuttlecraft to fit in."
  Kirk put out a hand and touched the dull
metal He couldn't feel it, of course the
force-field blocked the sense of touch which was just as
well, since the metal was as cold as open space.
His hand would have frozen to it.
  28 STAR TREK L00 0 tilde
  He knew the door was solid because something halted
the progress of his palm. The gesture was more
hopeful than anticipatory. As expected,
nothing happened when he shoved. The enormous lock
didn't budge.
  "Let's try up near where the top buckled,"
he suggested. "If it's only jammed and not really
locked, we might be able to jar it loose."
  He and Scott took out their hand phasers. Two
beams of incandescence began to play about the top d the
lock.
  Two minutes of concentrated beaming, however,
produced nothing more than a slight red glow in the
affected area.
  "Useless," he murmured, watching the red glow
fade along with all hopes of entering the ship.
  "Captain."
  The two men put their phasers away.
  "What is it, Mr. Spock?" Kirk
squinted. Spock was off on the other side
of the passageway.
  "I believe I may have had some luck,
Captain."
  'if hope so, Spock. We haven't. We
may have to bring the Enterpr tilde se's main
phasers to bear in here. I'd hate to do that. Either
we'll surely damage whatever's inside the main
batteries aren't as delicate as Bones"
cutters or else we won't be able to cut through at
all."
  They moved over to where Spock was waiting. He
said nothing, only pointed upward.
  About three meters off the floor was a large
square panel, recessed into the wall of the tunnel.
Three hexagonal-shaped plastic plates were set
into the recess.
  "I think, Captain, that that may be a key.
Probability would suggest some form of manual
backup system to operate any airlock."
  "I agree, Spock." Kirk studied the
panel, made an experimental jump. "There's
only one problem artificial gravity seems to be
in full operation here. For the moment, our key is out of
reach. Someone can beam back aboard and bring back a
. . ."
  "I do not believe that will be necessary, Captain."
  Spock moved to the curving wall and braced himself
against the metal. "If you will climb onto my
shoulders, you should be able to reach the panel."
  STAR TREK ONE 29
  "Isn't science wonderful?" murmured
McCoy.
  It took Kirk, a trained gymnast and tumbler,
only a second or two. Then he was securely
braced on the Vulcan's shoulders. Even so, the
recessed panel was still over his head. But by straining his
arm he could manage to reach all three hexagonal
plates.
  "I always said you were a supportive influence,
Spock," ventured McCoy.
  "And I've always felt your humor was in
execrable taste, Doctor." Spock's voice
barely hinted at the strain of keeping Kirk's
weight on his shoulders. "However I feel that in
all honesty I must revise my opinion of your
puns.
  "Well, it's about time! I always knew you'd come
around, Spock."
  "They are," the science officer continued, "not
merely bad. They are atrocious."
McCoy's expression fell.
  Kirk pressed firmly on the nearest plastic
hexagon. It sank inward under his fingers, but nothing
else happened. Trying the one to its left produced
a similar lack of results. When he hit the
third panel, however, the plastic suddenly pulsed
with a soft green glow.
  The brilliant reaction from something three hundred
million years "dead" was startling so much so that
Kirk nearly fell.
  "Careful, Captain," Spock admonished,
tightening his grip on Kirk's legs. "I can
support you like this for a long time, but if you insist on
shifting your weight, well, I'm not an
acrobat."
  "tilde Don't worry, Mr. Spock.
I'm the one who'll end up falling. I don't
plan to, not even in this light gravity." He
kept his hand on the depressed disk and was rewarded
with a faint but massive grinding sound.
  'allyt's movie", Captain!" shouted Scott.
  Sure enough, there'd been a slight hint of motion
from the massive lock door. And the space near its
top admitting light from somewhere within had grown a lithe
wider. But the grinding stopped immediately and the
green light faded from the disk.
  "Try again, Captain," Spock suggested.
Kirk pressed andence disk once more. The glow
returned. So did the grind
  30 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  ing noise. He kept the disk forced down,
trying to watch the lock door at the same time.
  He heard a deep and echoing ripping sound, as of
ancient joints and bolts giving way. The
massive door shuddered, started to swing wide on
unseen hinges ... then stopped. This time not all
Kirk's jabs on the disk could move it.
  But there was a gap between door and tunnel wall now
wide enough for a man to slip through.
  "That's good enough. Spock! Coming down." He
jumped carefully clear of his second's shoulders and
moved to the new opening.
  They had seen nothing so far to indicate that any
excessive caution was required. Nonetheless.
Kirk stepped softly as he edged through the gap.
Spock followed, with Scott and McCoy bringing
up the rear. The captain's last real fear was
eliminated when they were all inside and the gigantic
lock door failed to slam shut behind them.
  The interior of the chamber in which they nobler
found themselves was built on an enormous. inhuman
scale. The walls were the color of pale
chalcedony dull and warlike whites and blues.
They curved upward and outward. forming a room
vaguely hexagonal in pattern. Apparently the
six-sided format was repeated throughout the interior of the
vessel as well as in the construction of the
superstructure.
  The walls and sections of floor were lined with
shattered, smashed machines of unknown,
  indefinable purpose. It was unlikely their
purposes would ever be divined. Even the smallest
device partook of the same feathery, lacelike
design as the peat ship itself. It was almost as though the
builders had selected the internal structure of a
leaf as their pattern for interstellar craft.
  Some shapes more solid. less ethereal of form were still
intact. And still operating ... or at least
dormant. They pulsed with different shades and
blends of the visible spectrum. Violet and umber
emerald green and deep maroon and a light pastel
pink each seemingly too beautiful to be
functional.
  The men moved toward the center of the room, where a
monstrous amorphous shape squatted like a
jeweled toad.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 31
  From its top, graceful appendages radiated
roofward in all directions wands of flexible
crystal. The four men moved closer.
  As they advanced, the crystalline strands began
to move. Slowly, gently, swaying to the ebb of some
unseen tide. As the strands moved they were
accompanied by a strangely melodic, somehow
nocturnal music.
  McCoy murmured, "I heard something like that,
once. Not exactly the same, but close. Ever
hear electric cello, Jim?"
  "Close, dose," Kirk agreed. "I wouldn't
swear to any similarity, though. You know me,
Bones, I'm more partial to classical stuff."
  They stopped next to the enigmatic structure.
When they halted, the floating fronds also stilled,
the haunting music fading out in a last, triUing
pianissimo.
  "What do you make of it, Spock?" Kirk
asked. As he spoke, the translucent limbs
fluttered slightly and invisible fingers ran ever 80
lightly over a faraway harp.
  "Look here, Captsin," interrupted
Scott before Spock could answer. He was pointing
to the upper surface of the stocky construction.
  A thin, sparkling band of pink light had suddenly
appeared around the upper trunk of the main body.
Spock made a quick reading with his tricorder.
  "Captain, it's registering energy output. Quite
weak, but definite."
  "Still functioning, then," mused Kirk softly,
"after all these millennia. The lock door I can
  understand it would operate off any oddball emergency
power source. But AL
  thing?"
  Spock was circling the object, constancy
consulting his tricorder. He was shaking his head as he
rejoined Them.
  "I am still getting tricorder readings,
Captain."
  When he spoke there was music and movement in the
room again. "A would hazard an opinion that those
strange appendages are accumulators,
receptors that pick up any faint form of kinetic
energy motion, movement in the air from sound waves .
. . our voices . . . anything."
  "It absorbs this energy and metamorphoses it,
returning it or 'playing it back" in at
least two readily observable
  32 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  ways. As motion in its "arms" and as music
... if those sounds are indeed an alien conception of
music."
  "Yes, but what is its function?" Kirk
pressed, staring at the wands. They threw his words
back at him and added a lithe tune.
  "As to that, Captain, your guess is as good as
mine. This could be anything was and he gestured at the
shape, "from an energy-acceptance station for the starship's
engines to a recreation area for her crew. We do not
have enough information to deduce."
  "It gives me the creeps was announced
McCoy firmly. It wasn't a dip evaluation.
either. "I feel like somethin% that ought to be dead is
watching us."
  Scott looked equaDy uneasy an of a
sudden. Machines were his province. He knew them
beKer than mast people, but this thing
  "Aye, Captain. I feel it too."
  "A standard phvsiogg'o tilde cal symptom
of latent primal supersfftion." Spock said. "the
fear of primitive peoples confronting something
utterly incomprehensible to them."
  Kirk was studying the rest of the silent chamber.
He spoke idly.
  "Compared to the beings that built this craft, we are
primitive peoples. You too, Mr. Spock."
  "I did not mean to imply otherwise, Captain.
Merely to attempt an evaluation of his
  "AD right, an right, never mind, Spock.
Let's keep moving."
  He painted to the far side of the chamber where another
door waited.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 33

  Whereas the inner airlock door had been a single
massive plate of unadorned metal, this portal
was both more elaborately designed and more
  formal-looking. It was deco orative as well as
practical. The flat surface was seamed
by triple lines, forming three triangles, each
engraved deeply with alien words and cryptography.
To the men of the Enterprise they were so many scratches.
  Spocletter located another recess with its three
inserted hexagonal disks.
  But when he depressed them, nothing happened.
All four stared at the seemingly impenetrable
barrier for a while.
  "Of coursel" blurted Scott suddenly, as the
others turned. "The other door was bents damaged,
so only one disk was enough to operate it. Or maybe
the circuitry was jammed together. But three
  triangles three disks. Press them an at
the same time. Mr. Spock."
  "Ouite so, Mr. Scott," concurred Spock,
sharing-in the chief engineer's revelation.
  His hand was not quite wide enough to cover all three
disks, but both hands managed the trick neatly.
This feat gave them some idea of the size of the
starsbip's crew members, or of their
  manipulative digits, anyway. Spock
pressed in.
  The three disks glowed green. Seconds later
the three sections of door slid back silently
disappearing into wafts, roof, and floor. Another
huge chamber opened beyond.
  The interior of the pod was circular in design, with
  34 STAR TREK LOG
  huge rooms spaced around a common core, and they
were walking around it. This particular chamber was lined with a
long row of the dark, hexagonal ports they'd seen
from outside. Whether it was from starlight they admitted
or the presence of more of the ubiquitous
plastic strips, He light here was much brighter.
  "No, Captain," mused Spock as they
discussed the continuing puzzle of the strange
illumination. 'A think the light has been on in here
all the time."
  "Why couldn't we see in through the ports, then, from
out Oh, of course." Kirk answered his own question.
"One-way ports, to protect the observer from
external light and other radiation sources."
  They moved deeper into the long, curving chamber.
One interior wall was dominated by a huge
reflective shape. It resembled a giant convex
mirror and was also six-sided in form, though greatly
stretched-out. Objects with even stranger patterns
weird instrumentation and peculiar machinery lined all
the visible walls and domi- nated rank on rank
of high, slanted consoles.
  There was something else unusual, more unusual than
any individual piece of apparatus.
  The destruction that had blasted the rest of the starship,
including the room they'd just left, was not in evidence.
Whatever catastrophe had torn the great vessel
asunder had passed over this room.
  As they moved further into the chamber and close
to specific instruments, lights began
to appear, glowing, emanating from scattered dials and
panels and hidden strips of plastic.
  "Proximity activation," noted Scott
absently. "Huh-oh . . . Iook there." They
stopped, turned.
  The gigantic mirror, which was doubtless anything but
So simple a device, began to exhibit a
milky opalescence. Colors commenced to flow and
drift and blend across its surface. A moment
later there was more music. But this was quite different from the
sounds produced by the octopi poidal machine in the
odher chamber. They were more rhythmic, insistent and
yet sounding..
  They moved toward it, curious. Spock began
to adjust
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 35
  his tricorder, preparatory to taking some
preliminary readings.
  "A most intriguing phenome . . ."
  The gentle light on the clustered console
to Kirk's right abruptly exploded in brilliant
green. A lurid, blinding emerald flare bathed
them all. Formerly stolid. calm music changed
suddenly to an enraged percussive clamoring. An
enormous outpounog of emotion that even over
three hundred million years and unfathomable
differences in shape and physiology still sounded
unmistakably like an alarm.
  Behind them the three segments of the tripartite
portal slammed silently shut. McCoy took
a couple of steps toward it, slowed, stopped when he
realized the futility of the gesture.
  The light dimmed; the music ceased.
  They were trapped in the cyclopean cave.
  There were the thme familiar disks set in a
familiar recess to the left of the doorway.
McCoy sauntered over slowly and depressed the
three plastic plates. Lightly at first, then with
all his strength. Then he tried them in various
  combinations. All attempts produced equal
msults none at all. The door remained
resolutely closed, as obstinate as the dead star
circling below them. Not even the faint light appeared
from within the disks.
  Various imprecations and comments on the dubious
parentage of the door's designers also failed to have a
salutary effect.
  "Somehow I didn't think it would work, Bones."
  Kirk smiled grimly. "Analysis, Mr.
Spock?"
  Spoci consulted the all-purpose tricorder
once more, wishing instead for the mythical terran
supercomputer JWG. Wishing was not logical, but
under the circumstances, he permitted himself the tiny
private deviation. The tricorder singularly
uninformative.
  "Nothing available on whatever activated the
door mechanism. Captain. But an atmosphere
has been supplied now." He sounded surprised.
'It approaches tilde arthnormal. Shall we
deactivate life-support belts? We may be
here for a while and this gives us an opportunity
to conserve the power supply since we can't return
to the Enterprise for recharging."
  36 STAR TREE LOO ONE
  Kirk hesitated. Force-fields could be more of a
problem than a benefit at the damndest times, but .
. .
  "No, Spock. This is just a bit too neat,
too easy. That door could open again as fast as it
closed. Whatever established an atmosphere in here
might not have had the foredght to do the same in the other
room. No, we'll keep our life-wpport
systems on." He flipped open his communicator,
eyed the now ominous walls uncertainly.
  "Enterprise, do you read me? Mr. Sulu?"
He paused, tried again. "Lieutenant Uhura,
acknowledge. This is the captain speaking."
  - A faint, rhythmic humming was the only sound
the
  speaker in the compact unit produced a normal
blank
  receptor wave. That proved the communicator was
operaUng
  "No use, Captain," said Spock, still working
with the tricorder. "Some sort of blanket interference
has been set up. Its efficiency approaches
totality." He looked up from the 'corder.
  Hiswere' do not like this at all, Captain."
  McCoy had ambled back to rejoin them.
  "You always did have this marvelous ability for under-
statement, Spock. A gigantic alien zombie
could come crashing through the near wall, spewing fire and
dripping venom from poisonous fangs, and you'd sum
the situation up by declaring that its intentions were other than
benign!"
  Kirk noticed that Scott had his phaser out.
"What are you going to do with that, Scotty? We can't
cut our way out any more than we could cut our way
in."
  "No, sir," the engineer admitted. "Not
exactly."
  "You've got an idea, Scotty. Don't
keep us guessing."
  "Well, sir, these walls are tough, I'll
give you that." He gestured towards the trisected
door with the phaser. "But those control disks don't
look like they're made of any- thin' near as strong
a material. If I can burn through the covering
plates and short the controls assumin' they're
shortable there's no reason why the door shouldn't re-
lease."
  "It's a good thought, Scotty," Kirk
confessed. "I don't like being destructive, but . .
. Give it a try."
  STAR TREK LOO ONE 37
  Scott walked over and eyed the recessed disks
briefly. He lined up the phaser on the lowest
one, carefully set the power level, and pressed the
trigger.
  Nothing happened.
  He tried again, turning up the power all the way.
This time he produced a very faint red glow which quickly
faded and disappeared.
  At a sudden thought Kirk pulled out his
communicator again. This time he didn't try
to activate it. Instead, he turned it over and
checked the power telltale set in the base.
  "No energy rating. Something's drained them.
Blanket interference my eye! Something', at work in
here that drinks energy like a sponge." His eyes darted
around the innocent-seeming chamber, saw as expected
nothing.
  "And whatever it is, it's selective. These
panels and dials are still glowing, still activated.
I'm surprised this even picked up a carrier
wave, before."
  McCoy had his own comm unit out, checked it and
then repeated the check with his phaser.
  "Mine too, Jim."
  "And mine." Spock added. "But not the
tricorder."
  He made his own survey of the silent room.
"Odd."
  "So we're stuck," said McCoy unsubtly.
"No communications and no weapons . . . no way
of telling Kyle to pull us out of this." He jammed
the useless instruments back in his belt.
  "Only for the moment, Bones. Things are happening
awfully fast here. They might happen in our
favor any moment. We'd better be ready to take
advantage of them if we get a chance. You miss
a lot mooning over current disappointments. Por
example, notice anything new?"
  They all searched the chamber. Creamy
  opalescence still washed across the face of the convex
mirror. Lights still flickered and stuttered from
different instruments.
  "I see. Everything's returned to normal."
McCoy studied the mirror. "Or at least, what
was passing for normal when we came in." He
paused a
  moment, listening. "Even the music's back if
that's what it is."
  Kirk noticed the large, hexagonal dais in
the center of the room. They had just been passing it when
everything
  38 STAR TREUE LOG ONE
  had gone crazy. Now, staring at it intently for the
first time, he kicked himself mentally for not noticing the
similarity before. Despite its size and shape it
bore an unm tilde
  takable, if faint, resemblance to another
smaller, more familiar object . . . his own command
chair.
  Recessed knobs, oddly curled levers, and
triple-disk controls lined the slanted face of
consoles inside the "chair," along with a vast array
of multicolored, winking dials and band
indicators. There were markings over the transparent
dials and plates that might have been instruct
lions, directions. Whatever secrets they held
were locked up in a long-extinct alphabet and
mathematical system.
  ""Control and navigation instrumentation, maybe,"
he mused. He turned to scan the room, suddenly
seeing it in a new light.
  "I'll bet this was the ship's bridge." He
touched the peculiarly formed seat. 'The captain must
have sat here, in this same chair cons ago." He
stood on tiptoes and let himelf down gently
into the seat. Whatever the nature of his long-dead
alien counterpart, one thing was certain, their backsides
had differing configurations.
  Spock was fiddling with the tricorder as he circled
the command chair.
  "I don't think so, Captain. The source of the
interference is here, somewhere. Also, various aspects
of construction taken together with certain readings lead me
to believe that this was not a part of the vessel's
original equipment. It seems much more like something that
was made up for a special occasion 'jury-rigged"
I chink you cad it. To handle an emergency, for
example.
  "One thing is certain . . . it's generating an
kinds of energy patterns. I suspect that the
signal which activated the door came from here,
too."
  "Sure some sort of automatics were designed
to seal off this room'" agreed Scott, suddenly
uneasy. "But seal it off from what?"
  "Not from us, obviously," added McCoy.
  "This ship, despite its size and probable
power," Spock continued, "has been all but totally
destroyed. liven the last chamber we were in. But this
room, these instruments, this console especially this
console they remain intact.
  STAR TREK 39
  "Something, gentlemen, once came aboard this
ship. Something formidable enough to not only destroy it here,
but enough to cause her crew to commit suicide ... yet
leave His one last room intact. As a
precaution, I should Heaink."
  "But the door closed when we entered here,"
protested Scott. "Surely we didn
..." He stopped and his moudl gaped. "Oh, come
on now, Spock! No known form of life could
survive three hundred million years of
exposure to naked space!"
  "Quite right Mr. Scott," agreed Spock
grimly. "No known form of life.
  McCoy interrupted them aD.
  "Jhn, Spock, Spotty . . . the door .
. . 1" They whirled as one.
  In the confer of She still eighty closed portal,
lines of glowing emerald energy, shading occasionally
to aquamarine, now to deep olive, were playing
freely across Ule metal surface.
  "No," McCoy whispered, taking a step
backwards.
  Spoclc studied tricorder readings and spoke
without emotion..
  "Something is trying to get in here Captain. The
interference energy put out and directed by dais console
is reacting with another outside energy source of
unknown propoffiong and capabilities. The flux
that is the result of this interaction is now visible on
the surface of The door."
  "Will it hold?" Kirk asked. Spook nodded
slowly.
  "If The energy involved holds at present
levels and does not increase."
  Kirk studied Uhe door. It was hard to turn
away from that threatening. shockingly silent conflict of
energies. But he forced himself to, to look down and
study The alien controls. Somewhere in the maze of
dials and switches designed for digits other than
fingers there had to be a clue to what was happening.
Something. anything at all, to give them a hint of
what They might be up against.
  Cggtion a hunch andwitha lack of any real information
to proceed on (not a very promising base) he began
pressing in disks, moving switches as best he could
with clumsy hands. Por a while nothing happened.
Then, when he ac
  40 STAR TREK ONE
  ddentally nudged a spiral-shaped knob, the
lights in the console began to intensify. Spock
murmured something, and Kirk glanced up at his
science officer.l.
  'The mirror-thing, Captain." Kirk turned so
that he could see the huge, hexagonal reflector.
  It was beginning to pulse softly. The rippling
waves of diffuse color started to flow more rapidly
across its shifting surface. The mirror
shuddered, turned to face them on some kind of hidden
swivel mounting.
  For a moment the four of them were reflected in the
gleaming, curved- material, enlarged and
grotesquely distorted.
  "What is it, Jim?" McCoy demanded.
"What's it doing?"
  "I don't know, Bones." Kirk tared to watch
the mirror and handle the console at the same time.
Something had activated the mirror this far. Very
well. His hands played over controls as yet
untouched. After a few moments the colors started
to fade, the mirror itself to brighten.
  Then the chaotic display of color solidified,
coalesced into blurred images fluttering across the
screen. That's what it was, a screen! And sound
emanated from it now, too ... a husky chittering like
the song of a gigantic cAcket. But the sound
divas much more varied, much richer in invention. Somewhere
behind those sounds there was a guiding intelligence.
  A picture began to form in the mirror-screen.
The image sharpened. In the background was a control
room of some sort. A familiar control room.
  The control room they were in now.
  More interesting still was the creature that
dominated the screen. It was insectlike but not
ugly. Its surface features were smooth,
  streamlined not spiky, honey, or sharp. It was
difficult to get an idea of its true size because
of the way it dominated the mirror-screen. It must have
been sitting very close to the visual pickup. But it
was clear that it was much bigger than any man.
  Big enough to need the trio huge doorways they'd
encountered thus far. Big enough to make use of a ship this
size. Big enough so that each pod might be quarters
for a single crew member.
  Not big enough to prevent its destruction.
  STAR TUBE LOG ONB 41
  Now they could match up the strange sounds coming from
speakers behind the screen with the being's mouth movements.
There was a definite tone of urgency in its
peculiar, rasping words. It seemed though it was hard
to tell duo to vast differences in voice-box
construction that some of its message was being repeated,
over and over.
  Kirk finally broke the silence that had settled
over the lithe group. The creature on the screen
didn't react to the sound of his voice. If there was
any lingering doubt about that, there divas none now. They
were watching a recorded message, and none
cared to think how old it might be.
  "Could be the ship's log," he thought out loud.
"Or a warning. Or a religious service, or
instructions for game playing, or music
lessons."
  "I think not, Captain," said Spock. "This
preparation and care hints at more than mere
frivolity."
  "True . . . there, there's that same collection
of sounds agl" Kirk insisted. "It's repeating
itself, all right at least part of the time."
  McCoy manured, "A message from three
million centuries ago."
  "It is possible, it seems," nodded Spock.
"That much of their amazing technology has
survived." He was working with the tricorder again
  Kir right-brace divided his attention between his
busy science officer and the strange alien on the
mirror-screen.
  "Can you get anything out of this, Spock?"
  "I may be able to affect a translation," he
replied. "The basic voice pattern does not
exhibit any impossible aural characteristics. Perhaps
we are deceived as to its potential complexity by sheer
age."
  A sudden change seemed to come over the voice of the
ancient speaker. His speech was louder now, more
insistent. McCoy glanced back at the triple
door. Scott followed the doctor's glance with a
worried one of his on
  The green and light-blue bands of energy sparking
across its surface Severe thicker, less
intermittent than before. Whatever was at world on the
incredibly tough alloy was definitely working its
way through
  ""Hurry up, Spock."
  "Patience, Doctor." He activated some
switches on the
  42 STAR TREK LOG ORB
  tricorder. Leaving the compact instrument, he
started to scan the console, examining switches and
dials.
  Eventually he seemed to find what he was looking
for. He removed the tricorder from his shoulder and
placed it carefully on the panel, setting it on
top of a small sixsided grid set into the metal.
A last switch depressed on the tricorder and then
he stepped back, turning to watch the screen.
  Instantly, the voice of the alien started coming from the
tricorder speaker instead of from the
mirror-screen. The chittering sounds began to seem
less garbled, more comprehensible. Blank spaces in
the speech replaced chitters, where the tricorder's
marvelous abilities were unable to translate
delicacies of alien syntax.
  "Danger . . . (more chittering sounds) . . . star
. . . drawn to it . . ."
  Spock reached up and made some final, fine
adjustments to the "corder. The voice was suddenly
clear and understandable in the huge chamber.
  "... Rather than carry this malevolent life form
to other worlds," came the voice from across time, "we have
decided to destroy our own ship. The Them had been
trapped here by the tremendous
  gravity-well of the dead 6un. So it must
remain So, sadly, must we. We have studied the
problem quite thoroughly in the time remaining. There is no
other solution."
  Kirk desperately lavished he could read the
expressions on the face of the speaker.
  "The others are dead. Only I am left,
to give warning. If you are understanding this message,
comprehend that you are protected in this room only for the
moment. The Thing . . . grows ever stronger . . . it
wants . . ."
  A spectacular flare of green
phosphorescence erupted from the region of the
doorway. The voice of the speaking alien was drowned
out by a violent, hysterical flow of pure energy.
Then the three segments of the door exploded inward as
though struck by a small meteor.
  The shock threw Dr. McCoy and Scott off
the dais. Kirk and Spock were knocked down, but
managed to hold onto the control chair and console.
Fortunately, the splin
  STAR TRBR LOG Of 43
  ters of flying metal from the ruined door somehow
missed everyone.
  The great curved mirror-screen began
to vibrate, shiver as tremendous unrestrained power
was played through it. A wash of stunning olivine
boomed across the surface, absorbing the milky
opalescence, drowning out all other colors. There was
a deep rumbling.
  The polished surface started to quiver at
fantastic speed, then to flow. A crackling sound
followed, then another, and another as shards of
mirror material broke free, fell from the
screen to the noon Another powerful explosion tore
the remainder of the wonderful device into tiny
pieces of shining metal and blew a deep hole in
the structure of the interior pod wale
  Clinging desperately to the unsteady, rocking
console, Kirk and Spock watched as even the
smallest fragment of mirror tilde creen was
enveloped in soft green light. Each bit was then
melted into a tiny, shapeless blob of hot metal.
  At that point the command chair and console began
to glow faintly green. Spock noticed it just in
time.
  "Off, Captainl"
  Kirk was already jumping clear. Seconds later
the tempt porary control confer began to glow
white-hot beneath enveloping green mists, then to run and
drip like hot buttes
  All around the great chamber, the other previously
untouched mechanisms and devices started to show the now
deadly green fire.
  Kirk had a supportive arm around a dazed but
otherwise unhurt Scott. Spock aided
McCoy, who likewise had only been stunned.
  "Out of herel" Kirk shouted into space.
""Hurryl" Several pseudopods of
translucent green started to advance towards them from
various melting panels.
  The men froze. Glaring light played suddenly
over their forms. They dissolved, became four small
shapeless masses of colored particles.
  "... Located them right after you pinned down the area
of that last explosion, Mr. Sulu," said
Transporter Chief Kyle into the intercom. His
hands were smoothly operating the transporter controls
as he spoke.
  44 STAR TRBX LOG ONE
  "Locked on and beaming them aboard," he
  finished.
  "Good work, Chief." Uhura's voice echoed
back over the grid from the distant bridge. y
thought we'd lost them when we were first cut off. And then
when the pod they entered started to blow . . ."
  Kyle looked up into the transporter alcove,
saw flashing pillars beginning to take on solid,
familiar outlines.
  "Piece of cake, matm. They're coming through
now."
  The gleaming cylinders continued to build and take
bipedal form. Kyle studied his dials and
indicators intently, moved the levers down the final
notch.
  Kirk was in the foremost transporter
disk. He blinked, took in the transporter
room at a glance, and grinned in relief at
Kyle. His expression changed fast when he
noticed the chief's face. Kyle wore the
strangest expression, of shock, perhaps. He was staring
and pointing at Kirk no, not at him, behind him.
  "Chief," he began, "hvhat's the his
  "Captaint" Kyle finally managed to gasp out,
gesturing. "Something beamed aboard with your" Kirk
whirled, looked behind him. So did Spock and
Scott and McCoy.
  The fifth disk was occupied . . . by a glowing and
pulse tog shapeless green mass.
  ""Transport it bacl: outl" In an
instant Kirk was dashing for the transporter console
where the chief stood frozen. He dove for the
activating switch. He'd think about saving Spock
and McCoy and Scott later.
  Too late.
  The entire transporter room was suddenly
drenched in light the color of deep rain forests, in
diffused energy that tingled and sent waves of terror
over every man present. Then the walls seemed
to suck up the light like a sponge.
  Kirk recovered, his hand precious
centimeters short of the activating lever. Might as
well have been parsecs. Standing slowly he looked
around and saw that Spock and the others were staring at the
walls. Then he noticed it also. The walls of the
transporter chamber were now radiating a faint,
greenish glow.
  At the same instant a roar of sound burst from the
  STAR TREK LOG ONF 45
  ship's speakers. A bizarre, untranslatable,
somehow triumphant cry. It was repeated, once.
  In space, the Enterprise infinitely tiny
compared to the giant alien starship suddenly flared with a
halo of pale green. Then the seething mist thinned as
the ship's hull seemed to reabsorb the color
into itself.
  Kirk let out his breath slowly, trying
to regularise his metabolism.
  "Mr. Scott, are you all right?" The engineer was
staring blankly at the no longer friendly walls. His
gaze held hints of panic.
  4'MR. SCOTT!"
  The engineer shook at the verbal blast, but it was
what
  vas needed. He drew himself up, holding his right
shoulder with his free arm.
  "Yes, Captain. This is just a bruise. But
what . . . ?"
  "Bones?"
  McCoy rose slowly from his kneeling position
on the platform, brushed at his lower back and
grimaced, then nodded.
  "I'll be all right, Jim."
  Two unrelenting forces flowed through the EnterpAse
then. A green something that had lived at least three
hundred million years ago now permeated the
entire ship, and a holocaust of thought racing through the
mind of her captain, who had lived somewhat less.
  IV
  Kirk, Spock, and Scott moved toward the
bridge. Despite his continuing curiosity,
McCoy had left them at another level. His
job was elsewhere now.
  46 STAR TREK LOO ONE
  To their credit, the crew on the bridge had
remained reasonably calm. Less highly trained
personnel might have done something drastic. The three
returning officers took up their regular stations.
A glance served to pass command back from Uhura
to Kirk. They had no time to waste on formalities.
  Reports were starting to filter onto the
bridge from the rest of the ship as different sections
responded to Kirk's request for status
reports. His initial nervousnesss relaxed, but
did not disappear, as section after section reported
neither damage nor loss of life no harm done by the
strange discharge of green energy.
  Or whatever it was.
  He sighed as Uhura relayed the report he
most wanted to hear.
  "Sick Bay reports, sir. Dr. McCoy
on alert no injuries."
  "No damage to engines or hull structure,
Captain," came Scott's report a moment
later.
  So the Enterprzse was still healthy, organically and
inorganicaUy. That was something, at least. They'd
been given some time.
  But how much7
  "Automatic bridge defence system
activated and operating, Captain." This from
Spock.
  Kirk spared an idle checking glance up and behind.
A small metal globe, looking rather like a child's
toy ball studded- with tiny pipes Boar protruded
downward from a small hatch in the ceiling.
A tiny red light on its side winked on, showing that
the automatic phaser mechanism was powered up and
ready to deal with any intruder.
  Kirk had sees the last-gasp defences of the
enormous alien ship fail in an attempt to halt
the forays of the green light. He didn't pin much
faith on the powerful phaser.
  He nodded in acknowledgment and turned to study the
main viewscreen. The now familiar shape of the
ancient traveler, in reduced perspective, still
coated against the vast blackness of dead sun, empty
space. He thought a moment, then activated the
chair comm unit, leaning slightly forward to project
clearly.
  "Uhura, give me all intership speakers.
Open channel"
  - STAR TRBR L tilde ONB 47
  "Channels open, Captain."
  "All sections are to remain on full alert
until further notice. Section reports from
Sick Bay indicate your companions are all
unharmed. Engineering reports no damage to the
ship. Nevertheless you will remain on full alert
until told otherwise. All personnel will wear
. . ." He caught himself. He'd almost said
"will wear sidearms."
  What would they shoot at green light7
  "AU personnel will wear clothes." Sulu and
Scott tried to stifle laughs, failed. McCoy
would have approved. He tried to think of something
brilliant to conclude with, failed as usual.
"Everybody do your job . . . be ready for
developments .. . and relax. Further orders and
information will be forthcoming."
  He switched off the communicator and found that
everyone was watching him expectantly.
  "So we're in great shape, aren't we? But
whatever was on that ship was and he indicated the floating
alien starship, "used our transporter beam to come
aboard when it was good slid ready. I don't think
there's any question but that it allowed the alien's defense
system to jam our communicators, the transporter,
and our phasers until it was prepared to board the
Enterpnse itself."
  "This in itself says that it has some limitations,
Captain," suggested Spock. "R it was forced
to rely on our transporter, then it seems certain
it cannot move freely through space."
  "That's true. We may have occasion to hope it
has other limitations, Spock."
  "That alien commander, sir," said Scott slowly,
choosing his words with care. "At least, I assume it
was the commander. His message confirmed that they had
to destroy themselves. Why?"
  Kirk didn't reply. He sat and stared
closely at his left foot. It was as good a
subject to focus concentration on as anything Use.
Staring at Uhura would be more pleasant, but would have the
opposite effect. Despite his concentracom tion
he was aware that everyone was still watching him, waiting.
As usual, they expected him to get them out of this.
It was so goddamn unfairl
  48 STAR TREK LOG Of
  Kirk's opinion was not unique in the thoughts of
captains.
  When he finally spoke, the words came slow but
clear.
  "Until we learn more about this creature.
Scotty, perbledaps we should be prepared to do the
same."
  He paused, but ScoKnowledge wasn't going to help
him out on this one. He'd have to say the fronds himself.
  "Take two of your men and arm the self-destruct
mechanism in the engine core."
  "Sir?"
  "You heard, Mr. ScoK. Carry out your
orders."
  ScoKnowledge came erect, snapped off a sharp
salute.
  "Aye, girl""
  An interval of solemn, respectful silence
followed as the chief engineer left the bridge He
could have delegated the task to his assistants, but that
was not Montgomery Scott's way
  "Mr. Spock, any change in the Enterprises
readings? Anything to indicate what this creature may
be up to?"
  "Nothing obvious or immediate, Captain. We are
registering a slightly higher than normal
magnetic flux. It's not dangerous not as it reads
now. However, if it should go higher ... and the level
isn't constant. It appears to be fluctuating
irregularly. There is some slight pattern, some
half rhythm to these pulsations, but nothing
  recognisable enough to . . ."
  Kirk barely heard the rest. "Like the beating of a
heart," ho muttered, half to himself.
  A light blinked on wddenIy on Uhura's
board. No one turned immediately to watch her. At the
moment, private thoughts were of greater
  importance.
  "Bridge here." She paused, listening. Her
life-support aura formed a lemon-colored
nimbus around her, contrasting sharply with the red uniform
of a communications officer.
  "What?" The loud exclamation brought Kirk
around. "Thank you, Lieutenant." She swiveled
to face the (,aptain. Her voice was grim.
  "Sir, decks five and six report shutdown
of all life-support systems." An
anticipatory shudder seemed to run
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 49
  through the bridge. "They'd just gone over
to life-support belts there was barely enough time."
  She paused.
  "If you hadn't given the order for full sir
..." She left the obvious unsaid.
  "What about manual override?" Uhura shook
her head.
  "According to the officers in charge, manual overrides
have failed to respond. and his
  The raucous blare of the general alarm drowned out
her concluding statements and all other sounds on the
bridge. Kirk spoke angrily.
  "Cut that Mr. Sutu."
  Flashing lights and siren died quickly. He
shifted in his chair. "Mr. Spockl"
  "Still checking, Captain," came the science
offlcer's calm, reassuring tones. "Here it is
trouble in the engineering core, Captain."
  "Damn. Any injuries?"
  "I do not know, Captain. Apparently the atann
was sounded, but no one remained at the
  engineering communicator to supply answers
to queries."
  Kir right-brace shook his head in disbelief.
Didn't alone remember his training?
  "Bridge to Sick Bay," he began, speaking
into the communicator he'd been pounding for the last ten
minutes. "Bones, get down to Lngineering
Central, on the double. No, I don't know what
it is, but that's where the general alarm was sounded."
Another call switch down.
  "Life-Support Central . . . LI
tilde SUPPORTI"
  "Life Support here . . . Lt. CrandaDo,
sir."
  "Get on those dead systems on decks fire and
six, Lieutenant. Draw any additional
personnel you need from other sections, but get
on theml" If the hard-pressed Crandall desired
to reply, she didn't get the chance. Kirk was already
heading for the elevator with Spock close behind.
  The lights in the elevators ticking off the
different decks seemed to pass with maddening slowness.
  "What now, Spock?" he muttered tightly.
  ""I cannot say, Captain but I venture
to guess that the problems in engineering, as well as in
life-support, are due
  50 STAR ORBS BOO ONB
  to the conscious intervention of the creature that managed
to beam aboard with us."
  "Yes, of course but what's it doing, Spock?
Conscious, perhaps, but is it random or gLuded
consciousness that's at work here? What's its
purpose? Or does it have one?"
  "Xenopsychology is not one of my
specialties, Captain. At this stage we can
only be certain that its intentions are both
destructive and combative in nature whether guided
by intelligence we cannot yet say for sure, though its
actions would tend to suppport such a hypothesis."
  The light to the engineering core banked solid
green, inviting egress.
  Kirk smiled sourly. "Bones was Aght
about your facility for understatement. "Combative!""
They stepped out.
  This was the real heart of the Enterprise, JUS-THAT
as the bridge was her "brain." Awesome energies
worked quietly here, tremendous force was channeled,
contained, kept domesticated. It was an awkward
place to have trouble.
  A number of engineers, technicians, and a few
security personnel were clustered at the far end of the
chamber. They shifted, moving wordlessly aside as
Kirk and Spock approached. Dr. McCoy was
already there, kneeling next to a pardy opened
hatchway.
  The hatch leading to the maintainance tube that in turn
led out to the central core was closed nearly all the
way. Nearly, because chief engineer Scott was
holding it open. He was pinned securely between the
enormous weight of the
  power-activated hatch cover and the noon It
pressed against his waist, and the lime-yellow glow of his
life-support force-field eared redly at the
point of contact.
  Another few steps and Kirk divas able
to kneel next to the trapped engineer. Scott
looked up at him and smiled grimly.
He was in no real pain, as yet. Kirk touched the
smooth metal of the hatch cover its engaged closing
mechanism now
  humming softly, irregularly and felt as
helpless as it was possible for a starship captain
to feel.
  Spock had detached himself from the group and had
moved immediately to the nearby control panel. Now he
was conferring intently with the assistant engineer in charge.
The assistant was a thin young man with a wisp of
  STAR TRBR LOG ONB 51
  blond mustache and an earnest expression. Just
now he was perspiring heavily.
  Meanwhile Kirk managed to dredge up a
smile, somehow. It wasn't much, but Scott
apparently appreciated it. He smiled back.
  "How are you doing, Scotty?" Kirk finally said
to break the silence.
  "Y'm all right, sir." Kirk reflected on
how adversity made liars of all men. Scott's
voice was tinged with nervousness, if not pain. "There's
a good side to everything, I suppose. If the
general alarm hadn't been given, I wouldn't have
been wearing my life-support belt. And if the
belt hadn't been activated, well was
he grinned faintly, "there'd be two of me now."
  "The force-field M his belt won't hold
against that kind of constant pressure for long Jim."
noted McCoy softly. Kirk, who was about
to admonish McCoy for mentioning it so loudly,
reflected that if anyone knew the capabilities
and limitations of the belt fields, it was Scott.
  "I know that, Bones." He looked over toward the
control panel. "Override system, Mr.
Spock. Open the core hatch."
  Scott shook his head slowly.
  "It's no good, Captain The mechanism's been
frozen in the close mode. We tried everything."
  Spock looked over from his position at the
controls.
  "Engineer Scott is correct, sir. Something
has jammed all circuits. Very effectively,
too."
  Think . . . think . . . I Kirk studied the
massive hatch cover closely, sought ideas in the
intermittent hum of the servomotor.
  "Scatty, is there a manual device for handling
this baby?"
  "No, sir. Its designers never envisioned a
situation where it might be necessary to move such a
heavy, vital piece of machinery by hand. Security
has something to do with it. too. Anvhow. the last command
it received was to close. Only the computer can tell it
otherwise, sir, and it's blocked, as Mr.
Spock says. Nothin" mere muscles can do is
gain' to force it backwards against that command."
  As he finished, a desperately bright flare of
red came
  52 STAR TRBX LOG ONE
  from the place where the cover rested against his
forcefield and waist. He squirmed
uncomfortably. The brighter flare was the belt's way
of warning its wearer that they were approaching a
critical point.
  "Gettin'a little weak, sir," he said
unnecessarily.
  lairs spun and glared at the watching engineers and
technicians. "Well, what are you all mooning
at? The Em terprzse can survive without one hatch
cover. We'll have to. Maybe we can jury-rig
an emergency radiation shield. Get those cutter
beams out, Movet"
  "tilde Yes, sir!" replied one of the
mesmerised engineers. Then they an seemed to be
moving at once, like an army of toy
soldiers.
  Kirk studied his trapped chief engineer, and
Scott smiled reassuringly back at him. Which was
damned odd. It ought to be the other way around, he
reflected. But that
  vas the kind of person Scott was always warned about
others first. Quiet, more reserved than Spock in
some ways, less ebullient than McCoy,
Kirk tried to think of some way to make small
tally, but nothing that came to mind seemed in any way
appropriate.
  Despite the fact that starship captains were not
permitted the option of being maudlin, for the moment, at
least, the alien invader was completely forgotten.
  Two of the engineers finaRy returned and began
setting up a complicated arrangement of spools and
spheres and silicon spirals on a flexible
tripod. Kirk backed away. One of the engineers
gave a ready signal. Scott bent his head down
to his chest and turned away as much as he could,
covering his face with his army Both engineers wore
thick goggles.
  Kirk put his own hands over his eyes to shield
himself There was a soft click. An incredibly
brilliant, seemingly solid line of
violent, violet light lanced out from the tip of the
heavy-duty cutter. It touched one of the thick hinge
at the back of the hatch cover.
  immediately the hinge began to glow a deep red, shading
rapidly to white. A moment more and the metal began
to flow like grey milk. The hissing of the melting
metal was the only sound in the engineering section.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 53
  What seemed like ages later there was a dull
snap, and the hinge was cut through. The engineers instantly
switched off the cutter. Now pressing shut with only
a single activated hinge, the hatch cover was canted
at a definite awkward angle. Scott was just able
to struggle free,
  arefully avoiding the stin white-hot area where the
one hinge had been melted away.
  Kirk gave him a hand up. The chief was
unhurt, only badly shaken.
  "Be nice to be able to be in two places at the
same time, sir," he commented. "but I don't
fancy managin" it in quite this way. In the final
reckoning it's a mite too divisible."
  Sulu's voice sounded over the open intercom before
Kirk could reply.
  "Bridge to Captain Kirk."
  He moved to stand near the pickup. "What is it,
Sulu?"
  "Sir, something's taken over the ship's phaser
banksl They're locking on the alien starship."
  Now what? He dismissed the engineers and security
men to their normal duties, then moved to the small
wallscreen set close by the communicator. A quick
touch and once more they were treated to a view of the
magnificent, ancient vessel.
  Suddenly, two thick beams of destroying energy
licked out. They struck the alien, struck again.
Huge sections of metallic lacework were blasted
apart. Archwork and shattered pods disappeared as bolt
after bolt of phaser energy tore at the helpless
derelict. Bits and pieces vanished in a
maelstrom of organised destruction.
  Torn free and impelled by the force of the Chasers'
power, segments of the ship began to spin end over end.
They dropped out of ages-old orbit, falling into the
crushing gravity-well of the waiting dead sun.
Kirk's comment came in a whisper.
  "The creature has no respect for beauty,
either."
  "Of history, Captain," Spock added,
equally shocked by the invader's actions.
"All that knowledge . . . all those potential discoveries
lost forever."
  "Perhaps even more, Mr. Spock."
  54 STAR TREK LOG Of
  Sulu showed obvious relief when the others
reappeared on the bridge. He'd watched the
dissolution of the alien vessel and experienced an
unusual feeling of impotence as the phaser banks,
usually under his control, failed to respond to repeated
attempts to halt firing.
  Kirk listened to his helmsman's comments as he
resumed his command position.
  "Phaser banks were off, Captain. They
activated themselves. I tried, sir," he
half-pleaded, "but his
  "Override systems refused to respond?"
  "Yes, sir. How did you know, sir?"
  "The same thing just happened in engineering, Mr.
Sulu," informed Spock. "The same thing which has
affected the life-support systems on decks
five and sin About all that can be said in favor of our
visitor is that * is not capricious. It is
clearly about some private plan of its own. One which
we seem quite unable to alter."
  "If we only knew what it wants!"
Kirk muttered through clenched teeth. The familiar
hiss of the elevator doors operating sounded. He
turned to see Scott and Dr. McCoy appear.
  "No internal damage, Jim," said McCoy,
nodding in the chief engineer's direction. "He's
fine."
  Scott's expression, however, was less
encouraging.
  "Let's have it, Scotty. Nothing you can say could
really upset me any further not now."
  "Sir, we cannot get into the core. All exits
are sealed. And that means . . ."
  "That you can't arm the Enterpr tilde se's
  self-destruct mechanism. What about cutter
beams? They still seem to work. Can't you cut your way
. . . ?" He paused. Scott was shaking his head
slowly.
  "They might've worked a little while ago, sir.
They're drained of all energy now. Apparently this
creature has to sense something in operation before it can
drain that something of power, or counter its command source.
I don't pretend to understand how the creature does
it, but there isn't a cutting or weldin' or seaming
tool in the whole engineering section putting out enough
juice to rearrange a loaf of stale
bread."
  "Captain was Kirk turned his gaze to Uhura.
  "What new good news do you have now,
  Lieutenant?"
  STAR TREE ONB 55
  "Cargo holds three, four, and five report
shutdown of life-support systems. They've gone
to belt-support."
  '1errific tilde that's just marveloust" He
spared a glance for the emergency telltales located
at Scott's station. Spotted among the normal
greens and blues were an uncomfortablv large
number of flashing reds. Even one of the galley
lights was winking crimson.
  "what the hell would the thing want in the galley?"
  "Sir?" asked Spock, failing to sense the
irony in Kirk's voice
  "Power is now out on all but key levels.
Captain," informed Scott. 'I'm getting a
strong magnetic flux reading on all out decks."
  "Captaint" Uhura shouted. She was staring in
disbelief at her instruments. "Something's going through every
computer bank on board. every microspool, every
tape, every storage bin and fast!"
  Spock had backed slightly away from
his station, watching while his dials and checkouts gave
back impos tilde sible readings. Sulu's hands
hovered hesitantly over his own console. The
telltales of all the bridge computer systems
navigation, library, communications. engineering were
alive with myriad flashing, sparkling lights. All
indication. revere that information was being processed through
them simultaneously at an unbelievable rate.
  Then the double-red local emergency lights went
on, and the bridge alarm howled. They had very little
autonomy left or time. tilde Kirk was going
to do anything he'd have to do it now. His mind raced.
One last computer was as yet uncontrolled,
unread, by the invader a delicate marvel that could also
process information with more insight, if not more speed,
than all the onboard ship computers put together.
  "Spock," he murmured finally, "can you rig a
tem- porary, low-frequency shield, like the one we
found on the alien ship, for our own navigation
console?"
  Spock hesitated briefly. "It would have to be
a very small field, Captain."
  "That's all right, Mr. Spock. Just the
navigation console. I don't expect you to be able
to whip up a conve
  56 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  nienteainvader-proof, bridge defense system in
a couple of minutes. We're short on time."
  That was enough for Spock. He bent over the navigation
console and started to work smoothly, efficiently,
among the instruments. Occasionally he asked Sulu for
help and advice on this or that particular piece of
circuitry or had him depress this or the other
switch at a certain time.
  Meanwhile, the force-fields of both men flared and
gleamed bright as Spock played with local but powerful
energies. The resulting radiance and field
interaction gave each man a satanic
silhouette.
  Scott was bursting to complain about the lack of
adept quate safety precautions for such work, but
he managed to contain himself. They had no time to be
careful anymore.
  After an interval of minutes that seemed like years,
Spock stood and walked back to his station.
Scott eyed the critical meters on his board and
let out a sigh of relief.
  It's activated and in operation, Captain but
only for an area three meters square."
  "How's the flux reading there now?"
Kirk asked. Spock took his tricorder off a
rack and moved back to stand close by the shielded
section of console. He played the compact instrument
over the affected section.
  "Negative reading, Captain. The shielded
area is completely normal." He moved the
tricorder randomly over other sections of the helm.
"Especially now, compared to wbat t e rest of the
panel reads. Readings here are rising
  McCoy took a couple of steps forward and stared
at the slightly lime-yellow section of shielded
console in disbelief.
  "Jim, you don't think this is going to help?
Whatever this monster is, it's survived cons alone
in a dead, empty hulk. All it has to do here is
outlast us and take over n
  Kirk's reply was rich with a certain morbid
satisfaction.
  "No, Bones. It is obviously trapped here
by the gravitational power of the negative star-mass.
We have already ascertained that it cannot travel freely
in open space. Therefore it doubly needs a starship
this starshi tilde to
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 57
  break free. And it must also need a
crew to man it. Otherwise it would have left here long
ago in the alien vessel we explored. Because his
  Further elaboration was cut off as the room
suddenly was bathed in shades of color as
brilliant as cut emerald. Something . . .
spoke using the computer speakers. The phrasing
divas oddly rushed, childishly impatient. But it
was not the impatience of uncertainty, for no voice was
more self-assured, more fully confident than this.
  This is what it said.
  "YOU ARE CORRECT, CAPTAIN JAMES
T.
  KIRK! I POSSESS A GREAT MANY
ABILITIES.
  BUT THE ABILITY TO BREAK PREB OF
THE
  PULL OF THIS GRAVITY-WELL IS NOT
ONE
  OF THEM. SO I DID . . . I DO .
. . NBED A STARSHIP. NOW I HAVE ONE."
  The voice rose to a shrill, almost hysterical
scream.
  "A BODY . . . TO HAVE A BODY . .
. TO
  HAVE FORM . . . SOLID,
SENSUOUS, AGATNI
  SO LONG . . . SO TERRIBLY LONG:"
  The voice ended abruptly. The flashing lights
on the computer telltales suddenly died. Only the
normal blink of standard activity now registered.
If anything, the panels were even quieter than
usual.
  Spock ventured back to his library station and
tried the controls. They worked normally. Only their
readings and the information they now provided were abnormal.
He studied them a moment, then looked back at
Kirk.
  "It has absorbed the computer banks,
Captain. All of them. Language was naturally
but one small section of the total information it
gleaned."
  Kirk eyed the walls thoughtfully, trying
to penetrate to the heart of the softly ominous green
glow that pulsed there.
  "All the information in an the worlds of the Federation
won't give it what it needs, Spock. A
manipulative digit. In going through your library,
I'm sure it discovered that we carry no
manipulative robots on board that it could
control."
  If the captain expected that statement to provoke
the creature, he failed. The alien seemed to have
only a single tone of voice. One continuous flow
of nervous emotion. The voice was a mirror image
of its actions violent
  58 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  and quick. It ignored the mild sarcasm, if indeed
it was sensible to such subtleties, and spoke with
single-minded purpose.
  "YOU WILL NOW REMOVE THE STATIC
  SEIIBLD PROM THE NAVIGATION
  CONSOLE, CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK."
  Kirk considered his reply carefully. It might
still be posssible to reason with this thing.
  "You've shut down life-support systems and
threatened the lives of my crew. I'll remove the
static shield if you restore those systems first."
  As he half-expected, even that modest request
was denied. No, not even denied. It was ignored,
treated as unworthy of comment. For this being, nothing
existed outside of self.
  "ALL NONPSSBNTIAL SYSTEMS HAVE
  BBBN EXTINGUISHBD IN THE INTBRBSTS
  OF SIMPLIFYING CONTROL. OBBY
MBI""
  That made his decision simpler, if not more
pleasant.
  "And if I refuse?"
  A phaser beam darted out of nowhere as Kirk
rose in the command chair. No, it issued from . . .
the automatic bridge defense systeml The beam
impacted on his forcefield squarely and knocked
him stumbling into a bulkhead.
  "OBBY ME-THAT" the alien thundered from all
  speakers.
  Kirk tried to dodge out of the phaser's line of
fire and searched frantically for cover. But he
couldn't dodge the beam of the phaser anymore than
one could escape sun in a desert. As for finding
cover, the automatic defense system was very
thorough. It had been carefully designed to permit
a hostile intruder no cover.
  The beam cut off for seconds, shot out agaul,
and slammed him against a wall. It pinned him there like
some shriveled, colorful insect. His force-field
flared pink, then red, turning slowly to a deep
crimson. Beads of sweat began to form on his
forehead. Though it hadn't broken through, the intense
concentration of heat was starting to hurt like blazes. He
felt himself weakening, slumped against the
wall.
  "Captain!"
  Spock ran toward him, stopped. The beam left
Kirk for
  STAR TRIM ONB 59
  a split second, affording him little relief. It
moved to Spock. But when the science officer remained
frozen in place, it swung back to batter again at
Kirk's shield.
  Spock took a heavy, metal-spired reference
manual from a shelf and stepped quickly toward the
bridge defense module. As he threw, the
phaser beam looped around and struck at his ankles.
The thrown book fell far short, bounced over the
command chair. Moving higher the powerful beam shoved
Spock back against the base of the library computer.
Then it shifted slightly and he was washed down the
floor along the wall like a leaf in the
  ip of a powerful hose.
  It finally pinned him upright against a far bulkhead,
holding him there until his force-field also flared
pink, red, and crimson.
  Kirk put a hand to his singed chest and rolled
over slowly. He staggered to his feet. The first thing
he saw was Spock, pinned up against the
wall. Swaying, he took a step toward the science
officer. It was the shock of the near-fatal phaser
assault that had affected him, more than any actual
physical damage. He knew what an
uncontrolled phaser of even mild strength could do
to something as fragile as a human body.
  At that moment there was a deep red flare, almost
black, from Spock's life-support belt. Then
his force-field was gone, overloaded by the concentration of
energy from the phaser.
  Immediately the beam stepped down to low power. It
continued to focus on the center of Spock's chest.
Kirk could have continued to advance, but now dared not.
  From somewhere in the depths of the ship, from all around
them, the implacable alien consciousness spoke.
  "OBBY MB-LIKE"
  It was Kirk's turn to scream.
  4'allyou'll hurt him!"'7
  "REMOVE THE STATIC SHIELD PROM
THE
  DRUB CONTROBS AND NA tilde GA
tilde ON
  PANEL' DO IT NOW-LIKE"
  No hint of compassion not even a mention of
Spock. There was absolutely no doubt
in Kirk's mind that the creature would kill Spock
slowly, without thought.
  60 STAR TRY ONE
  The subject Iying under that threat still had his
voice, if not his mobility.
  ""No, Captain!"
  The phaser beam intensified ever so lightly. No
cry of pain escaped Spock's lips, but he
writhed. A tensing in the knuckles showed what he was
feeling. Inwardly, Kirk slumped.
  "I will obey. Let him go."
  As quickly as that, the phaser beam was gone. Spock
stood leaning against the wall for a moment longer. Then his
legs gave way under him and he collapsed to the
floor. Kirk took a step in his direction, but that
damnable, allseeing voice interrupted again,
bellowing.
  "NOW! IGNORE THE PABBBN BIPED AND
  PROCBBD We THB FIRED RBMOVAB!"
  He turned and started reluctantly to the
helm-navigation console. McCoy moved
to Spock's side. There was a small but neat hole
in the confer of the science offlcer's shirt. McCoy
dug out a tiny spray vial and began to work on the
injury
  Kirk thought furiously. It was the end of everything
unless . . .
  He looked down at his chest, where he'd been
lightly burned . . . Iower, to his stomach. His
hand slipped slowly ever so slowly, down to his
life-support belt.
  "It's too fast for us, Doctor," Kirk said
quickly. "So don't try deactivating the defense
module with one of your sprays." McCoy looked
up, puzzled.
  Had the alien learned enough to read a human
expression?
  It had not. Mc)cceaoy's response was to look
at Kirk. In doing so he automatically brought the
spray vial away from Spock, and up. The phaser
shifted to cover McCoy and the almost awake Spock.
  In that brief, unguarded instant Kirk whipped
free his life-support belt with one hand, hit a
switch on the console with the other, and dropped the
activated belt across a certain unshielded section
of it. He jumped clear as the panel erupted in
sparks and fiery flashes.
  He'd been gambling that the creature wouldn't
turn off
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 61
  the bridge life-support systems and risk
killing them alp He was right.
  But the phaser beam swung to burn an opening in the
floor. Desperately he rolled to get away from
it. It eventually caught up with him at the other end
of the helm console. Stopping, the beam focused just a
few centimeters to one side of his head. He could
feel the deadly heat on his cheek. The beam had
been raised to killing force.
  "REPAIR THE WARP-DRIVB CONTROLS!
  OBEY MEI",
  The now maddened voice had risen to a
  tremulous shriek.
  Kirk got to his feet slowly, cautiously,
making sure he made no rapid gestures that
might be misinterpreted by the trigger-happy alien.
As he rose the beam stayed centered parallel to his
skull. He walked to the command chair.
  "Mr. Scott."
  ""Yes, sir?"
  "The warp tilde rive controls have burned out.
Commence repairs immediately. Install the auxiliary
bypass system."
  If Scott suspected anything, he gave no
sign.
  "Aye, Captain." He looked around, his gaze
coming to rest on the somnolent bridge defense
mechanism. It was as good a point to direct his
voice to as any.
  'ally'll need some cuttin" and repairin'
tools." He pointed to a nearby locker. "I can
get what I need in there if you'll allow them
to energise."
  "YES, YBS-THAT" came the anxious voice.
"BUT MAKE NO
  62 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  WRONG MOTIONS. I HAVE THB ENTIRE
  WARP-DRIVE AUXILIARY BYPASS
SYSTEM
  AND REPAIR PROCEDURE FROM YOUR
  OWN COMPUTER RECORDS. HURRYI'"
  "Do as it says, Mr. Scott."
  "Aye, Captain," Scott replied, keeping
a determined pokerface. Not that he knew what
Kirk had in mind, but he suspected the captain was
up to something. And it was up to him to give Kirk as much
time as posssible to prepare for it.
  He walked slowly to the locker, at the same time
being careful not to move unnaturally and thus make the
creature suspicious. There was a nervous
moment as he energized the precision microwelder.
SmaUs as it was, it could still easily burn a
hole even in a bridge defense modulecom if
given the time.
  However, the alien apparently felt secure in
its control It permitted him the necessary small tool.
He walked to the fused section of helm, examined
it, and shook his head like a doctor clucking over a
sick patient.
  Then he moved to the back of the bridge, near
Uhura's station, and a small wall panel that needed
to be removed. Controls and switching points were
revealed within. There were also several long coils of
fine cable.
  As he brought the activated welder close and
began to make the necessary connections, the voice again
reverberated around the bridge.
  "ANY ATTEMPT TO SABOTAGE THB
  AUXILIARY WARPDRIVE CONTROLS,
  CHIRP BNGINBER MONTGOMERY SCOTT,
  WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE
  OBSTRUCTION OF ALL OTHER BRIDGE
  PERSONNEL. I WOULD RATHER NOT
  RESORT TO THB USE OF INFERIOR,
  SECONDARY PERSONNEL TO CARRY
OUT
  MY COMMANDS BUT I WILL NOT
  HBSITATEI"
  "I'll be sure to try and keep that in mind,"
Scott mumbled, concentrating on the delicate work
at hand.
  Spock was on his feet again. He touched his chest
once, looked at McCoy.
  "A fine, professional job, Doctor.
Fortunately, your medicine is more effective than
your jokes."
  For once, McCoy didn't feel up to a
reply.
  The science officer walked over to stand next
to Kirk. Both faced casually away from the bridge
defense system's
  STAR TREE LOG ONB 63
  video pickup. Apparently the creature's
abilities did not also include mind reading. It
had divined nothing of Kirk's series of delaying
actions beyond their immediate practical effects.
  The defense sphere's sound pickups were not
designed to detect whispering. It was primarily a
visual device. Normal ship noises would have
drowned out soft talk and only confused an
efficient mechanism. So the two men felt
reasonably secure in conversing.
  "Let's have it all, Spock. You've had enough
experience with this creature's actions to have formed some
solid opinions about it, at least. What are we
dealing with?"
  Spock rubbed his chest again. "Beyond its undeniable
belligerence, Captain, we know nothing about its
mental composition. We can theorize more thoroughly about
its physical makeup.
  "It seems to be some form of pure energy
organism, without much actual mass, and it is
essentially electromagnetic in nature. At the
same time, it appears capable of a strong parasitic
relationship with a solid host body. A starship could
provide such a body, it seems.
  "It appears to utilize the electronic network
of the En" terpr tilde se the way a man or
Vulcan uses the nervous system of his body. It
has, in effect, become the Enterpnse. We, on
the other hand, are only marginally beneficial
organisms in its structure, like the white
corpuscles in human blood. That is, some of us
are. Apparently it regards most of the crew as
unwelcome growths germs simply to be
disposed of as rapidly and with as little effort as possible.
  "And, Captain, the computer library still
operates. It has indicated that the flux readings
are growing in strength. The longer this being has to adjust
to its new body, the stronger and more secure it
grows."
  Kirk dropped his voice even lower. If the
alien could somehow pick it up and understand it, then all
was lost. But it had given no sign of being able to so
far. And devilish subtlety did not seem to be
one of its characteristics. They had no choice but to try.
Spock was looking at him expectantly and Kirk
remembered that he couldn't read minds, either.
  "The slingshot effect, to throw us free of this
gravity
  64 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  and out of orbit can you do the necessary math in your mind,
Spock? I've got reasons for not using the
navigation computer."
  Spock nodded. "I see. Yes, the alien would
know. I believe I can, Captain. Soon I will
to aid Mr. Scott, but my mind and hands can
operate on different projects at the same time."
  Kirk turned and raised his voice as he
addressed the rotating sphere of the defense
mechanism.
  "The chief engineer will need assistance from my first
officer to complete repairs. Is this permitted?"
  Circuits continued to open and close. Human
diaphragms operated somewhat slower. Otherwise
there was little motion on the bridge. Spock strode
slowly, cautiously, to where Scott was working.
Kirk kept a wary eye on the dormant phaser,
but no punishment, no warning was forthcoming
  "I guess it is," he murmured.
  "WHEN REPAIRS ARE COMPLBTBD," came
  the voice suddenly and, as usual, Without any
warning, "YOU WILL LEAVE THIS ORBIT
  AND PLOT A COURSE TEIIRTY-SDE
POINT
  REB TWO ONE PROM OUR PRESENT
  LOCATION."
  Sulu spoke up.
  'That's the heart of the galaxy, Captain!"
  "Set the course, Mr. Sulu."
  Sulu looked back at him incredulously and
made no move to obey. Spock glanced over from his
work and spoke.
  "Captain, we've seen this creature separate
itself into different parts. If it can divide and
grow, it could take over every starship we meet. It
could control entire computer centers perhaps whole
planets."
  "I am aware of that, Mr. Spock. But we
have," and he looked downcast, "no choice, I'm
afraid."
  "COMPLBTB REPAIRS!" screamed the voice.
  "OBEY ME-LIKE"
  "Set the course, Mr. Sulu! That's an
order."
  "Yes, sir." Sulu's reply held a hint
of bitterness.
  Scott and Spock unwound two small cables from
the recess in the wall and ran them along the deck
to the burnedout navigation console. Working with the
microwelder
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 65
  and Spock's assistance, Scott proceeded
to install a small metal box to one side of the
melted panel.
  The box's face contained a basic, simplified
version of the ruined warp-drive controls. The engineer
made a last connection, wiped his forehead with the back
of a hand, and took a deep breath.
  "Auxiliary controls ready
to activate, Captain."
  Everyone on the bridge divas staring at Kirk.
  The Captain looked up at the sphere, hardly
daring to breathe and yet forcing himself to maintain a normal
tone of voice.
  "The auxiliary controls can only be opened
manually."
  At that, the memory banks of Spock's
  computer-library station suddenly hummed into operation.
No one needed to be told what was taking place.
The creature was checking Kirk's statement against the
operations manuals stored deep within the ship.
  Eventually the lights at the computer station
returned to normal. There was a short, screaming
silence. Kirk willed himself not to sweat.
  "THAT IS CORRECT. OPBRATB THB
MANUAL CONTROLS. OBBY!"
  Kirk breathed an unseen sigh of
thar"3rfulness and offered prayer to all
supernatural deities who looked after starship
skippers. Then he nodded slowly to Scott.
  The engineer moved back toward his own station.
Kirk rose and walked calmly to the auxiliary
control box. He placed his hands on the
simplified device. It divas only
illusion, but the smooth metal controls and knobs
felt hot.
  "Control activated." He paused, started
toward another set of switches. "Setting cour was
His hands moved in a blur.
  The Enterprise's engines slammed into emergency
dAve. Not away, toward the beckoning mist of the
Milky Way, but down, down and in, toward the
devouring black maw below.
  Sulu jerked in his seat as the dark bulk of the dead
sun grew suddenly enormous in the main
viewscreen. He spun to face Kirk.
  "Captain, we're falling out of orbit!
We're falling into the start"
  66 STAR TREK BOG ONE
  "APP tilde y PUI B POWBR
REVBRSB
  BNG tilde BS-THAT" shrieked the disembodied
alien. "OBBY MB, OBBY ME-THAT'"
  The bridge defense phaser came on, swung
around to touch Kirk's back. He jerked and hung
grimly to the controls. He had no force-field
to protect him now, with his life-support belt
fused to the original controls.
  Picking up speed with every microsecond,
the Enterpnse rushed toward the destroying gravity
below. The phaser abruptly cut off and Kirk
cursed silently. The creature had guessed what
he was trying to do. If it killed him while he was
hanging onto the controls and failed to cut his hands
free in time . . .
  It tried something else, and for a few seconds
Kirk was forced to fall away. The entire console
section and even the deck around the manual control
unit began to glow with heat. At the same time the
walls of the bridge began to fluoresce an
angry, pulsing green. The vivid color deepened
and dimmed in indecipherable, distorted patterns. The
voice of the alien rose to a terrible, frightened
scream.
  "NO, DECEEBRATB! DO NOT DESTROY
THE
  SHIP" OBBY OBBY OBEY'"
  Kirk had glanced down at his hands, then back
at the glowing console. If the alien realised that at
any second it could now safely kill him and
induce another member of the crew to operate the
controls . . .
  He threw himself back on the metal box and its
burning knobs and dials. There divas a
sizzling sound and the odor of burnt flesh filled the
bridge. Uhura screamed. Tears streamed from
Kirk's eyes, but his hands stayed frozen on the
controls.
  "Stand by to activate warp dnve!" he gasped.
Spock instantly took the vacant assistant
helmsman's place next to Sulu . . . in
case.
  "NO . . . DON'T:" came the terrified
voice. The Enterprise dove toward the extinct
solar furnace. It filled the viewscreen now, as
complete a grave as any man could wish for. Its
surface was alive with brilliant discharges of
electricity.
  The starship glowed all over with a soft green aura
This rapidly coalesced into a single, bright blob of

  STAR TRBR LOG ONB 67
  beating, living light. On the bridge the green
luminescence of the walls suddenly faded and seemed
to sink into the metal. The phaser beam of the defense
sphere abruptly cut off.
  That was the first sign. Now for the final blow.
  "Activate warp tilde rivel" Kirk
managed to cough out. The white heat of the
panel had vanished at the same time as the phaser
beam, but the metal was still fearfully hot. If it was
a last, desperate ruse by the creature to get him
away from the controls, it failed.
  "Activated, Captain," came Spock's
prompt reply.
  The ship shuddered briefly as the titanic
warp-drive engines cut in. There divas a last
faint pulse of green radiance then it was gone. A
final, despairing cry, shrill and weak now, came
from the speakers.
  "PBBASB . . . DON'T:"
  Suddenly the Enterpnse seemed to leap toward the
black sphere, toward the very horizon of the sun that was
no more. It seemed impossible that it could miss that
sucking, grasping target. It must strike, vanish
in a blank flash of instant annihilation. The
image of the starship wavered as it reached the critical
point of that bottomless pit of gravity, seemed
to flow like a liquid . . . and disappear.
  An instant later the combination of emergency
overdrive and the tremendous pull of the star had flung
the Enterprise far beyond any threat far beyond any
clutch of its relentless tug.
  For a few seconds the star wore a ring
of incredible thinness. A tiny narrow band of soft green
circled the black sphere, revealing a last,
hopeless grab for a ship safely out of its reach.
Forever out of its reach.
  Then the green ring contracted, shrunk in on itself,
to become a single bright, emerald blob of
incandescent life an amorphous mass of now
harmless malevolence.
  "You can let go now, Captain," said Spock
gently.
  "Let ... go ...?" Kirk mumbled. His eyes
glazed. Spock reached over and gripped the
captain's wrists. They pulled easily but that death
grip was not so simply broken. Spock reached around
more firmly and pulled, pulled
  68 STAR TRBR LOG ONE
  again, hard. This time both hands came free of the
controls.
  Kirk slumped in Spock's arms,
unconscious. The second-in-command of the
Enterprise carried his captain over to the command
chair. Sulu
  immediately put the helm on automatic and took
over the warp-drive controls, his hands safely
encased in a pair of thick protective
gloves. He brought the Enterprise down from
emergency to normal cruising speed.
  McCoy had been waiting. Spock watched him
at his work. When he spoke, his tone was as
  emotionless as ever and as lucid, curious.
  "Well, Doctor?" McCoy was already working with a
second kind of spray, then rapidly applying some
white cream to Kirk's hands those blackened,
terribly burned hands. The cream hardened instantly
to an almost plastic consistency. He smiled just a
little.
  "I don't find any serious nerve damage,
Mr. Spock. Nothing that won't repair itself. As
for the skin, that's easy to regenerate. Oh, someone will
have to feed him for a few days, but other than that ..."
He smiled wider. "He'll be as good as new."
  Sulu, Vhura, and Scott all turned away
so that no one else could see how relieved they were.
McCoy moved to the nearest intercom, which happened
to be the one in the command chair, and thumbed the switch.
  "Sick Bay? Doctor McCoy here. I
want a
  medtable on the bridge, double-time."
  Spock was watching Kirk. The captain's eyes
fluttered as both anesthetic and
stimulants took effect.
  "Is it . . . it . . . gone?"
  "Affirmative, Captain." At moments like this
Spock almost lavished he could smile but only for the
therapeutic effect it would have on Kirk, of
course.
  "It left the ship when it thought we would crash into the
negative stellar mass. In the end it seems that the
alien's instinct for self-preservation, even after all
these millemlia, was stronger than its analytic
abilities. If it had gambled and stayed with us
another few seconds it would still be with us. Now it is
trapped back there once more.
  "And now that we know it is there, we can enter its de
  STAR TRBX LOG ONB 69
  scription, dangerous characteristics, and location with
Stardeet, so that any other exploring vessels that
visit this sector can give it a wide berth."
  The elevator door dilated, and a pair of
medical techs with a mobile medtable between them entered.
Under McCoy's direction they lined it up
parallel to the command chair. Both techs gave a little
start when they saw that the patient-to-be was the
captain, but McCoy reassured them.
  "It's all right Darrell, Elayne
nothing too serious."
  Kirk eyed the medtable and then shifted his gaze to the
face of the good doctor.
  "What's that for, Bones? I'm all right. You just
said so yourself."
  "I know, Jim. There's nothing wrong with you at
all that a pair of new hands won't fix." He
patted the table. "Be a good boy and climb aboard
without forcing me to tranquilize you, hmmm? I will if
I have to, you know."
  "Okay, okay to Don't threaten me,
Bones."
  "Threaten, Jim?" McCoy grinned.
  With the help of the two techs and Spock, Kirk
slid onto the table. The table was convoyed to the
elevator.
  "Wait a minute, Mr. Spock Captain,"
Uhura broke in. McCoy froze the
elevator open. Her brows drew together as she
fiddled with her controls.
  "We're still picking up emissions from the area of the
dead star. It's growing faint as we move away, but
. . . ah, therel" She did things with the amplifiers.
  A tremulous, desperate voice filtered through
the speaker. A familiar voice, made
harmless now by increasinBut distance and hopelessness.
  "DON'T LBAVB MB ALONE AGAIN!
OH,
  PEBASB, PLBASB!"
  No one on the bridge said anything. There was a
crackle of static as a different source of distant
energy from another star announced its own presence.
Then a final, faint piping.
  "SO LONELY . . . OH, DON'T GOI
DON'T . . . DON . . ."
  The voice vanished, swallowed down and digested
by distance.
  "It doesn't sound so dangerous now, does it,
Mr. Spock?" Kirk whispered.
  70 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  "The creature? No, Captain. Not now. But the
danger behind it remains."
  "If only the alien had tried to cooperate,
to communicate instead of threaten ..." He shook his
head tiredly, beginning to feel the side effects of
McCoy's ministrations as they rode down the
elevator. He stared at the steady light set in
its roof.
  "What makes a thinking, intelligent being act in
such a fashion?"
  "Who knows, Captain? We know not where it comes
from. And eve do not even know what makes certain men
or Vulcans act the way they do. The creature's
instincts, in the final analysis, are not so
incomprehensible or even alien."
  "Now you're acting unnecessarily rational,
Spock."
  "To me, Captain," Spock replied, "that is
a contradict lion in terms."
  "You know," said Kirk abruptly, "I think I
can feel my hands again. They're beginning to tingle
slightly."
  He felt a pressure on his upper right
shoulder.
  "What was that?" Turning his head slightly he
saw that they were entering Sick Bay. "Bones, what
have you done to me now?" McCoy smiled down at him
reassuringly.
  "You're coming out of shock, Jim. I just gave you
a good dose of something to keep your mind off it. If
I didn't, despite the local anesthetic, in a
few minutes those hands would do more than just tingle
slightly."
  "Shock? What do you mean, shock? I'm not in
shock, Spock." McCoy had to grin.
"And nothing you slipped me, Bones, is going
to make me go un . . ."
  -
  PART 11
  YESTERYEAR
  [Adapted from a script by D. C.
  Fontana)
  Vl
  A world of silvery sky.
  There seemed to be no oceans; but they were there,
rolling and heaving under the shining clouds. There seemed
to be no deserts; yet they existed, too. Dry,
bone dry, and inhospitable, and old. There seemed
to be no green forests or rolling hills. True,
they were rare; but they too held a real existence.
  There only seemed to be sky.
  There was a peculiar atmospheric aura to this world
a kind of shimmer in the stratosphere that rippled and
flowed with strange effects other than merely
meteorological.
  Kirk finished his glass of reconstituted
rombouton inice, prepared on a distant South
Pacific isle on Earth itself, and studied the
image on the viewscreen before him. He touched a
button on the arm of the command chair and leaned
over to direct his voice into the open grid.
  "Captain's Log, stardate . . ." He
burped, rather loudly, and looked around in mild
embarrassment. Everyone on the bridge studiously
avoided looking back at him. But at the helm,
Sulu made a sound suspiciously like a stifled
chuckle.
  "You find our approach maneuvers amusing,
Mr. Sulu?" Kirk was not in the best of moods.
His newly regenerated skin on his hands itched something
fierce.
  "No, sir," deadpanned Sulu in return.
He examined the readouts of the navigation computer most
intently.
  Satisfied that digmty had been maintained,
Kirk hit the 73
  74 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  switch once more. "Erase that last," he
muttered, then began again.
  "Captain's Log, Stardate 5373.4." He
paused, formed his thoughts.
  "After an unexpected delay of some
substantial awkwardness . . ."
  "What was that I once heard you say about my
tendency to understate, Captain?" came
Spock's quiet voice from the area of the
library-computer console.
  "Quiet, Mr. Spock. I'm recording.
Or trying to."
  He hit the unlucky switch again, irritably.
"Cancel that last.
  "Captain's Log, stardate5373.4 After an
unexpected delay of some substantial awkwardness
., ." he glared around, but this time no one saw fit
to interpose a comment, "dis . . we resumed our
original course and are now lying in orbit around the
planet of the time vortex.
  "Commander Spock and I will land to carry out basic
research for the Institute of Galactic History,
in conjunction withand in support of similar research
to be conducted by historians Jan Grey, Loom
Aleek-om, and Ted Erickson.
  "Dr. Leonard McCoy will also accompany us,
as ..." He held the panic button down and
looked back to where Dr. McCoy was standing, idly
observing the view of the planet rotating lazily
below. "How do you want to go into the record on this,
Bones?"
  'iWhat?" McCoy dragged his attention away from
the fascinating image of the time planet.
"Oh, might as well play it linear, Jim.
'Interested onlooker" will do. I'm not hunting for
academic credits."
  "Attaboy, Bones. I thought you'd say something
like that." Kirk let the pause switch up. "dis . .
as interested onlooker." Satisfied, he switched
off the log and thumbed a communicator switch.
  "Historians Grey, Aleek-om, and
Erickson report to the transporter room,
please. We are ready for descent." He flipped
the communicator off and rose.
  "Lieutenant Sulu?" The younger officer glanced
up from the helm. "You're in command in my absence."
  "Yes, sir," Sulu replied. He
hesitated, then spoke quickly, earnestly. "I
sure wish I was going down with
  STAR TREK ONE 75
  you, sir. I've heard a great deal about the
Guardian of Forever."
  Spock and McCoy were waiting at the
elevator, and Kirk moved to join them.
  "It can be very interesting at times, Mr. Sulu
that's true. It can also be infernallly dull. Either
way, you know the regulations. No one is permitted
on the surface outside the reception station
except authorised research personnel and
StarDeet officers with the rank of Lt. Commander and
above." He smiled.
  "You'll be there in a couple of years,
Lieutenant."
  When they'd left, Sulu looked back at
Uhura.
  "Somehow, Uhura, I get the impression the
captain's not terribly enthusiastic about this
expedition."
  Uhura replied while taking the opportunity
now that the commanding officers were absent to touch up her
makeup. "I suppose even the most exciting of
pasts can grow dull with repetition. Seeing a
famous person or witnessing an important
historical event could be offset by bad smells and
unsanitary plumbing.
  "Besides, you can blame him for being a bit blase
after what we just went through with that that thing on the fringe?"
She whistled. "Substantial awkwardness . . .
wowl"
  The three historians were already waiting in the main
transporter room when Kirk, Spock, and
McCoy arrived. All appeared outwardly
composed, but their faces betrayed the
excitement they were feeling. Two had made the trip
to the surface once before.
  Their anticipation was understandable history was their
chosen profession. The discovery of the Time Planet
and the subsequent development of the Guardian of
Forever and the Time Gate as a research tool had been
to the study of galactic history what the invention of the
war tilde drive had been to interstellar travel.
Kirk could empathise with their special excitement,
even if he couldn't wholly share in it.
  Of the three, Erickson and Grey were human,
Erickson was a small, intense man in his
mid-forties, with thinning grey hair cut in bangs
in the front Vulcan style. His
  76 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  limbs seemed to be in constant motion, like the legs
of a millipede. The most noticeable facet of his
personality was his finding absolutely everything, to be
"fine, just fine" and said so.
  Jan Grey was slightly younger, taller and she
had a pleasant narrow face that Divas now glowing
with inner anticipation. Both humans wore plain
grey jumpsuits emblazoned with the crossed
Ionic column and short spade of physical
history. They carried elaborate
tricorders in shoulder harness.
  The third member of the official research party,
Loom Aleek-om was neither human nor Vulcan.
The native of Aurelia stood head and shoulders
above Spock, though he was thinner and lighter than
any of them, even Grey.
  His wings he kept neatly folded along the line
of his back. Short anus ended in a spread of
delicately taloned claws, which could manipulate
the extremely fine controls on his own, smaller
tricorder.
  Tattooed on his beak was an intricate
  scroll sign of manhood above which wide,
black eyes shone piercingly. They were in startling
contrast to his brilliant gold and blue-green
plumage.
  "Ladies and gentlemen," Kirk smiled, "are
you ready?" A rhetorical question. Erickson
couldn't resist waving his pudgy arms in reply
anyway.
  "Ready7" he chirped, feigning disbelief.
"We've been ready for days, for months for this
minute, Captainl Pirst we encounter that terrible
monster and I thought we'd never get here at all.
Then more days of unexpected travel and
waiting. And you want to know if we're ready?"
  "I do not believe I shall ever understand this
extraordinary affectation of humans," mused
Spock as they took their places in the
transporter alcove, "for answering a simple,
direct question with half a dozen inane ones."
  "Don't worry, Spock," replied Kirk,
scratching at his newly grown right palm, "it's not
contagious."
  "I sincerely hope not, Captain," said
Spock fervently.
  Beaming down was convenient and quick, though uneventful.
They missed the spectacular sights of shuttling
down through the silver atmosphere.
  STAR TREK BOG ONB 77
  No one would miss a descent to the dry,
semidesert sew lion they would eventually arrive
at, however.
  Oddly, very little was know of the early civilisations of the
Time Planet itself. Nor of how its inhabitants
were able to unite a seething infinitude of time lines and
tie them to a single point on their world. Nor why.
  Oh, the usual reasons were given . . .
curiosity sparked them, and the spirit of scientific
exploration. But Kirk and many others
couldn't help but believe that the builders of such an
incredible device as the Guardian of Forever must have
had some other, unknown, more potent reason for
constructing it.
  There was irony on a grand scale present,
too. For in tying together thousands upon thousands of time
lines, the builders of the Guardian of Forever had
apparently neglected to tie in their own. So
historians could use the Guardian to research the
reasons behind any great invention except the
Guardian.
  A distant chance existed that this was not in fact the
case, that the time line of the Guardian's inventors was
in truth accessible. But if so, it had not yet been
discovered. It's builders had covered their own past
too wed.
  The research party materialised at the modest,
clean reception station of the Historical Institute.
The reception port was fully automated,
proceeding on the logic that machines couldn't be
bribed. Anyone attempting to beam down to another
part of the planet, illegally, would have found himself
materialised instead thanks to elaborate
  transporter intercepts inside one of the
well-armed armored fortresses that circled
the time planet with unceasing, never-tiring vigilance.
  The station was near the southern sector of the best
preserved portion of the massive urban ruins that
rose near the Guardian. The city of Oyya, all
two thousand square kilometers of it, was itself a
formidable subject for historical and
archaeological study.
  Excavations had revealed that at one time the city was
even greater in extent. And there were ruins of other
enormous cities scattered around the planet, many
even larger than Oyya. But none were so well
preserved.
  Had the Time Planet, then, once been
severely over
  78 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  populated? Was the Time Gate a last,
desperate means of finding a way to relieve
population pressure before it overwhelmed its
creators? There was evidence to support such a
theory.
  Most particularly, despite the unquestionably high
degree of civilisation on this world, there divas no
hint, no sign that its inhabitants had ever
discovered a drive capable of carrying them from star
to star. And there were no other planets,
uninhabitable or otherwise, in the Time Planet's
system. It didn't have even a single moon.
  The Time Planet was alone in space. Its
visionaries and explorers had been forced to go
adventuring in time.
  The automatic checkpoints at the reception
station were thorough and efficient.. As soon as they'd
cleared, they were met at the exit lounge by the head
of the Institute's main station on the planet, Dr.
Vassily.
  Dr. Vassily was elderly, silver haired,
scintillating of mind, very female, and built like a
hockey puck. Notwithstanding, she had the voice of a
pixyish eleven-year-old.
  She invited them into the nearby central building,
a spartan yet comfortable facility, for a light snack
and some heavy conversation. Visitors were still a rarity
on the Time Planet.
  Brandied tea, cake the tea was good, even if
reconstituted. Somehow, though, reconstituted
brandied tea, in all its varied brands and types,
never approached the real thing. Of course, the
natural product was far beyond the financial reach of
pioneer historians however revered and respected.
  Kirk forced himself to make easy conversation
with the good doctor. It wasn't hard; she was
fascinating But before long Brickson was squirming like
a jellyfish with the fidgets, Aleek-om was beginning
to flap his wings nervously, sending feathers
into everyone's tea, and even the normally imperturbable
Jan Grey was showing signs of severe impatience.
  "We certainly appreciate your hospitality,
Dr. Vassily," Kirk said smoothly and
honestly. "But as you can probably tell, my
professional charges are anxious to be about their
job."
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 79
  "Of course," she nodded sagely. "Thoughtless of
me. I've been working here for so many years I'd
forgotten what the experience of a first trip to the Gate
means to outsiders." Her voice turned brisk and
workmanlike.
  "There's a ground car waiting for you outside in the
motor-pool hangar. Take the black and yellow
one. I've had it pre-checked and fueled for you."
  She rose, her coveralls falling in shapeless
wrinkles around her stout form, and walked them to the
door. It stood open to the dry desert air. The
climate here sucked moisture from unprepared
bodies, but the temperature was not as
severe as on other parts of the Time Planet.
  She directed her attention to Aleek-om. "By the
way, Loom, what time line are you going to search
out?" Aleek-om's upper and lower beak clicked
several times in rapid succession a sign of humor
among his kind.
  "Why, that of the city Oyya's, of course tilde
her-w*!" Dr. Vassily smiled at the
injoke.
  "It's been tried, believe me. With every
semantic variation you could think of. Every play on
words, every stretching of definitions. The Guardian's
reply to such requests is always the same.
  was "There is no access through the Gate to the
requested time line"." Aleek-om looked
suddenly serious.
  "Dr. Vassily, do you really think the builders
of the Guardian forgot to tie their own time line into the
device?"
  "No one can say for sure, of course," she
replied, wholly professional now. "Personally,
I tend to the belief that any race which could construct
such an astounding phenomenon as the Guardian would not
overlook something that affected them so deeply and so
closely. I prefer to think that for their own
unknown reasons they denied access to their own past
to themselves and to those who might come after them.
  "We may never know the truth, and I want to!"
She grinned awkwardly, a little embarrassed at the
sudden outburst of emotion.
  On the way to the motor-pool hangar, this was
commented on. Grey found it unseemly. Aleek-om
attributed it
  80 STAR TREK By ORB
  to too lithe fresh contact with others. Erickson
thought it only human.
  Spock, as usual, pinpointed it.
  It was called dedication.
  The ground car carried them easily and rapidly
over the dry terrain. It was fifteen kilometers from
the reception station to the site itself.
  There was no Gate, no artificial barrier in
evidence around the Guardian. It had value beyond
measure, value that transcended mere monetary
considerations. Anyone who wished to try and destroy it
if, indeed, it could be destroyed might seemingly have
free and clear access to it. It had been
demonstrated time and time again that madmen would attempt
most anything.
  Nor was there any visible bar
to potential misusers of the device. It seemed that
anyone Leo could manage the time and expense necessary
to reach the Time Planet and who shuttled instead of
beaming down to its surface could make whatever use
of the Gate he wished.
  Of course, there was the small matter of slipping
past the four superbly equipped orbital
fortresses that covered every square meter of the planet
in a ring of destructive power. Power reserved
elsewhere only for protecting prime military
canters.
  It meant avoiding the gigantic phaser and
missile batteries buried deep in the
innocent-looking sands that drifted in low dunes around
the Guardian itself.
  But anyone who could get past that well, access
to the Time Gate was quite free to an such.
  Such elaborate precautions revere more than
justified.
  It would not do to allow the frivolous or unstable
access to the malleable past. So the missiles that
remained locked in their racks and the phasers that sat
on their stores of ravening energy and did not disturb the
desert bushes around them were occasionally publicised.
Thus far no one had yet tempted them.
  A well-mounted military expedition might
possibly have succeeded in seizing the Guardian
by force, if it managed to avoid total destruction
in the battle that would ensue with the planetary defences.
  STAR TREKOG ONE 81
  But that would mean war. Access of a belligerent
to anenemy's past, well, it was unthinkable. So
three empires and two interstellar federations
cooperated in policing the Time Planet. They were
reassured by the certain knowledge that anyone of them who dared
try to make use of the Guardian for its own
purposes would invite the immediate wrath of the other four.
  It might not have been the most civilised of
arrangements, but it worked.
  Not that the setting of the Guardian was
unimpressive, oh no. Hydrogen missiles
might be larger, planet-to-space phasers more
intricate, but none could match the nearby city of
Oyya for sheer splendor. It stretched on and on,
magnificent ruins dominating the horizon as far as
one could see to east and south.
  And of course, there was the Guardian of Forever itself.
  Physically, it was impressive without being
massive. Certainly in size it was nothing to match
such awe-inspiring artifacts of ancient
civilisations as the Temple of Halos on
Canabbra IV, or the Alja.ean Wall on
Qahtan.
  In color it was the shade of rusty iron,
spotted here and there with overtones of grey. In shape
it resembled a lopsided doughnut. The central
hollow of that doughnut was the actual Time Gate.
It was always filled with luminous, shifting images of a
thousand pasts, all racing by at speeds far too
rapid for even scanning tubes to pick out and dis-
seminate.
  They left the ground car near a clump of some
hearty green-brown desert bushes and walked up
until they stood a couple of meters in front of the
cut stone base. Kirk and Spock, having been
here before, chose instead to spend a moment observing their
fellow observers.
  Grey just stood there quietly, her eyes
shirung. Aleekom's wings fluttered gently and
thin claws drew small preparatory beeps from his
special tricorder. As for Erickson, he shoved
both fists into chubby hips, blew out his cheeks, and
beamed.
  "Well, isn't this fine just final" he said
reverently. He turned to his companions.
"Let's get a-move on."
  82 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  Grey seemed to float back to reality from some
distant place. "Yes, by all means. You know the
rules." Aleek-om no.ded, a thoroughly
humanoid gesture.
  "Only one of us is permitted to undertake the
actual entry and journey with Captain Kirk and
Commander Spock acting as supplementary
  observers and escort. The rest of us win remain
here in the present time to record and interpret the
subsequent flow of regularized
  time-sequences."
  Then the three historians did a curious thing.
They bent over and spent several moments
  searching the ground. When they stood, each placed his
or her open palm face up towards a common
center. Two pebbles of varying size lay in each
palm.
  "AU right, get ready" Grey instructed.
Hands were placed behind backs, Grey doing
likewise.
  "I beg your pardon, Captain," murmured
Spock curiously, "but what, exactly, is
happening?"
  "We're going to decide which one of us goes and which
two stay behind, Commander," Grey told him.
  Spock considered this. "I see no, I do not
see. You will pardon me, Historian Grey. I
am not familiar with the intimate interworkings of
professionals in your field 60 perhaps I should not
venture to comment upon them but this does not strike me as
an-especially scientific way of determining the
composition of this expedition."
  Aleek-om shook his feathered head again, set
brilliant gold plumes dancing. "If I
live for a thousand mating flights, I'll never understand
you Vulcans."
  "Ready?" queried Grey.
  "Ready," the two males echoed.
  "Nowl"
  Each thrust a closed fist into the center of their little
circle while Grey counted, "One . . . two .
. . three!"
  Three hands opened. A single pebble rested in
Grey's open palm, another in Aleek tilde
more's.
  "Ah, that's fine, colleagues," announced
Erickson, "truly fine!" He tossed both his
revealed pebbles over his shoulder. They
dropped their own, downcast. It didn't last but a
moment.
  STAR TREK ONE 83
  "Well, good luck, old boy," said
Aleek-om, and Grey concurred. "Yes, good
luck, Theodore."
  They proceeded to a solemn shaking of hands.
Aleekom curled his hand in a peculiar way so as
not to scratch a sensitive human palm. Then the
two unlucky historians began to prepare their
tricorders.
  "Captain," intoned a thoroughly puzzled
Spock, Hiswere' confess I am still confused by this
method of selection for such an important mission.
I don't believe I have witnessed anything quite so
arbitrary since . . ."
  "Ill explain it all to you later, Mr.
Spock," Kirk grinned, "in the future. Right
now, Mr. Erickson seems impatient to be on
his way."
  "Yes, yes," insisted the little historian, waving
his warms like a semaphoring turtle, "let's get
going."
  The other historians turned their tricorder's
visual pickups on and aimed them at the
flowing Time Gate. Erickson mounted the stone
platform and took up a position just in front of it.
Kirk flanked him on the right side, Spock on
the other. Then his voice boomed out a squeaky
parody of an old-line politician's.
  "Guardian of Poreverl"
  For a long moment nothing happened. Then, from somewhere
out of the air in front of them, a ponderous, rolling
voice replied. It was heavy with age and weighty with
infinite patience. Was this an accumulated effect,
from answering thousands of inquiries? Or was it the
Guardian's original voice? Kirk wondered.
It always responded with perfect fluency to any question,
no matter what language it was framed in.
  Regardless, the effect produced by those thunderous
yet gentle tones was sobering.
  The last vestiges of humor disappeared from the little
assembly. Everyone was all business now.
  "TO WHBNCB DO YOU WISH TO TRAVEL,
  AND PROM WnBNCB COMB YB," rumbled
that
  mighty voice.
  "We come from elsewhere," answered Erickson
formally, his words ridiculously inadequate in
counterpoint to that stentorian thunder. "And we
wish the elsewhen of the Empire of Orion."
  The Empire of Orion! Kirk started. He'd
never both
  84 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  ered to inquire which time line the historians intended
to explore. They hadn't struck him as a
particularly adventurous bunch. Erickson's
request came as a double surprise.
  He'd figured this group of academicians for
something much duller and more mundane than this. Say, the
Butterfly Wars of Lepidopt, or the ceramic-
and porcelain-making era of Sang Ho HiLn.
  But, the Empire of Orion!
  He found himself getting just a little bit excited.
This vas going to be rather more fun than he'd
anticipated.
  There was a clouding effect obscuring the Gate.
A creamy blue-green blur filmed over the hazy
surface of the circular center. As it did so, the
dizzying array of time scenes began to slow. It was like
watching a projector gradually wind down from a
high speed the visual equivalent of a slowing
tape.
  Eventually only a single alien scene remained.
It did not shi*, did not ripple, but
held steady and clear. The blur started to fade. As
it did so it was replaced in the scene by natural
colors.
  When they passed through the Time Gate, their first
task would be to obtain a change of clothing. In the
barbaric Empire of Orion, two starship
uniforms and the casual dress of Historian
Erickson would render them something less than
inconspicuous. No one knew what passed for
casual dress in that time period. Kirk knew this
was so because if they did know, the historians would have had
their necessary costumes prepared in advance.
  Fortunately, the medium of exchange was only
gold, and Erickson was amply supplied. They'd
have no trouble making any needed purchases.
Erickson divas probably pleased. It gave
him an excuse to bring back three sets of the
genuine article for study, of course. It was forbidden
to profit materially from a journey through the Gate.
Otherwise, the most dedicated researcher might be
tempted to travel back in time to, say Earth's
past and return with some little valuable knickknack like
Praxiteles lost gold statue of Pallas
Athena.
  They could touch things, move about, and
  purchase,
  STAR TREK LOG Of 85
  but nothing of real value could be brought back
except for study purposes.
  Once through, they would spend some thirty minutes
objective time. That might be several days in the
subjective time of the Orionic Empire. Then,
wherever they happened to be in space in that ancient
civilisation, the Guardian would reach out and pull them
back to the present, ejecting them once more on
silent desert sands.
  Thirty minutes! Even the great, still unexplained
energies that powered the Guardian could not hold open a
time vortex any longer than that. And the amount of power
necessary to hold a time dilation for even five minutes
objective time was nothing short of astronomical.
It was generally agreed on that the Guardian somehow
drew directly on the local sun for power but
exactly how this was ac- complished was still a source of
mystery and controversy.
  "Captain Kirk, Commander Spock," piped
  Erickson, "if you're ready, gentlemen?"
  "Whenever you are, Mr. Erickson," acknowledged
Kirk. Erickson turned to glance back behind himself.
  "Ready, colleagues?"
  "Ready, short stuff,") grinned Grey.
  "Go get "em, Ted," cheered Aleek-om.
  "Then, gentlemen," he said importantly
to Kirk and Spock, "if you will, on three one,
two, three . . ." They stepped forward.
  Two seekers of knowledge ... one human, the other
faintly so, stood alone on the sandy plain where a
moment before they had been five. Two seekers of knowledge
and one interested
  onlooker. McCoy had chosen to remain
quietly in the background.
  The early Empire civilisation turned out to be
a rnaelstrom of colors and sights and fascinating
detail through which Kirk, Spock, and the little
historian moved like wraiths in a dream. The sounds
matched the barbaric imagery the unexpected and
incredible exceeded the wildest expectations. They
spent two and a half days, Orion time.
  When their thirty real minutes were up, seemingly
seconds later, Kirk was as sorry to leave as
Erickson.
  One moment they were changing clothes in the back
  86 STAR TREK LOG Of
  room of a disreputable inn in a gaudy bazaar,
while meters away an equally disreputable
personage was auctioning off modest examples of
local feminine pulchritude. The next, they were
standing once again on the stone platform facing the
Guardian.
  Grey and Aleek-om made no move
to approach them as the three travelers swayed
uneasily. There was always a moment or two of
nausea that followed any passage through a time
vortex. Then their systems had readjusted to the
sudden change in climate and gravity and other
variables, and they stood easily once again.
  Both historians appeared excited and pleased
by the stream d slowed time pictures from different
time-sequences that they'd been able to examine and
record. Apparently that had been exciting enough.
No one seemed the least upset now at being left
behind.
  Erickson, for his part, was flushed With a glow that on
a more imposing individual might have been interpreted
as maniacal.
  Kirk noticed McCoy staring at Spock.
There was an expression of mild concern and some
  puzzlement on the doctor's face. Studious
physician to the end, the Captain reflected.
  Come to think of it, Aleek-om and Grey
also seemed to be staring at the science officer.. But in
the first flush of excitement at their successful
journey and return, Kirk didn't notice the
intensity of their stares. For that matter, neither did
Spock or Erickson.
  "Relax, Bones, we're all fine. Usual
upset stomach, and that's all but gone. Orion at
the dawn of civilisation, Bones! Just watching, not
interacting significantly for fear of changing some
tiny bit of history . . ." He paused. The
others were paying absolutely no attention to him.
Instead, they continued to stare at Spock.
  Por the first time, Kirk took notice of their
odd fascination with his assistant.
  "What's the matter?" He still smiled. "Bones,
what's wrong?"
  Dr. tilde McCoy did a rather startling thing,
then. He jerked his head in Spock's direction,
then pointed at him. His voice was open, curious.
  STAR TREK L tilde ONE 87
  "Who's he, Jim?"
  This outrageous comment took some time to register.
Kirk looked over at Spock reflexively.
It was the same old Spock, all right, down to his
unwavering expression and peaked aural
receptors.
  For his part, Spock's eyebrows made an
upward leap of Olympian proportions. In
fact, the science officer looked as close to total
befuddlement as Kirk could ever recall having seen
him. The captain turned back to McCoy,
mildly
  irrritated.theexcitement of their return had
been stolen from him.
  "What do you mean, 'Who's he?"' You know Mr.
Spock."
  McCoy's nonchalant attitude and indifferent
manner were much more shocking than his casual reply.
  was Braid I don't, Jim."
  Spock's expression changed only slightly
at that. Just the veriest hint, the merest touch of
annoyance seeped through his otherwise stony visage.
  Kirk, however, was much more expressive in his
display of facial contortions. He started to speak
further to McCoy, became aware of his imminent
loss of self-control, and thought better of speaking just
now. There was no point in getting upset, yet.
  It was a practical joke. Yes, of course!
Bones probably authored the whole thing himself. It
would fan apart any minute, as soon as
someone made a slip and said something relating
to Spock. For now he would go along with the gag. He
pulled out his communicator, nipped open the grid,
and glanced over at Grey and Aleek-om.
  "You've both concluded your observations, then?"
Jan Grey sighed reluctantly. That was the most
blatant show of emotion she had yet displayed.
Maybe she had Vulcan blood.
  "Sadly, yes, Captain. It was an too
short, too brief. But yes, our work here is
finished."
  They all climbed back into the shuttle car.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy rode in silence
while the three historians chattered in the back.
  "We should stop before we depart and thank Dr.
Vassily for her help and consideration," noted
Aleek-om
  88 STAR TRBR LOG ONE
  when they'd returned the car to its stall in the main
hangar. Erickson agreed. "Yes, by all
means." He nodded vigorously. Kirk interposed
a negative as he toyed with his open communicator.
He'd put off calling the ship. Erickson's
call to remain here longer woke him from idle
daydreams.
  "why not, Captain7" The stout researcher was
pouting. Then he smiled slyly. "That brandied tea
wasn't half bad, even if it was
reconstituted."
  "It's not the quality of the refreshments,
Erickson. There's something else." Kirk looked
around at the now curious faces.
  At first they'd an stared with unconcealed fascination
at Spock. Now they were studiously ignoring him.
If this was a practical joke, then someone was
carrying it off in style. Too much style. Kirk was
starting to feel that any overtones of humor to the
situation were becoming shaded in tones of Uack.
  He activated the communicator. Anyone could
beam freely up from the surface of the Time
Planet. Getting dawn was the problem.
  "Kirk to Enterprise."
  "Enterprise," came a familiar voice with
sharp vowel sounds. So Scotty was working with Chief
Kyle on the transporter now. So much the better.
  "Six to beam up, Scotty."
  "Aye, sir."
  Aleek-om had been thinking. Now he spoke
delicately to Kirk.
  "If you don't mind, Captain, I
should like to remain here a while longer, to record and
study some of the artifacts Dr. Vassily has
unearthed. If we have some time before departure, that
is." The Aurelian's expression was hopeful.
  "Me too, Captain," added Jan Grey.
Kirk nodded, turned to the other historian.
  "How about you, Erickson?"
  "Oh no, I'm satisfied. AU I want
to do is put my tapes in a big viewer and play
them back. I was so busy recording and taking
notes that I didn't have half a chance to
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 89
  enjoy the journey." His blissful look turned
momentarily serious.
  "But you've got to understand, Captain Kirk, that this
is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most
historians. We can't hold you up." Aleek-om
and Grey indicated agreement. 'A know starship time
is precious. But if my compatriots could have even
a few additional minutes . . ."
  dis"...AII right. all right." Kirk grinned,
spoke into the communicator. "Cancel that, Scotty.
Four only to come up. Myself, Mr was he
hesitated, "and the others."
  The two historians who would remain a
while longer thanked him profusely and then hurried
off toward the reception station. They promised to be
ready for transporter pickup at the first call from
the orbiting Enterprrse.
  "All clear, Scotty. Bring us up."
  "Aye, sir."
  There was a familiar feeling of disorientation. The
four figures dissolved into four roughly
cylindrical columns of luminescent particles.
  In the transporter room, Chief Engineer
Scott personally handled the delicate task of
transporting while Chief Transporter Kyle,
himself a master at the job, watched admiringly. Those
calloused, practiced hands operated the
transporter controls even more smoothly than his
own.
  The first thing Kirk noticed when he regained
sight was the startled expression on his chief
engineer's face. The first thing he heard when he
regained hearing was the startled tone of his chief
engineer's voice.
  "Captain was Scott paused, unmistakably
confused. "I was expecting two of the historians with
you and Dr. McCoy. But a Vulcan his
  Kirk decided that was quite enough. If this was
a prac, tical joke, it was going too far.
  "Explain yourself, Mr. Scott!" he snapped.
Scott's mouth worked. His puzzlement seemed
honest.
  "So... sir?"
  Kirk chewed at his lower lip and stepped out of the
alcove, off the platform.
  "I don't know what's going on here but the Jirst
officer of this ship will be treated with respect!"
  90 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  "Captain," came a strange voice from the
elevator, "I assure you no one has ever
treated me otherwise."
  It was Kirk's turn to look dumbfounded.
  His gaze snapped to the right. The humanoid who'd
just brazenly laid claim to Spock's title
walked easily into the room. He was an Andorian,
clad in the blue shirt of starlleet science
officer, and wearing the insignia of a full commander.
  Like most Andorians he divas slim, rather
fragile-looking, and had the pale blue eyes and
silver hair of most of his people. Kirk noticed the
two slightly curved, flaring antennae which
protruded from his forehead and ended in dull, round
knobs. These were his organs of hearing. He
had no shell-shaped ears as did human or
Vulcan.
  Where distance was involved the knobbed antennae had
less range than other humanoid sensing organs,
but they could pick up much higher and lower
frequencies. The Andorian's slim build belied
his agility and strength, characteristics which certain other
races had learned about the hard way.
  Kirk took a couple of steps towards this
alien, and his jaw dropped in amazement. He
looked the other up and down without fazing him, finally
managed to blurt out his thoughts.
  "Who the hell are you?" This time it was Dr.
McCoy who replied, wryly.
  'A thought sure you'd know Thelin by now, Jim.
He's been your first officer for five years."
  "Is something the matter, Captain?" queried the
Andorian. His tones were soft, slightly accented.
And he too seemed openly puzzled. Kirk could
only stare at hirn.
  Spock finally broke the silence, summing up
both his own and Kirk's thoughts in his usual terse
fashion.
  "Captain, I have come to the conclusion that this is not a
game."
  "No no," Kirk muttered. "I agree,
Mr. Spock. But if it's a reality and everyone
else here seems to think it is then what happened?"
He stiffened.
  "All right, I don't know what's going on here,
but I'm going to get to the bottom of ill Spock,
Mr.... Thelin. I! you'll both come with me to the
main briefing room.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 91
  There's no point in upsetting anyone else on
board." They started off.
  "Me too, Captain?" asked Erickson. He
had no real part in the problem, but if something was the
matter with Spock well, he'd formed enough of a friendship
with the starship officers to at least be concerned.
  "Yes, by all means, Mr. Erickson, join
us."
  V11
  The command briefing room was small, with a single
free-formed table of dark mahoganylike wood from the
forests of IandBut dominating the center.
Holographic portraits of various alien
landscapes decorated the walls, along with a framed
copy of the Federation charter, and there was a musical
rain sculpture shifting and chiming softly
in one corner.
  The seats were also free-formed, lush and comfortable, but
they could do little to ease the tenseness of the four
humanoids who now sat in them.
  Erickson immediately set to work with his tricorder,
keeping his verbal requests to the machine to a whisper.
He had thought about the unbelievable situation, and
decided that maybe the compact instrument had noticed
something
  significant they had not remembered.
  "I will pass over the obvious, gentlemen,"
began Kirk. "I can think of only one explanation
for what seems to have happened, and I'm sure it has
occurred to you also."
  "When we were in the time vortex, something happened
to change the present as we know it. No one seems
to recognize Mr. Spock. And neither he nor I
nor Mr. Erickson
  92 STAR TRB tilde L tilde ONE
  recognises Mr. Thelin. The only answer must
be that the past was somehow altered when we were in it.
Instead of emerging into our own time line, Mr.
Spock, Mr. Erickson, and myself have
  reemerged into an alternate secondary one as a
result of that as yet unidentified
change." He paused for breath.
  "And if that sounds confusing, gentlemen, I
assure you it's a fit description of my present
state of mind."
  Erickson chose that moment to interrupt. He
shook his head and looked disappointed.
  "Nothing, Captain Kirk. I've just done a
double-speed review of our entire journey. The
tricorder has no record of anything we did
while in the vortex that could conceivably have affected
the future. Any future."
  "Please, Mr. Erickson," requested
Kirk. "I don't doubt your readings. But could you
. . . try once more? Take all the time you need."
  "I don't need any more time, Captain. I've
done this sort of review a thousand times before." He
shrugged, bent over the tricorder once more.
  When he looked up again a while later, after
completing the second run-through, the stocky historian
found all eyes were on him. The sameness of his
expression was eloquent.
  "Nothing, Captain. I've even run down any
changes in the atmospheric content while we were
present, and there's absolutely nothing."
  Kirk slammed a fist down on the
smooth wood. One of these days he was going to break
a hand doing that.
  "But, dammit tilde omething was changed!"
  "It seems, Captain," interposed Spock
easily, "that I am the only one affected. The
mission, the ship, the crew except for myself remain
the same."
  ""Not entirely, Mr. Spock," Kirk
countered. "I still know who you are. So does
Erickson." The
  historian nodded vigorously. "But no one
else aboard does. While we were in Orion's
past, the time revision that apparently occurred here
didn't affect us." He looked thoughtful. "I
wonder how extensive it is?"
  "If you'll pardon me, Jim," began Thelin.
Then he smiled faintly, uncomfortably.
"Captain, I might be able
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 93
  to answer that. While we were on our way down here,
I took the liberty of placing an informational
request with the library. It should tell us how complete
the time change has been."
  "I didn't hear you put in any request,
Mr. Thelin."
  "You were in deep conversation with Mr.... Spock,
at the time," the Andorian replied.
  As if on cue, the bosun'swhistle sounded in the
room. Thelin looked pleased.
  "That ought to be the reply now." Kirk pressed a
halfhidden switch under the rim of the table. A
three-sided viewer popped up from the center of the dark
wood. He hit another switch.
  "tilde Kirk here."
  The picture of a young, neatly turned-out ensign
appeared on the three screens. The ensign started
to speak, but Kirk waved him off.
  "Just a minute, Ensign." He turned
to Spock. "You know who that is, Mr. Spock?"
  "Ensign Bates, Captain. Inexperienced, but
studious, tilde vell-intentioned, reasonably
efficient.. Graduated OTS Starfleet with high
honors but not the highest. Sewed one year
apprenticeship on the shuttle tender SCOPUS.
Transferred to Enterprzse starda . . ."
  "That'll do Spock." Kirk looked
satisfied.
  "That would approximate my own evaluation of
Bates" abilities at this stage, Captain,"
Thelin added casually. "Transferred
to Enterprise stardate 5365.6."
  "Ummm." Kirk's tone was noncommittal.
He directed his attention back to the screen.
"What have you got for us, Ensign?"
  "Sir, we've checked Starfleet records as
Commander Thelin requested."
  Even though he thought he was growing used to the
present impossible situation, Kirk still gave a
little mental lump every time he heard the Andorian
referred to by his own crew as "Commander Thelin."
  Deep down he knew that in the original time
line, at least the Andorian didn't really exist.
  Or was this the real time line, and the other merely a
secondary copy? One problem at a time . . .
  94 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  Yet McCoy, Scotty everyone seemed to know
Thelin intimately, and not Mr. Spock.
  He blinked, remembered Bates. The ensign was
patiently awaiting Kirk's orders to report the
researched material, destroy it, stand on his head,
play dead, or do something.
  "Findings, Ensign?" he said crisply. The
ensign's reply had the directness of truth.
  "There is no Vulcan named Spock listed with
Starfleet in any capacity, sir. Neither
as commander, nor cook no listing whatsoever."
  Spock's only visible reaction was the moderate
ascension of one eyebrow.
  "I see," Kirk muttered. He thought a
moment, then, "You have your visual pickup on?"
  "Of course, Captain. I was not told this was
to be a closed meetin . . ."
  "No, no, it's not. Relax, Ensign. Now,
can you see the Vulcan sitting to my immediate right?"
Bates' head and eyes moved. He showed no
  reaction.
  "Yes, sir."
  "Do you recognize him?"
  "No, sir," responded Bates, who was one of
Spock's regular science-library assistants.
"I've never seen him before in my life."
  Thelin leaned forward and addressed the screen.
"Did you also research the Vulcan family
history requested?"
  "Yes, Commander," said the ensign crisply.
"There are some related visual materials. I can
put them on the viewer pickup, if you wish."
  "We so wish, Ensign," Kirk ordered.
Bates hit a button below screen pickup
level and his image vanished, to be
replaced immediately by a still hologram of a
distinguished-looking male Vulcan clad in formal
ambassadorial attire. Bates continued
to speak.
  "This is Sarek of Vulcan, ambassador
to seventeen Federation planets in the past thirty
t-standard years."
  Soock broke into the Ensign's speech. "That
is not correct."
  Kirk only grinned sardonically.
  "In this case or this time, Mr. Spock it
seems that it
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 95
  is." Spock gave a slight nod of understanding and
looked back to the tripartite viewer.
  "I wish to ask a question."
  "Yes, Commander?" Bates might not know
Spock, but he could still recognize the uniform and
rank of a starship commander, even if not his own.
  "What of Sarek's family? His wife and
son?"
  The picture of Sarek disappeared, to be
replaced by another hologram. This one was of a
lovely human woman in her early thirties.
She was fair-haired and slim, delicate
one of those rare women who you know instantly will retain
her youthfulness well into old age. The young officer's
voice impersonal voice, doom voice, continued
  "Amanda, wife of Sarek, known on Earth as
Amanda Grayson." Kirk gave Spock a
sympathetic look as Bates droned on. "The
couple separated after the death of their son."
  That finally drew a visible reaction from Spock,
though, as Kirk knew, ninety percent of it was still
bound up tightly inside his first officer. Bates
continued.
  "The wife was killed in a shuttle accident at
Lunaport, on her way home to Earth.
Ambassador Sarek has not remarried."
  Everyone was watching Spock now, and he was watching
none of them. His eyes remained glued to the picture
on the screen. When he finally did speak, there was a
pause, a bare hint of a catch in his voice that could
have been no, ridiculous.
  "My mother was he whispered softly. Then he
spoke well, almost normally. There was no
uncertainty in his tone, only a desire
to satisfy perverse curiosity to the utmost, to draw
out the thing to its ultimate mad conclusion.
  "The son what was his name and age when he
died?"
  "Speck," came Bates reply. "Age .
. ." he seemed to be checking some off-screen
reference, "dis . . age seven."
  "Sympathy is not among my race's primary
traits, Mr. Spock," said Thelin, "but I
believe I can understand a little of what you are feeling
now. I'm sorry, truly I am." He gave the
Andorian equivalent of a shrug. "But I am me
and you are you, and there is nothing to be done for it."
  96 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  "Not in this time line, no," mused Kirk.
  "You are, of course, correct, Captain,"
Spock added. "But if we didn't change anything
in the past his
  "We didn't!" insisted Erickson. "We
didn't!" Suddenly his forehead creased and he
repeated, softly this time,
  "We didn't!" insisted Erickson. "We
didn't!" Suddenly
  "Of course! Jan and Loom!"
  "Surely," said Spock, "they didn't enter the
Guardian while we were in the vortex?"
  "No, no!" Erickson was nervous as a mouse.
"They would never do a thing as potentially
dangerous as that. But scanning they must have been
scanning! We might at least get some useful
information from them if they . . ."
  "... were looking into my past while we were in
Orion's. Yes, I see what you are leading
toward, Historian." Spock rose, looked at
Kirk.
  "Captain, we must go down to the Guardian again.
And as quickly as possible. The longer we stay in this
time line, the stronger our position here grows, and the
less chance we have of returning to and correcting our
own my own."
  "Certainly, Spock. Erickson, come on!"
The four rose and left the briefing room.
  "You're sure you don't recognize him?"
Kirk asked Scott when they'd returned to the
transporter room. They were mounting the transporter
platform prior to beamdown. Scott studied
Spock carefully, indifferently, and shook his head.
  "There are few Vulcans on the Enterprise,
Captain. I'm not likely to forget any, let
alone a commander."
  "Thanks, Scotty. Beam us down, please."
  On the way back to the Guardian in the ground
car, they tried to explain the situation
to Grey and Aleek-om. Since Kirk was still
confused himself, he wasn't sure they made things much
clearer to the two historians who had remained behind.
But they seemed to grasp the idea behind what had
  happened better than he had. I-'me was their
business, space was his.
  Of course, neither of them recognised Mr.
Spock. And both seemed to know Thelin. The
Andorian had insisted
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 97
  on coming along, as was his privilege both as commander
and scienceflicer.
  By the time they had returned to the quiescent
Guardian of Forever, mutual agreement had reached
on an approximation of sequential
probabilities. Nevertheless, Kirk continued
to examine every salient fact with the three historians
as they all made their way toward the Guardian. As
always, the Time Gate was modest in appearance,
overwhelming in capabilities.
  Glowing cream-colored mists flowed and danced
patiently, langorously in the central hollow,
oblivious to the petty problems of the small knot of
approaching humano tilde ds.
  "If we didn't change anything while
we were in the time vortex," Kirk insisted, "someone
or something else must have." He turned to Aleek-om
and then Grey. "You were using the Guardian while we
were gone."
  "Yes, but it was nothing unusual," said Grey
matterof-factly. "We were merely scanning
occasional sequences of recent history."
  "Any recent Vulcan history?" asked
Kirk.
  "Why, yes!" She smiled in sudden realisation.
"I see the way your thoughts have been going,
Captain. I don't see what we might have done,
but of course it seems the only other
possibility."
  "What time period?" asked Spock as they mounted
the last step leading towards the Gate.
  'Em not sure." She fumbled with the omnipresent
tricorder. "Just a momnet ..." A quick recheck
provided the desired information. "No specific
dates listed approximately twenty to thirty
Vulcan years past." Kirk had a sudden thought.
His question beat Spock's by a few sew onds.
  "Was there any notation recorded on the death of the
son of a Vulcan ambassador named Sarek and his
human wife?" Both historians looked
thoughtful, glanced at each other before turning back
to Kirk and Spock.
  "I don't recall any, but there was so much
information was Aleek-om looked a little tense as he
worked his own tricorder. Thin, powerful claws
clicked over the sen
  98 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  sitivecontrols, too fine for any human
to manipulate. It hummed softly, then stopped.
  Aleek-om jabbed a recessed switch, ran
  something back and played through it more slowly. The hum
deepened. He stopped again and nodded, his crest bobbing
and dancing in the dry desert breeze.
  "Cggier-wz tilde to Yes, the death is indeed
recorded."
  "How . . ." Kirk all but choked on the
  peculiar-sounding words, "how did he die?" He
still found it hard to believe he was living this nightmare.
It was no consolation to know that it must be a hundred times
worse for Spock.
  Again, Aleek-om checked the instrument readings.
  "The child is recorded as dying during some form of
... maturity test. Yes, that's it. It is
recorded only because the father was a notable figure in
government and in Federation history."
  Spock spoke absently. "The Kahs-wan a
survival test for young males. It is
traditional, a holdover from less peaceful, less
civilized days."
  "The death is recorded as was Aleek-om
  continued, but Spock finished it for him.
  "dis . . falling on the twentieth day of
Tasmeen."
  AU but Kirk and Erickson looked at
Spock in surprise.
  "How do you know this?" asked Thelin. Spock
paused, spoke slowly.
  "That was the day my my cousin saved my life when
I was attacked in the desert by a wild animal."
  But how could Spock know that that was the parffcular day
and that that incident was crucial?
  Inspiration hit Kirk then, wthout warning at
warpeight speed.
  "This cousin, Spock, what was his name?" Spock
frowned, shifted his position on the rocky surface
underfoot.
  "That I'do not seem to recall clearly. I was
very young. He caned himself yes, Selek. A common
enough name in my father's family. He was visiting us."
Spock frowned slightly. "Odd, but I
never saw him again after that though I wished to, many
fames. Nor, I believe, did any of my
family." The frown grew deeper.
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 99
  "Captain, your expression, I believe you
..." Spock seemed to hesitate.
  Kirk looked directly at his first officer.
Inside, Spock knew. But he was so close to the
answer that it hadn't yet come to him.
  "Spock this Selek did he by any chance look
like you do . . . now?"
  Even then, Spock was reluctant to accept the
idea. Alternative lines of possibility,
however, suddenly looked more barren than ever. He
nodded slowly.
  'ally believe he did, Captain. And I see
what you are thinking. That other time, it wasn't my
'cousin" who saved me it was I. I saved myself."
  "But this time," continued Kirk, pushing the thought
forward, "you were in Orion's past with Mr.
Erickson and me. At the same time, Aleek
tilde m and Grey were here, playing back that
section of Vulcan history. You couldn't exist in
two time lines simultaneously, so you had to vanish
from one of them. In other words, you had to die
as a boy, since you couldn't be there to save yourself."
He shook his head. Much more thinking along
paradoxical lines like that and they'd all be
candidates for the silly station. He spun to face the
Gate.
  "Guardian, did you hear that?"
  The shifting colors seemed to flow a little faster,
shine a touch brighter. When it spoke, the colors
pulsed with internal light as each syllable was
intoned. The words themselves were, as always, neither
masculine nor feminine nor even
  machinelike but instead a kind of strange sexless
and timeless neuter.
  "I EIBAR AB[."
  "We could resort to the Enterprise's computers,"
Kirk murmured, as much to himself as to the Gate, "but
in all the Universe, no one, nothing, knows as much
about time as you. TeDo me is it possible for Spock
the Vuican to return to the period when he was not
(god, this was insane!) and repair the broken time
line so that all is the same as it was before our last
journey?"
  A pause, then, "IT IS
POSSIB[B," the Guardian boomed
indifferently, "IP NO OTHER
MAJOR
  FACTOR HAS BEEN
  CHANGED. OR IS CHANGED IN TIIB
  CHANGING."
  100 STAR TREK LOG OF
  Kirk turned to his science officer.
  - "Do you remember enough, Spock? You heard the
Guardian. You can't risk changing anything when you go
back. You've got to repeat what happened when you were
seven years old."
  Spock shook his head slowly, the strain of
recall showing plaunly.
  "I do not remember everything, Captain. There are
vague memories, from a child's point of view. But
as is common to youthful memories, a child's details
are blurred and run together. The memory is there but
slightly out of focus."
  "You'll have to try!" Kirk insisted. "For you and
your mother to live." Spock nodded slowly, considering.
  "Yes. I will need the following items: a
Vulcan desert soft-suit and boots, and a small
selection of plain streetwear accessories circa
8877 Vulcan years. The matching obhgatory
carry-bag should be of the same period and look well
used.)"'
  "You've got them," nodded Kirk quickly.
"I'll have quartermaster section drop whatever
they're doing and run them off now." He flipped
open his communicator and moved slightly to one
side. The three historians were already engaged in
animated discussion of what had become for them a
  fascinating socio-mathematical exercise in
conflicting time lines.
  This curiosity was touched with tragedy only for
Erickson, since among the arguing historians
only he had been intimately involved with the
actual expedition into Orion's past. But his
academic concern outweighed the desire to offer
further consolation to Spock. He wasn't very good at
such things. anyway.
  That left Spock alone with his quiet
  doppelganger Thelin. The Andorian studied him
closely.
  "This proposed modification of time lines will put
you in my place on a different plane . . .
replace another Thelin somewhere." He paused.
"Yet, I am not aggrieved."
  "Andorians are noted for many things," said Snock
conversationally. "However, as you yourself admitted,
symnathv is not one of them."
  "True," Thelin nodded. "A warrior race
has few sym
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 101
  pathies and little time for same. Yet it is not a
normal situation we find ourselves in. I,
personally, do not feel threatened. Yet, in a way,
I am actually contributing to the murder of a distant
cousin."
  "Who should not be there in the first place," concluded
Spock evenly.
  "Perhaps. Yet one empathy we Andorians do
possess is for family. On this time plane, you will
lose and so would your mother. The knowledge that this will be prevented,
at least, is acceptable mental compensation for me."
  He gave Spock a smart Vulcan hand
salute. "Live long and prosper in your own world,
Commander Spock in your own time." Spock returned
the salute.
  "And you in yours, Commander Thelin."
  There was nothing to do now but wait for Spock's
requested clothing and materials to be sent down from the
Enterprise. There'd be no problem there planetary
defenses could recognise the difference between a suit
of clothes and a photon torpedo. But it left them with
nothing to do but think, and after a while that
wasn't too comfortable for the historians, either.
  The little group spent several nervous, awkward
minutes wandering around the base of the now familiar
Guardian. Kirk studied it idly.
  Certainly it possessed some strange unknown
variety of organicstinorganic intelligence
witness its answers to questions in many languages. But
no one knew if this intelligence lay dormant
until evoked. Might it not be always alert,
constantly observing? Was it even now looking down on
them from some uncomprehensible alien OI-YMPUS and
musing on their problems? He could ask, of course.
  But the Guardian of Forever did not deign
to answer any questions about anything but time.
  As for other sights to study, they were too far from
Oyya for the city's ancient and distant attractions
to hold their interest for very long. The area around the
Guardian itself was singularly barren.
  Even the Time Gate was beginning to seem like no more
than a pile of oddly hewn rocks and stone by the time
a small transporter effect, a chromatic glow
of atomic
  102 STAR TREK BOO ONE
  action, began to take shape nearby. As it
faded, the glow congealed into the form of a
Vulcan carry-all bag, a small pile of goods
and knickknacks, boots, and a neatly tied
bundle of sand-colored clothes.
  "Nice to know that the crew in this time plane is
efficient, too," Kirk commented
appreciatively. He hesitated, then held out
a hand to Spock. Words were unnecessary.
  It took Spock a few moments to make the
change of clothing. He stacked his uniform and boots
neatly to one side, then turned and moved away from
them, walking up to the base of the Gate itself.
  Thelin moved to stand next to Kirk. Not Front
to miss even a blurred glimpse of what might
take place, the three historians activated their
own special tricorders. Spock's voice as
he addressed the enigmatic intelligence known as the
Guardian was clear and precise, as always.
  ""I wish to visit the planet Vulcan."
  "Tams?" rumbled the Guardian.
  "Thirty Vulcan years past, the month of
Tasmeen, be" fore before the twentieth day."
  There, that ought to provide a reasonable margin of time
in which to get reacquainted with himself.
  "BOCA equals ON?"
  "Just outside the border city of
ShiKahr."
  By way of reply, the pastel mists that filled the
circular Gate started to swirl and boil. flowing
slower and slower, until the blur of time pictures
began to steady as the Guardian locked in to the
requested time line. Then, abruptly, the Gate was
filled with a view so familiar to Spock that it
immediately relaxed all inner tensions.
  A hot. dry orange world Vulcan.
  "Yes," was an Kirk heard him say though there
seemed to be other words, voiced too low to be
understood.
  "TOMB AND PBACB," the Guardian shouted
in tones as stable and final as the Universe, "ARB
READY TO RBCE-RVE
  Y."
  "Yes," Spock murmured again. One word worth
a thousand pictures. Then he was running. running
forward, and taking a short leaf into the time portal.
  His body faded from view as though he were slinging
into a transparent sponge. As soon as he touched the
field,
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 103
  the picture began to blur from the temporary
distortion of the time vortex.
  For several moments after he'd vanished, Kirk
stood staring at the now resumed blur of
  time-patterns racing across the Gate. Then he
turned to one side, where the blue uniform of a
Starlleet commander, science section, and a pair of
boots Starfleet standard issue, offlcer's lay
on the broken gravel, awaiting their owner's
return.
  In another, unknown time line, another James
T. Kirk was staring at another set of clothes,
thinking the same thoughts, hoping the same hopes. And
on a different line, perhaps, yet a different
Kirk. And another, and another an infinitude of
Kirks waiting for the return of a billion
Spooks a million variations of a certain awkward
see" and or two in time ....
  Spock stood on the sands of the world of his birth.
Behind him, the land was desert, painted in harsh
ocher-yellows and umber-browns spotted only
reluctantly here and there by an occasional winsome
patch of greenery.
  Further back, a range of forbidding black
mountains clawed at the sky with great ragged talons
of granite, basalt, and gneiss. The thin
atmosphere inspired a roof of flinty
orange-red instead of the soft blues of Earth. But the
clouds that spotted it were just as cottony white.
  Before him lay the city of ShiKahr, like a neat,
orderly oasis in the wastes. A wide band of
lush, landscaped parkland formed a civilising barrier
between urban environment and raw, arid sands. Flowers
and other vegetation tended toward soft, warm hues of
yellow and brown, with a few isolated sprinklings of
pink or purple.
  The park bufl'er zone was as modern as the rest of
ShiKahr, which nevertheless was an old city.
Buildings were geometric, regular, and
aesthetically as well as architecturally sound. A
logical city designed for relentlessly logical
inhabitants.
  A person standing next to Spock at that moment
might have heard him mutter something vaguely like,
"thirty years . . ." Or it might have been the
wind rippling through a desert bush.
  In any case, no one could have stood close enough
to
  104 STAR TREK L tilde ONE
  see what was going through Spock's mind. That mind
was considering. From here on, he was quite aware that his very
continued existence depended on repeating with as
much precision as possible events he could barely
remember events that had taken place thirty years
ago now.
  He shifted the carry-bag higher on his shoulder,
ran his right thumb underneath the strap, and started off
towards the city. At the city gate he experienced
an instant of apprehension. There was always an
outside chance that something else about him, something unseen
but vital, had been altered by interlocution of time
lines.
  If the automatic sentry defense systems which
were designed to keep out fierce desert carnivores
sensed anything suspicious about him, he would be, not
killed, but immobilized and held helplessly
tranquilized until the arrival of a detention
squad from the city reasoning force.
  That wouldn't be fatal. But subsequent questions and
examinations could be embarrassing as well as time
delayinR. At the very least, serious alterations in this
time line might be produced. That could jumble matters
beyond repair.
  They might be damaged beyond change already, but there was
little benefit to that line of thought. Besides, it was very
depressing.
  He needn't have worried. Unseen
radiation probed him, hidden sensors clucked
approving mechanical tongues. His shape and
composition were familiar Vulcan. No challenge was
offered as he walked through the park. No
tranquilizing darts phocked out at him, no stun
rays sought to bar his passage.
  He experienced no difficulties whatsoever.
His only barrier to progress was confusion of a mental
variety. He'd forgotten the beauty of ShiKahr.
The calm efficiency and palpable sense of security
that made a Vulcan city so different from the
hectic, albeit exciting urban hodgepodges
of so many other humanoid worlds.
  He passed by the last of the flowers, past a gentle
fountain that dispensed a constant stream of fresh well
water, and suddenly found himself on a walking street.
  This pathway was broad and paved, but designed for
pedestrian use only. It was quiet and
tree-shaded. Every
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 105
  effort every stone, every bush, all but the actual
placement of the leaves on the branches was
predesigned and executed to enhance one's serene
appreciation of podal locomotion.
  High walls kept homes and gardens
discreetly secluded from passersby. Delicate
symmetrical blossoms on creeping vines
trailed over many of the stone walls and brightened the
rustic scene even further. There was a main artery in
the distance ahead, busy with ground-car activity.
Old-style, outmoded ground-cars, he noted.
  That mechanical sound was distant. But soon,
another clamor reached his ears. A group of young
voices male. Their tone was biting and sarcastic a
near-emotion to which even Vulcan youth were not immune.
The words matched the tone of delivery.
  "Barbarian . . . Earther . . . throwback .
. . emotional, squalling, uncontrolled Eartherr
  He'd heard those same insults long ago, it
seemed. Surprising how painful they could still be, after
all those years. He moved to a corner, turned it,
and looked ahead.
  A high wall fronted on an intersection of
several small pathways. He moved a few steps
further, halting in front of a high, solid old
gate of polished, engraved wood. Nearby,
another lower gateway led to a flourishing garden. In
front of this second gate stood a very young version of
himself.
  There was no question of who it was.
Inwardly, he'd dreaded this moment from an
intellectual, not an emotional, standpoint. How
would he react to the first sight of . . . himself?
Kirk had equated it to an old terran expression
being "on the outside looking in." Now that Spock
comwas actually confronted with the experience, the result
  proved anticlimactic.
  There was no abrupt sundering of mind, no shattering
of preconceived images. No, no emotional
damage. This younger, smaller version of himself was only
a young boy who looked somehow familiar. But another
person entirely
  After all, he'd met a universe full of
aliens and to an adult, children are often the most alien
of all.
  He blinked. Three other Vulcan youngsters
stood in
  106 STAR TREE LOG ONE
  front of young Spock, taunting him. Old
memories came drifting back, long-lost little
pains that made small wrenching tugs deep in his
mind.
  That one, there, with the light-colored hair that must be
Stark. Then Sofek, next to him, and the tamest one
standing between them had to be Sepek a persistent
childhood tormentor until later years, when they
grew to become great friends.
  But for now . . .
  "You're a terran, Spock," shouted Stark.
"You could never be a true Vulcan."
  "That's not true!" yelled young Spock in
reply, barely managing to lettereep a grip on his
temper. "My father . . ."
  Sepek's reply touched each noun, each
syllable, with contempt
  '7erran! Your father brought shame to Vulcan!
Marrying an Farther worn his
  comThat was more than enough for young Spock. Sadly, his
physical reaction was more emotional than reasoned.
He rushed forward blindly, arms flailing, to crush and
rend his tormentors. Old Spock's first reaction
was to observe that one against three with one of the three much
older, heavier, and more experienced was an illogical
arrangement to aggravate. Not to mention an unnecessary
one.
  But he'd been different as a youngster. Now the rather
astonishing emotional outbursts of childhood rushed
back to him. Had he really been so ready to react
belligerently to mere words? Had he actually been
so impulsive, so blind, so so emotional?
There was no denying the evidence of his eyes.
  Any last concerns he might have felt about meeting
his younger self disappeared. The child really was a different
person.
  Any mother could have told him that.
  Sepek the nearest and strongest, easily dodged
young Spock's blind, angry punch. Sepek
deftly tripped him backwards while avoiding the
clumsy grab. Young Spock landed
unceremoniously on his backside in the smooth
rt.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 107
  He didn't appear to be hurt not physically,
anyway. Sepek's voice dripped contempt.
  "You haven't even mastered a simple Vulcan
neck pinch yet!" he said nastily, concluding with the
ultimate insult, "Earther1" The three youths
walked quietly away.
  Young Spock sat there in the settling dust, alone
and insulted and hurt, obviously trying to keep
control of himself. Alas, he failed in this, too.
Scrambling to his feet, he dashed into the nearby
garden enclosure and slammed the gate heavily behind
him.
  He didn't even have the satisfaction
of a terran child, of hearing a loud slam behind him. The
garden was designed as a place of peace and
contemplation. The cushioned gate hinges
  automatically absorbed the shock of closing and
snapped shut with a quiet click.
  Spock remained standing quietly across the way,
watching the direction his departing younger self had taken
in disappearing among the thick vegetation. That green
domesticated jungle had been his favorite
place of h tilde dmg and solace as a boy.
  This had been only one of many similar difficult
mom meets in his childhood. It was not as painful
to watch as it had been to live, but it was hard
nonetheless.
  "My apologies, visitor," came an
unexpected voice a deceptively quiet,
unhurried, immensely powerful voice that he'd
recognize anywhere. A voice that could impress
whole worlds or little boys. A second was
sufficient time for him to compose himself. Then he
turned, carefully keeping his expression open and
receptive.
  108 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  V111
  Sarek of Vulcan stood opposite
him, looking very much like the familiar picture
Spock had seen earlier on the small triple
screen in the command conference room. The only immediately
obvious difference was that this living version had far less
grey in his hair and eyebrows, far fewer age
lines in his forehead and around the eyes.
  A tall, broad-shouldered Vulcan he was,
perhaps no athlete but in fine physical trim. He
had sharply planed, strong features and deep-set
eyes. Altogether an attractive man. An older,
tauter, more severe version of Spock.
  Spock calculated rapidly. His father should now
be seventy-three standard years old, in the prime of
Vulcan 1ife. He wore the sandy-hued,
neutral clothing Spock remembered so well.
No loud shirts or bold prints for himl It was
brightened only by a single spot of color, the
adhesive badge of his office.
  "I regret you were witness to that unfortunate
display of emotion on the part of my son."
  If there was any lingering hesitation in Spock's
mind as to the identity of this man, that brief,
so-typical phrase instantly dispelled it. This was
Sarek, all right. Spock raised his hand in
salute.
  "In the family, an is silence. Especially
the indiscretions of children. No more will be said of it.
Live long and prosper, Sarek of Vulcan." The
ambassador hesitated for a second before returning
the salute.
  "Peace and long life." Then he spoke
uncertainly while
  STAR TR-EKnowledge LOG ONB 109
  studying Spock with understandable puzzlement. "You are
of my family?"
  "A distant relative. My name is was He
paused. It wouldn't do to give an easily
recognisable false name here. was Selek. A
humble cousin, descendant of T'pal and Sessek.
I ... am journeying to the family shrine in
Dycoon to honor our ancestors." There, that was a
plausible reason for traveling the way he was.
"Family is family, and I thought to give
greeting to you on my passing.
  Sarek nodded approvingly. "A pilgrimage,
then?"
  "Even so."
  "You have a long way to go. Will you interrupt your
journey to remain with us awhile, cousin?"
  "I have already come quite a distance, and in good
time," Spock murmured. "I have a little time
to spare. I would be honored." He dipped his
eyes, uncomfortably aware of Sarek's
unwavering, intense stare. There was nothing he could do but
try to ignore it.
  "Is something wrong, cousins" Spock asked.
Sarek seemed to return from a region of far
thoughts, formless musings.
  "No, no. It was only that I seem to . . .
know you. To have met you before."
  The best defence, Spock reflected, was a fast
retreat through forward enemy positions.
  "I, too," he countered, "have been struck by the
physical resemblance between us. A common ancestor
among our forefathers, no doubt."
  "No doubt," agreed Sarek quietly. Then,
as though suddenly remembering that to continue such a line
of inquiry with a strange relative would have been
impolite, "Well, come then. Allow me
to welcome you to my home."
  He turned and opened the beautifully caned gate
behind them. Familiar, so familiar, was the interior
of the house! Spock tried not to let his eyes stray
overmuch. Everything was as he remembered it, everything
fit so comfortably in his mind.
  Except that most everything was just slightly
smaller.
  Sarelt indicated a well-stuffed lounge of a
type no longer made there seemed to be few
craftsmen left anymore and then a nearby
mechanical senitor. Spock eyed
  1 lo TREK LOG ONE
  the quaint antique and tried not to feel
superior. There were so many things he could tell his father,
if only . . .
  No. Impossible. Forget it.
  "A place to rest and comfort yourself, cousin.
Refreshments at hand, if you thirst. Excuse me.
I shall return shorOy. I have . . . an errand
to perform. Meanwhile, my house is yours." He
walked out of the room. Spock had a fair idea
of the nature of his father's "errand."
  Young Spock had buried himself against a shaggy
Wall of fur. He might have been crying, though it
would have been difficult for an observer to tell. There
was no sound.
  The wall of fur filled out to north and south,
completing the form of the youngster's pet sehlat,
Ee-chiya. The sehlat looked rather like a cross between
a lion and a giant panda, with a pair of
downward projecting, ten-centimeter long fangs.
It was fluffy, but not cute.
  A temperamental sehlat would have been a poor
choice of pet for a young human. But for the logical,
never cruel or brutal Vulcan child, he was ideal
loving, intelligent and protective, as well as
fiercely loyal.
  This particular sehlat had a brown coat faded
in spots to patches of pale beige. One of the
worn, yellowed fangs was broken off at the tip,
and there were other indications of the creature's advanced
age.
  Young Spock heard his father enter the garden, but he
didn't look up from the massive flank.
  "Spock . . ."
  The boy slowly detached himself from the warm haven of
Ee-chiya's furry side. He knew his father
wouldn't repeat himself. He got slowly to his feet
and shuffled over, presenting himself to his father in the
traditional attitude of youthful respect back
straight, chin out, hands clasped firmly behind his
back.
  Sarek stood, looking down at his son for a
moment, and then shook his head slightly, sadly. His
voice was soft, but the words were not.
  "Spock, being Vulcan means following
disciplines and philosophies that are difficult and
demanding of both mind and body. Do you understand?"
  "Yes, Father."
  STAR TREK L tilde ONE 1 l 1
  "Your schoolwork has been disgraceful. You
constantly display your emotions in public. You've
even been seen fighting in the street, and your
attitude in such conflicts is reported to have been
somewhat less than experimentally martial." A hint
of defiance crept into the youth's voice.
  "Personal combat for a worthy cause is not
dishonorable."
  Inwardly, the reply pleased Sarek. However, the
situation was serious. It could no longer be put off.
This was not the time or place for him to express
appreciation for such a sentiment.
  "Brawling like a common deckhand off an alien
freighter is not." Young Spock lowered his head.
  "Yes, Father."
  Sarek took a deep breath, paused, then
continued more fi -- Y.
  "The time draws near when you will be forced to deeide
whether you'll follow Vulcan or human
philosophies. Vulcan offers much.
No war, no crime, with logic and reasoned
guidance operating in place of raw emotion and
unbridled passion. Once on the path you choose,
you cannot turn back.
  "Yes, Father."
  Sarek lifted his gaze briefly, in a tiny
display of disgust. That constant, meek "yes, Father"
was beginning to annoy him. Perhaps he'd been, not too
easy, but firm with the boy in the wrong ways.
  Spock finished his drink and looked around the
eomfortable room. Still no sign of Sarek
returning. He noticed old touches of Amanda's
Parthwoman's influence a easeade of brilliant
blue flowers pouring over a flowerbox built into a
wall. A dizzyingly eolorful afghan tossed
easually across a chair-back.
  And the books especially the books, on the
shelves. Real books, to handle and read, not to be
flashed and turned on by a dial on an
electronic reader-viewer. He smiled inwardly.
For those, at least, his childhood assoeiates had
envied him.
  Impractical they might seem to many adult
Vulcans, but they brought back a thrill of pride
and memories to
  112 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  him. There was something about having the words there, in your
hand. Any page, any chapter, at your personal
beck and call instead of having to plead for them through an
electronic middleman.
  He rose and walked to the large, open door that
faced into part of the lush garden. Distantly, he could
hear faint sounds of conversation between his father and his younger
self, engaged in some deep discussion.
  There had been many such discussions.
  A soft, shocking voice made him whirl.
  "I hope you were not disturbed by my son's
behavior, cousin Selek."
  Amanda stood there, even more beautiful than her
picture, more lovely than any memory.
Intelligent, gentle, and gracious. For the first time,
he could admire her as a woman in the prime of her
life, instead of as a boy seeing his mother.
  And more than any other quality, he
  remembered, far more than beauty or wisdom her
constant understanding. Understanding for the ordeal of his
childhood.
  "No, my lady Amanda." He didn't even
think the word "mother." This was one meeting he'd
  prepared for well and one mistake he was
  determined not to make. "Any child has much to learn.
My young cousin has a more difficult road
to travel than most others."
  Now it was Amanda's turn to study him closely.
  "You seem to understand him better than my husband."
  Careful now' Sarek you could err withand cover up, but
one slip with this woman and there would be trouble. She would
not fool so easily.
  "It is difficult for a father to bear less than
perfection in his son. Spock will find a way, I
suspect his way." His mother looked anxious.
He'd succeeded in diverting attention back to her
son from her son.
  "I do hope so. I respect Vulcan and all
its traditions, or I would not have married Sarek, but
it's such a demanding life. It's hard enough on a young
boy, without the added complications my son must
endure." The conversation was getting to be too painful
for Spock.
  STAR TREK L tilde ONE 113
  "The boy appears to be of a certain age. He
goes through the Kahs-wan ordeal soon, does he
not?"
  Amanda nodded. "Next month."
  Visions of catastrophe, of a helix of
mad time lines meeting in a common crazed confer and
dissolving into chaos, sprang into Spock's mind.
  "Next .. . month?" He couldn't keep all
the confusion and puzzlement out of his voice. "But tomorrow,
tomorrow is the twentieth day of Tasmeen?" His mother
looked up at him, disturbed a lithe by his
controlled intensity.
  "Yes, it is." That was reassuring, at leastl
The universe had not gone completely insane though
something was very, very wrong "Is something the matter, cousin
Selek1" Spock struggled to regain his
composure.
  "I've been traveling for quite awhile. I seem
to have lost track of time."
  "dis .. And that is all I have to say on the
subject, for now," Sarek concluded. "Soon you
trill undergo your test of manhood, in the
Kahs-wan. To survive for ten days without food,
water, or weapons on Vulcan's Forge as our
human associates have so quaintly renamed the
Sas-ashar desert.
  "It will demand more of you than anything else ever
has. To fail once is not unusual, nor is it
a disgrace for others." Young Spock lowered his eyes
again, studied the ground. But his father wasn't
through.
  "If you fail, there will be those who will nevertheless
call you coward an your life." These last words
rang like steel being hammered out on a Vutcanian
forge of another type. That stentorian tone had been
employed more than once for the glory of all
Vulcan, in interstellar diplomacy. The tone was
not softened for delivery from father to son.
  "I do not expect you to fail."
  Young Spock considered and looked up. "What if
I do, father?"
  Sarek could not admit to himself that there was anything so
alien as emotion swirling through his mind.
  "There is no need to ask that question. You will not
disappoint me. You will not
  disappoint yourself. Not if your heart and spirit are
Vulcan."
  114 STAR TRIER Lob ONE
  He turned abruptly and walked back toward the
house, leaving the youngster standing alone amid the
silently watching blooms, the eloquent ferns. A
few pebbles were lightly kicked by a small foot,
a little earth disturbed.
  Then he turned to the sehlat. The big mammal
had dozed somnolently through the entire
  discussion, oblivious to the verbalisations of father and
son. Now it stirred as his young master sat down beside
him.
  "Ee-chlya, what if I'm not a true
Vulcan, like they say? What if Sepek and the
others are right?"
  The sehlat was not that intelligent. It did not
understand. But it was sensitive to emotions. It snuffled
and nudged nearer the boy, edging close in rough
affection. Young Spock put his arms around as much of the
massive neck as he could and hugged hard.
  Spock maintained his own cover with near perfection
throughout the rest of the day. He always managed
to produce a plausible answer to any question Sarek
or Amanda might pose, to turn awkward lines of
inquiry neatly into other channels. It was a
performance worthy of a diDlomat's son.
  He'd passed a pleasant, no, an ecstatic
day, reliving the company of a younger mother and father, able
to enjoy them as equals. to respond to them on
entirely different yet eanallv Pratifving
levels.
  He committed his one potentially serious error wed
after the sun had vanished below the horizon.
  Slee tilde time approached. As the
guest, it was his place to mention such.
  "I have had a long, full day, cousin Sarek, and
your hospitality has been spoiling. I find myself
more than ready for sleep." Sarek and Amanda both
rose.
  "Rest well, cousin," said Sarek. "We shall
talk more tomorrow. I have enjoyed our evening immensely."
  "It is the highlight of my journey, cousin
Sarek," replied Spock, adding with an unseen
smile, "perhaps I may remind you of it again some
day."
  Sarek looked at him oddly for a moment, then
nodded politely. Amanda gestured, and Spock
started to follow
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 1 lSo
  her towards the bedrooms. He almost turned in the
direct tion of his own young Spock's room.
  Fortunately, it was dark in the hallway and
Amanda hadn't noticed the motion. He was barely
able to recover before she glanced back at him.
  She seemed willing to talk further at the door
to the guest room, but he made further excuses of
exhaustion. Too much close contact in the sometimes
revealing dimness of evening might lead to unwanted
questions.
  He then attended to matters of Vulcan
hygiene, enjoying once more the use of the interesting,
old-fashioned washroom facilities. Then he
returned to the guest room and turned on the single
overhead light.
  There was a lock on the door, but for a relative,
a guest in another's house, to have bolted it would have
been inexcusably bad manners. So, of course,
would be the unannounced entrance of any member of the
household. Still, he would have felt better with it
bolted. He'd have to chance leaving it open. The single
shuttered window he didn't worry about.
  Sitting down on the edge of the bed he brought out his
carry-bag. The little tricorder that came from it was far
too modern and compact. The sleepwear he now
wore was thirty years old, a simple garment of
pale yellow worn like a loose toga.
  One last time he considered locking the door, but
discarded the idea. Instead he turned on the bed and
put his back to it, shielding the potentially
embarrassing tricorder with his body. And while
recording, he kept his voice low. A passerby
in the hall would have to strain to hear him and press an
ear to the door to make any sense of what he said.
  "Personal log, stardate 5373.9,
subjective thee.
  "The time line seems to have changed once more, yet
I cannot discover on thinking back anything I have done
that might have affected it. My memory is quite clear
regarding the actual day my cousin saved my life.
That day is tomorrow." Then, as much to refresh his own
memory as to provide information for future listeners:
  "The Kahs-wan is an ancient rite of
Vulcan's warrior days. When Vulcans turned
to logic as the ruling element
  116 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  of their lives, they reasoned that it was necessary
to maintain the old tests of strength and courage.
Otherwise devotion to pure reason might make them
grow weak and incapable of defending themselves from
barbarians who might be less advanced mentally and
socially.
  "This, in itself, was of course a logical
decision."
  The house was very quiet. There was no
  pedestrian traffic on the surrounding pathways this
late at night.
  A door opened quietly in the rear of the house,
and a very small, very young figure crept out. Young
Spock was dressed in a desert
soft-suit and boots. He closed the door
carefully behind him and surveyed the area cautiously
before moving any further out.
  He took 4 couple of steps into the garden. There
was a rustling sound from the shrubbery on his left and he
froze.
  A large, familiar shape lumbered into
  view China, snuffling in the early morning air like
an old man with a sinus condition. The boy shook his
head, then held out a hand, palm up. The sehlat
halted at the hand signal, but continued to puff and
grunt. He certainly showed no sign of returning
to sleep.
  "No, Ee-chIya," he whispered. "This is my
own test. I have to do it alone. Stay!" He moved
away from the sehlat, heading for the garden gate.
  Ee-chiya looked after him, considered this in his
slow, patient mind, then turned and loped off after his
young master.
  Meanwhile, Spock had clicked off the compact
tricorder and had carefully repacked it with other
items deep in his carry-bag. His head dropped
halfway to the headrest on the bed before he seemed
to convulse. His head and upper torso came
instantly erect. Realization hit him
subtly like a small nova.
  Of course, he yelled to himself, I should have
remembered! It wasn't the actual Kahs-wan
ordeal his "cousin" had intervened in to save him!
  Reaching for the carry-bag he made haste to unpack
his clothes It took only minutes to lay out the
desert suit and boots, moving with as much speed as
quiet would permit.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 117
  When the sun rose over the black mountains, it
turned the hard-baked desert floor the color of
molten lead. Eechiya still trailed close on young
Spock's heels. They revere headed for those same
forbidding dark peaks. Under the circumstances and given
the task he'd set himself, the peaks seemed as
logical a place to prove himself as any other.
  Quick physical collapse was an early threat
of the real Kahs-wan. That was one test Spock no
longer worried about. He strode along easily at
an even pace, seemingly untired. Of course,
all of his walking so far had been in the pleasant
chill of night and the cool of early morning. Soon
it would grow hot and the sun would pull moisture from
him. That is, unless he elected to stop and find
shelter for the day. He hadn't decided
yet.
  He refused to let such dismal possibilities
intrude. were it not for his anguished state of mind he
could have enjoyed the hike. As for any unpleasantness
that might lie ahead, he was determined not to let his
spirits drop. The most important element in the
Kahs-wan was mental.
  Ee-chiya continued to mope along slightly behind.
In his case it divas not the mental aspect that was
most important. The big animal was unused to such
extended hiking. Eventually young Spock had
to pause and wait for the sehlat to catch up.
  Several long strides and his huge pet had done
so. It promptly lay down on its belly,
panting from the unaccustomed exertion and trying to catch
its breath. Ee-chiya's spirit was willing, but the flesh
was too old.
  Besides, a sehlat's normal environment was the
cool, high forests of the south. He managed well enough
in his cool stall and in the thick shade of the garden at
the house. But here, in open hot country his thick
fur divas a heavy burden. The rapidly rising
heat would put a tremendous strain on the body of
even a young, vigorous animal.
  Young Spock stopped again and turned
to face his pet squarely, hands on hips. His tone
was gentle, but frustrated.
  "Ee-chiya, go home! You are too old and too
fat for this."
  118 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  Ee-chiya leisurely examined this statement from his
position on the warming sands. Then he put his great
head down on his forepaws and assumed an air of
patient dignity. Young Spock shook his head
determinedly.
  "Huh-uh, that's how you always get your way with
father. It won't work with me. Go home,
Ee-chiya."
  The sehlat took no notice. He seemed quite
prepared to spend the rest of his existence on this spot.
It was clear to young Spock that the only way the beast
would return home would be while trailing its master.
  And he had a great deal to accomplish before that
return journey could take place. He sighed,
shrugged, and lifted his shoulders in a very human
gesture that said, "I've done what I can." Then
he turned and started off towards the high range at
the same steady pace he'd maintained since leaving
home.
  Ee-chIya waited only a few
seconds. Then he lurched to his feet and shuffled
off to join his master.
  After a while, another, taller figure reached the
same spot. It paused to examine the depression
left in the sand and soft gravel by Ee-chlya's
relaxing bulk. A light breeze off distant
desert plains swept sand and twigs into miniature
dust demons, threatening manifestations of
Vulcan's turbulent atmosphere.
  He pulled out the tricorder as he resumed his
walk. The trail of young Spock was clear enough, that
of the sehlat was unmistakable.
  "Personal log the boy Spock should be moving
toward the Arlanga mountains. He . . . ,"
Spock hesitated, "I . . . had much to prove
to myself. The personal ordeal, I now remember,
on which I embarked was meant to determine the course
my life would take. Many things are coming back to me
now, as I retrace my steps of thirty years
past and as I become more familiar with this time of my
youth."
  Sarek was just entering the garden. Amanda spotted him
and left the shady seat to rush into his arms. She was
calmer, more controlled than most terran women would have
been in a similar situation. But to one of
her Vulcan neighbors, she would have appeared almost
hysterical.
  STAR TRBK [tilde ONB 1 1 9
  "Sarek, I've looked everywhere. Our son and the
guest are gone."
  "And Behlya?" asked Sarek calmly. Amanda
frowned. She didn't know what she'd expected him
to say, but that was not it.
  "Ee-chlya?"
  ""He would go with our son," Sarek noted, "as
he always does."
  "I haven't seen him, now that you mention it,
Sarek."
  Sarek nodded. "I feel more secure knowing that.
Eechiya's getting old, but it will be difficult for the
boy to get into any serious trouble with the sehlat around.
You're certain he's with the stranger?" Amanda looked
uncertain.
  "I don't know, really. Spock's not anywhere in
the neighborhood I've checked and it's not like him
to go off any distance without telling me. I don't know
what else to think."
  "This cousin," mused Sarek, 'lie puzzles
me. Something very odd about him. I sometimes think I can
see it, and then it suddenly eludes me
again."
  Amanda gave an anxious start.
  'Lou don't think he'd harm Spock?"
  'if don't know what to think, Amanda. The man
claims to be a relative and is frb enough, yet
there is this lingering strangeness about him that all his
good-naturedness cannot conceal. However, I will take no
chances. I shall notify the proper authorities
immediately to watch out for either of them."
  Amanda bit her lip. That was the only logical
thing to do
  The desert ended abruptly in the first rugged
ramparts of the mountains. Spock knelt to study the
fresh trail of boy and sehlat, then rose and
began his first real climb. The morning sun exceeded
his rate of ascent.
  The various formations he passed as he moved higher
into the foothills were of igneous rock, stark and
weirdly shaped. Not from wind erosion, but by the
primeval forces of Vulcan itself. This was an area
of geologically recent platonic activity.
  120 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  Once the ground turned upward his path became more
difficult. Spock climbed slowly and carefully.
  Something sounded in the air, distant. He
stopped climbing and turned his head to listen. Nothing.
  Several steps later he heard it again and this time it
was unmistakable and much louder. A sound ... no,
there were two sounds, separate and distinct. One was a
deep, grinding snarl, the other the scream of an
animal with a much higher-pitched voicebox.
  The sounds conveyed anger and fury rather than fear.
He began climbing faster. Each boulder seemed
intent only on slowing his progress, every small
fissure designed to catch and trip him.
  Then he was running along a channel out through naked
rock. The old watercourse twisted and turned before
finally opening into a broad natural amphitheater.
  On the far side young Spock was scrambling for
safety, trying to stay behind protective rocks and
at the same time gain height. The le-matya
swung at him with venomous claws. They barely
missed a trailing leg, digging shallow gouges in the
soft stone. As young Spock dodged behind another
boulder the le-matya screamed in frustration.
  It was built like a terran mountain lion, but
huge. The nearly impenetrable leathery-grey hide
was more reptilian than mammalian, as was the
poison in its claws. Again the high-pitched scream
sounded, like the sound of metal rubbing on
metal at high speed, grating from the depths of that
awful gullet.
  The youngster moved higher and reached for a handhold.
Instead of a handhold he found himself confronted by a
sheer wall of shining black obsidian. It was no more
than three meters high not much of a barrier. But there
was no way up it and no way around. It might as
well have been three thousand.
  He turned his back to the volcanic glass and
awaited the le-matya's charge. If he could
dodge the first swipe of the monster's claws, he
might be able to slip past on that side before it could
swing again. The le-matya snarled and drew back a
paw for a last, final blow.
  It was never delivered.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 121
  An aging Ee-chiya struck the le-matya like a
runaway war tilde drive, rolling it over
completely on the high ledge. The heavy, square
head, neither cuddly nor benign now, bit quickly and with
surprising speed. Yellowing old teeth made a
deep double slash in the le-matya's flank.
  Spitting and squaring, the carnivore twisted
free, clawing at the sehlat. Ee-chlya darted out
of the way and threw a blow with one massive
paw that barely missed crushing the le-matya's
skull. The half-reptile glared and leaped at the
sehlat with both sets of claws extended.
Eechiya dodged that multiple death and in doing so
lost his balance.
  Both animals clashed together, off stride and on
crumbling, uncertain footing There was a moment's
pause while they overbalanced. Then, locked in
each others grips, they tumbled over and over,
clawing and biting, down the short slope.
Ee-chiya's low, rhythmic snarls boomed in
counterpoint to the le-matya's high-pitched,
hysterical screams.
  Spock hesitated only a moment.
To chaDange a lematya unarmed was certain death.
But for a while, the sehlat had * fully occupied.
Maybe, just maybe . . .
  He ran straight for the massive collage of
fighting flesh. Young Spock saw him coming. But the
sudden unexpected appearance of his cousin generated
only mild concern. He was too worried about
Ee-chIya.
  The sehlat had managed to bury his fangs in the
lematya's thick hide. Powerful teeth failed
to do much damage. His jaw muscles were
too old and weals. There wasn't even much blood
oozlog from that armored skin. But the considerable bulk
of the sehlat kept the writhing, spinning le-matya
continuously off-balance.
  It never saw Spocl: moving close by, eyeing
it, waiting for a chance. The le-matya dug in and
started to rod Eechiya over on his back
preparatory to a hiding strike. As the armored
spine came up Spock saw his opening, ran,
made the short leap. He landed firmly on the
carnivore's back.
  Incensed at the sudden new weight on its
shoulders the le-matya exploded in frenzied anger.
It jerked and twisted, trying to buck Spock off.
Ee-chlya skidded back out of the
  122 STAR TREK ONE
  way as the le-matya frantically tried to deal with
this tiny but unrelenting tormentor. It screamed again and
again.
  By simply lying still and rolling over it could easily
have dislodged Spock. But a le-matya, while long
on ferocity and strength, was notably deficient in
matters mental So it did not roll over. Instead
it kept spinning in circles and leaping high in the
air, trying to bite at the thing on its
back. It had no luck.
  Making a vise of his thighs and digging one hand
into loose, flying hair, Spock leaned forward
along the smooth neck and felt for the certain
special joining on the animal's neck. If it
suddenly decided to roll over, or jump back first
against a boulder . . . He couldn't hold on
indefimtely, and to let go now was an easy way of
committing suicide.
  There! That should be the place. Small but powerful
fingers touched, moved.
  The le-matya gave a long, drawn-out shudder.
As the wild eyes closed it sank unconscious
to the earth. Now the muscular form started to roll over
on its side, but Spock was not worried as he
jumped clear.
  Turning, he glanced up the slope, but the boy was
alreadv down off the dark rocks and running towards
the sehlat.
  l tilde chiya was getting slowly to his feet
when young Spock reached him. He threw his arms around
the big animal's neck. The slight boyish shape
had no effect on the huge furry mass. It
shook itself, a long rolling oscillation that commenced at
the nose and fluttered back to the short
tail.
  It seemed that his pet was unharmed, merely out of
breath.
  "0chiya," muttered the Youth. unable to enjoy
the emotional release of crying. "Good boy, good
old boyl"
  Forgotten but not upset by the neglect, Spock
dusted himself off and walked over to the two companions.
He'd bruised his thighs with the shifting, frictioning
grip he'd held on the le-matya's back, and
there was a possibility of a broken toe, but
otherwise he was intact. He cleared his
  roat.
  "I suggest we move away from this area before the le
  STAR IBM tilde 123
  matya regains consciousness I do not thin it
tilde 1 follow us, now, but it would be better not
to tempt it."
  'qtrue," replied the boy, then, 'allyank you for
helping me and China."
  "It was only my duty, Spock," the elder
version of himself told the younger. The reply held a
slight hint of reproof.
  'mother says you should always say 'y're welcome."
was That caught Spocl: a little on guard.
There tilde an awlrward sBenco. Some sort d
repair seemed called for.
  "The lam Amanda 1e noted for her gracion
tilde so."
  The youngster looked over at the motionless lo tilde
matya, a tlireatening shape eyed whine
unconscious, then back up at trig cough He
continued to strolls l tilde chlya tilde fur.
  "Do you think 1 tilde ever be able to do that new
pinch as well as you, comin Sele right-brace his
  '51 dare sag yew arm," admitted SpoclEvery
drug. "Come now. Let us leave this place."
  They moved off, heading up the 810pe. A little
while later they had circled the far cam of the
amphitheater and were heading deeper into the mountains.
  Neither of them noticed the occasional shiver that
passed through the sehlat's body. Nor could they see
inside to learn that the big Emil was moving with
increasing difflcultg.
  They'd entered an area where huge bonders and
tilde worn volcanic rock had began to mix
wit' 80iLike The first dwiduow trees am' here,
marching down in friendly ranks from the wetter high
plateau. Young Spock spoke again, his Solos
fog d open childish curiosity.
  "You followed me why?"
  For a quick moment Spoclc felt that he didn't have
to be as careful as hold had to be with his mother and father.
But ho paused before replying. Overcanfidenoe
might be his biggest danger. After alp his Coal
inquisitor, though young had an undeniably
brilliant mind.
  "I suspected you might attempt something of this
sort. I sensed your worry about the tilde Cah
tilde wan. Such an expedition seemed a very
natural gesture."
  Young Spock loolred up at him.
  124 STAR TREK L00 0 tilde
  "I had to see if I could do it. A personal
test first, a test for me and no one else. I cannot
faill"
  "That is your father's desire?"
  The boy spoke slowly, choosing his words with care.
  "Yes, and my mother's. They ... they confuse me,
sometimes. Father wants me to do things his way, and when
I ask her, Mother says that I should. But then she
goes and was He stopped and looked away from
Spock, suddenly embarrassed over what he was about
to confess.
  Remembering, Spock continued the thought
himself. "She's a human woman with strong emotions
and sensitivities." He kicked at a loose
pebble, unaware that he was repeating a gesture
performed several times by his younger self the previous
day.
  "She embarrasses you when she displays those
traits. And you are afraid when you see them in
yourself, be cause of what your father wishes."
  "How ... how did you know?" young Spock mur-
mured, quietly amazed. Uh-oh it took
Spock some fast thinking to find a way around that one.
  "There is also some human blood in my family
line, Spock." Then he added, taking some of the
solemnity off the conversation, "It is not fatal."
  "What you do not yet understand. SAID-OCK"" me
first offlcer of me Feanterpase continued, "Is
mat Vulcans do not lack emotion. This is- an
all too common misconception among many
Vulcans as well as among other races. It is
merely that ours are controlled, kept in check. This
adherence to principles of logic offers a serenity
mat omers excepting certain theological and
philosophical orders rarely experience in
full."
  "We have emotions, you see, so that is
nothing to be ashamed of. It is as natural as having
a sense of sight, or touch. But we deal firmly
with Hem and do not let them control us. Nor are
humans, like your mother, wholly ruled by their emotions.
Instead, they must walk an uneasy, nerve-wracking
tight-rope between the Vulcan principles of logic
and reason and the his
  He would have said more suddenly mere were so many things he
wanted to say to mis boy but they were interrupted by a
low moan. It came from behind mem.
  STAR TREK
  Startled, they both turned. l tilde chlya was
no longer right behind them. Instead he stood far back,
half-leaning against a broken cliff-face. He
showed no sign of moving toward them. They ran to the
sehlat's side.
  Up close, they could now see that the huge
animal was swaying unsteadily on his feet. By the
time they reached him he'd sunk slowly to the ground, his
eyes glazed and
  .. .
  cum.
  "tilde chlya!" young Spock shouted,
completely forgefflng Spock's recent lecture
on logic and emotion.. The science officer
made an efficient, rapid examination of the
distressed animal. If he could only remember the
details of his own childhood, he'd know exactly
what was the matterJust He'd been through this experience
once before or had he? Everything was so vague.
  The time was so distant, so insubstanffal, so . . .
  Nonsense, he told himself. The past was now
tilde nd it was very real.
  Then he found what he was looking for but didn't
expect to find. Puzzled, he stared at it until
he greyer aware of young Spock's anxious gaze.
  "It appears that the le-matya grazed him with a
claw, here. A slight wound, not too deep. But that
does not matter much, not with a le-matya. It should not
have happened. I don't seem to recall his
  The boy interrupted. "Is he dying?"
  Spock considered. When he finally replied it
WaBut with a double pain. Pain for himself, pain for what
he must say.
  "Yes."
  The youngster looked stricken. He stared down at the
rapidly weakening, moaning sehlat.
  Spock walked away a few steps, his thoughts
spinning. For the second time something completely
unexpected had happened. Try as he
might, he couldn't remember anything like this taking
place before.
  But musing on the perversity of the time vortex would do
no good at all. The animal was dying. He would be
dead already, only the strike had been a shallow one.
So Be chive had not received a normal dose of
venom. There might be a chance.
  But the boy's pet his pet would die for certain un
  126 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  less they could bring a healer here, and soon. He
told young Spock as much, making no effort
to sugarcoat the news.
  "tilde We cannot Bet him back to the city to a
healer. He is too large to move without special
equipment."
  "Then what," and young Spock's tone was
agonized, "can we do? There must be something."
  "You are 8 Vulcan. What would be the logical
thing to do?" The boy thought, looked up brightly.
  "I have medicines in my desert kit. Can . . .
?" Spock shook his head slowly.
  "Bven if by some chance you have a proper medication,
there could not possibly be a large enough dose for an
animal the size of Be chiya. Try again."
  The youthful brow twisted with concentration, the
mouth grimaced with the strain of furious thought. He
looked up again.
  "I can bring a healer here."
  "It is a long journey back across the desert,"
Spock Warned. "There are many dangers. And it will
be night again qoon. I will go." But his youthful self
stood up, his voice defiant. determined.
  "No. He is my pet. It is my duty.
No one else can do this for me. B. will you stay with
him?"
  Spock considered, trying to keep events sorted
out. If this had actually happened before, then his younger
self should succeed in the journey. If it hadn't
already tilde curred, and this was yet another variant
in the time line, he might he rhkine his own life in
all time lines by letting the boy go. Then he
remembered the uncertainties of his early
adolescence, the constant burning desire to prove
himself again and again. He nodded his
  acquiescence, but reline tartly.
  Young Spock took off immediately, disappearing over
the rolling, heat-warped horizon in the direction of
ShiKahr. Once the boy was out of sight, Spock
relaxed and regarded the dying sun. It turned the
desert floor to deep purples and threw
maroon shadows in the lee of small dunes.
  He reached out and idly stroked the massive head
of the sehlat. The big fellow looked up at him
trustingly. But
  STAR TREK [00 00 127
  it was also confused. That was no surprise. This was the
first time it had gotten a close whiff of Spock.
Obviously this tall stranger was not his young master.
  And yet smell and to a small extent sight, said
othermse. It was very puzzling.
  "This did not happen before, I am sure of it,"
Spock said to him, ruffling the warm fur behind an ear.
"My life's decision was made without the
sacrifice of yours, old friend.
  Ee-chIya moaned softly and stayed calm under
Spock's ministering hands.
  "I know there is pain. I can help a little.
Sleep now."
  He reached over and moved both hands on the
sehlat's neck, probing. Then he made a motion
similar to, and yet unlike, the thing he had done
to the le-matya. The great eyes closed an the way
and the entire massive body seemed to slump.
  Spock sat back and watched the desert.
Absently, gently, he continued to stroke
the now supine head. Kirk would have found the present
tableau incongruous. Doubtless Dr. McCoy
would have seen in it opportunities to apply his own
particular brand of humor.
  But to Amanda or Sarek, the pose would have looked
entirely natural and very very much in character.
  It grew dark rapidly and soon young Spock
had to depend on his natural, well-developed
night vision. Vulcan had no moon.
  He moved at a fast jog across the black,
shadowed landscape. His eyes rarely took note of
dim shapes and distant moving objects. They stayed
fixed on the ground in front of him. A few
small nocturnal animals observed the passage
of the slim, ghostly shape. They scurried
instinctively for the safety of their burrows.
  Once, the predatory shriek of a night-hunting
le-matya cut the air. It was distant, and young
Spock didn't break his stride. But he did
look back over his shoulder. And in not looking
ahead, he failed to see the coil of dark vines
half-buried in the sand.
  Another step the vines suddenly uncoiled,
snapping out like a dozen whips and grabbing at his
legs. He made a
  128 STAR ORBS LOG ONE
  half-running, half-standing leap that would have done
credit to any athlete in his age class and fairly
flew over the powerful thin tentacles. tilde
tilde
  There was a sharp, popping sound. One
  convulsing, clutching coil had just missed his ankle
and snapped instead against the heel of his left boot.
He continued on, resolving to keep his eyes on the
rough gravel and sand immediately in front of him even
if a le-matya screamed right in his ear.
  The writhing unthinking vines of the carnivorous
d'mallu did not ponder on the near miss. They
merely recoiled and reset as the plant with the inherent
patience of all growing things arranged itself once more
to wait for less elusive prey.
  There was a peculiar emblem on the door, cut
into the highly varnished yellow wood and inlaid with
shiny metal. Below this an odd-shaped plaque,
functional as well as decorative, was also
recessed in the wood.
  A soft, tinkling clash wind playing with distant
tem. ple bells. It stopped, started again as young
Spock shoved insistently against the plaque.
  It seemed ages passed before the door
finally opened. A tall, middle-aged Vulcan
appeared, dressed in a togalike night garment.
This toga was red with garish blue stripes. A
private expression of a publicly prosaic
physician.
  The elder eyed Spock with evident displeasure.
He was not in the mood for idle chitchat.
  "The hour is late. I trust your errand is
urgent?"
  "Yes ," young Spock panted, trying to catch his
breath and speak at the same time. "Most urgent,
Healer. My sehlat fought a le-matya in the
foothills. He suffered a small wound. The
poison of the le-matya's claws is working in him
now. Please was The carefully maintained, even tone
began to crack. "You must come with me. He needs your
knowledge!"
  The healer considered, studying his late-night
caller. The dim light at the door made
recognition difficult, but not impossible.
  "You are Spock, son of Sarek, are you not?"
  "Yes, Healer." The physician nodded in
satisfaction.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 129
  ""I have heard of you. You have a
tendency toward vhat humans call "practical
jokes." his
  The youth nodded knowingly. He'd expected something
like this. Vulcan gossip reached far and lasted long.
  "It's true, I did that two years ago, and
did not repeat it. Healer, I would not call you out
at such an hour if it were not deathly serious. You have
heard several things about me, it seems. Have you ever
heard the son of Sarek called a liar?"
  The healer's tone softened. Such direct
challenge from one so young could only be admired.
  ""No. That has never been said." A quick
glance at the boy's disheveled clothes and flushed
face brought him to a decision.
  "Very well. Wait here and I win gather my
things."
  Young Spock caned after him as he disappeared into the
house.
  "Healer, please hurryl" Inwardly, he was
relieved. He'd delivered himself and his message so
quickly, so urgently, that the healer had not thought to ask
a most obvious question.
  What was a young lad of seven doing in the black
mountains with his sehlat in the middle of the night, and
why had he come alone to get help?
  Spock was not ready to waste time on
  embarrassing explanations.
  It was wondrous strange to be sitting alone at
night with a dying figure out of one's old
childhood, instead of in the commander's cabin on the
Enterprise.
  The sehlat moaned softly, conscious once again.
A quiver of pain ran down its Banks. Inside
Spock's belly something tightened. There was nothing more
he could do for the suffeilng animal. To put it under
again might prove fatal in itself, given the advanced
state of weakness of the creature's systems.
  There was another soft moan. At first he ignored
it. Then he rose and stared into the night. The moan was
still distant. but growing rapidly louder. It had not come
from the sehlat.
  It was a thick purr now, rough and mechanical.
He
  130 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  scanned the dark horizon wishing, wishing for a
battery of portable lights from the starship. But the
Enterprise had not even been built yet. He
didn't have so much as a flare.
  It was needed. Silhouetted against the night sky,
he saw the source of the sound. A desert
flier, a streamlined version of the standard city skimmer.
Low and rakish, but practical, built for
emergency bursts of speed.
  An ordinary citizen would not rate such an
expensive, compact craft. Logically, he had
no need of it. It was also bigger than the average
skimmer, big enough to carry several passengers. There
were only two figures in it.
  As the craft drifted closer he recognised his
younger self and another, older man. That could only be
the healer young Spock had gone to find.
  The skimmer came close. It whined to a halt and
hovered a meter or so off the ground. The rocks where
he waited with E -- chlya were jagged and close
together, so the skimmer pilot had settled down in the
nearest flat space. It raised a cloud of sand and
dust before the older Vulcan cut its power.
  He climbed out, and young Spock began to lead him
up into the rocks. Spock turned and walked back
to stand next to the heaving bulls of the sehlat. He
stroked the head, scratched it behind weakly fluttering
ears.
  "It will not be long now, old friend."
  A moment later young Spock and the healer appeared,
scrambling over the last rise. They moved
to join hirn.
  The healer took only the briefest of looks at
the long scratch where the le-matya's claws had
struck. Then he removed several compact medical
sensors from his carrycase and began a thorough
  examination of the stricken animal.
  Spock stood and placed a hand on the
  youngster's shoulder. From the first there had been no
shock at the sight of his younger self. He'd been
well prepared for that. But this first actual physical
contact brought home thealienness of the situation in a
way that mere sight never could.
  The full, true incredibility of it slammed
home for the first time. Under his hand the boyish shoulder
stirred. Spock felt a need to mumble something,
anything.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 131
  "tilde You made The crossing most
efficiencyeaity, Spock. And at night too. I
have a hunch call it a preliminary evaluation based
on sound initial observations Uhat you will not fail
your father in the Kahs-wan." Young Spock didn't
look up at him, instead kept his gaze focused
on the sehlat and The healer.
  "y wanted only to help
Ee-chlya. He was my fadher's before he was mine.
I didn't want him to come with me, but he wouldn't
stay behind. To lose him was Spock interrupted as
gendy as possible.
  "A Vulcan would face such a loss without
tears."
  "How?" Controlled or not, there was a universe of
emotion packed into chat one word, Ulat single
desperate exclamation.
  "By understanding Chat every life comes to an end when when
time demands it. Believe me, Spock, when I
say Nhat the demands of time are not to be argued
wide. Loss of life is to be mourned, true, but
only if that life was wasted.
  "Such was not Uhe case with Ee-chlya."
  The healer looked up from The sehlat. He had
to hunt a moment before locating Them in The dark.
  "Spock?" The youngster turned. So,
automatically, did the older Spock. The boy
glanced up at him curiously, but there were other
Heaings on his mind. He dismissed The incident as
he moved closer to The healer. Spock followed,
thankful that the healer had not witnessed the lapse in his
meticulous masquerade.
  "Yes, sir?" The sehlat was moaning
louder and continuouslv now. The healer glanced down at
the animal and shook his head slowly.
  "It has been too long, I fear, and the scratch
was deep enough. No known antidote can save his
life."
  The boy stood silently in the dark,
contemplative.
  "Iq there nothing you can do?"
  ""To save him, nothing. But I can prolong his
life though he will always be in pain. Or . . . I
can release him from life. In this I will need your
decision. He is your pet." The healer did not
look up at him.
  Alien, unchildish thoughts vied for attention within
young Spock's mind. He turned away from the two
adults
  132 STAR TREK ONE
  so they could not see the effort he was putting into his
answer or the anguish that might be visible.
  Spock waited several minutes, then moved up
quietly to stand behind the boy. He put his hand on the
small shoulder once more. This time there was no shock,
no sense of unnaturalness. For the first time, he
truly was Selek, the wise cousin. Young Spock
glanced up at him, then back down at Be
chlya. When he spoke it was in a fiat,
mechanical voice, to the healer.
  "Release him. It is fitting he dies as he
lived with peace and dignity."
  The healer nodded expressionlessly and reached into his
case. He withdrew a small tube whose size and
looks belied its effectiveness. There were only
three controls on it two tiny dials and a button
at one end.
  He adjusted the settings. Young Spock watched
for another moment, then walked over and knelt beside the
sehlat. He sat down on the hard ground and took
the massive head in his lap.
  IZ-EVERY-CHIYA stared up at him and burrowed himself
deeper, closer to the boy. There was an ethereal,
minute hiss as though from a tiny spray. Young
Spock's face remained unchanged,
  emotionless Vulcanl
  "I regret that my actions troubled you in any
way, Father," young Spock said, "but I am convinced
my actions were necessary." Sarek blinked in the strong
light pouring in through the garden window as he studied his
son.
  There was something in the youth's attitude and speech
pattern that the elder Vulcan had not
detected before. In fact, both seemed somehow rather like
. . . he chanced a quick and hopefully unnoticed
glance towards his odd cousin, standing impassively
by a far bookcase.
  Spock divas studiously examining an ancient
terran book. It happened to be a fantasy, a
childhood favorite of his by a terrau with an odd
name. Sarek could not see the title and it probably
wouldn't have set any thoughts going in his head anyway.
The paper books were Amanda's province. His mother,
however, might have made something of the coincidence, but she
was too relieved to notice much of anything but her
son just now.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 133
  Sarek turned back to the boy.
  "I hope you can explain why it was necessary. Your mother
and I were . . . worried."
  "There was a decision to be made," said young
Spock firmly. "A direction for my life had
to be chosen and before the artificiality of the Kahs
tilde wan. I chose Vulcan."
  On the other side of the room, Amanda turned
away briefly in her chair, fighting off tears.
She felt a slight sense of loss, common to all
mothers at those strange, offcenter times when
they realize their child is growing up. Her son had
elected to follow the more difficult path.
  Sarek exhibited no outward reaction to this
announcement but he was naturally pleased. Of
course, it would be unthinkable to show it, or to smile.
He nodded solemnly.
  "It is welt You have comported yourself with honor."
He paused. "We will see to it that Ee-chlya is
brought home from the mountains."
  "Thank you, Father." Young Spock shuffled his
feet impatiently. "If you will excuse me now,
I have some business to attend to."
  "Business?" queried Sarek suspiciously.
  "With some schoolmates. A demonstration of the
Vulcan neck pinch. Our cousin taught me."
He nodded by vay of excusing himself and left the
room.
  When he'd departed, Spock replaced the friendly
old tome in its slot on the shelf and moved
towards Sarek and Amanda.
  "I, too, must beg to be excused. I must
make my farewells now. Your hospitality has
been most kind, more than you can know. But I must
journey on. Already I have spent too much . . ."
he paused and almost, almost gunned, "too
much time here."
  "Just enough time," said Sarek gratefully. "You
saved my son's life. There is no way I can
ever repay you for that." Spock interrupted him
smoothly, his voice turning serious.
  com"...Try to understand your son, Sarek of Vulcan.
His troubles, his confusion, his battles with his emotions.
That will be repayment enough."
  "An odd and intimate request from a stranger,
but I
  134 STAR TREK LOG ORB
  will honor it. I am bound to honor it. If you
ever pass this way again, or if there is anything I can
ever do for you all that I have tilde yours."
  "if should like to, but I *tar that circumstance will
dictate that I not retrace this path again." This
divas becoming too painful. It was thne to leave.
He raised his hand in salute. "Peace and long
life, cousin."
  "Peace and long life," saluted his mother and father in
return. "Long life and prosper, cousin."
  Ho didn't look back as he left the garden
gate and started down the path leading back toward the
desert. But he could feel their curious eyes on his
back, watching, watching . . .
  He remembered now that his parents had never mentioned
a cousin Selek. He smiled inwardly. Even so,
ho understood now why he had never forgotten that
remarkable individual . . .
  James T. Kirk paced nervously back and
forth in front of the Time Gate. He was alone on the
rocky platform in front of the Guardian d
Forever.
  Unresolvable shapes drifted across the confer of the
time portal, cloaldog unknown mysteries,
enigmatic paste. Suddenly he stopped paclag and
stared at the rippling mists. They began to slow,
to organise and coalesce into a definite pattern.
The Gate divas activating.
  It was confirmed a second later as a deep, now
familiar rumble issued from somo stiBut
  indeterminate locale.
  ""THB TRAVBBBR D RIO."
  Kirk studied the Gato with painful expectation.
At first there was nothing. He began to worry. Then,
in the distance, a transparent flowing form seemed
to jump towards bim. It was solidifying as it came
through the Gate.
  A familiar lanl tilde y frame, clad in
the attire of another world's bygone dam,
stepped out and shook hands with him. Speck didn't
say
  anything but Kirk had had enough experience reading
barely noticeable Vulcan expressions to tell that
the trip hadn't been a total disaster.
  Spock went immediately to his waiting pile of
normal clothing. Off came the worn soft-suit and
tight boots,
  STAR TREK L00 0 tilde 135
  swapped for the daytime uniform of a Starileet commander.
  "I sent the others up to the ship," Kirk
volunteered in response to the unasked question. He
nodded in the direction of the again blurred time portal.
"What happened in there? You were only gone
twenty-four minutes ... subjective time."
  "Nothing deferent happened, nothing unexpected,
Captain." He paused. "Oh, one small thing was
changed, nothing vital. A pet died."
  Kirk looked relieved. "A pet? WelLike that
wouldn't mean much in the course of time."
  "It might," Spock replied, "to some his
  Kirk eyed his first officer more closely as he
swapped Vulcan carry-bag for utility belt,
communicator, and other modern necessities.
Kirk hesitated, decided to ask no
further questions for now. There were more important ones
  to be answered. He flipped open his
  communicator.
  "Enterprise . . . this is the captain. We're
moving away from the Guardian. There'll be two
to beam up."
  "Aye, sir," came Engineer Scott's
reply.
  A moment later both men stood still as a
luminescent glow enveloped them and turned them
into pieces of sun.
  This state was quickly reversed in the main
transporter room of the starship. Both Kirk and
Spock held their positions, however, after
remateriali tilde ing Kirk uncertain,
Spock
  apprehensive.
  "Well, well, well!" Dr. McCoy
stepped into view from behind the transporter console as
Scott concluded final shutdown. The doctor
looked at them and nodded knowingly, his tone as
irascible as ever.
  "So you two finally decided to end your vacation.
While You've been running an over creation,
I've been stuck performing semiannual
crew physicals. You two are the last ones."
Captain and
  commander exchanged glances. each certain he was more
relieved than the other.
  "Welcome aboard, Mr. Spock," said
Kirk. McCoy moved closer, shepherding them out
of the alcove and toward the elevator.
  "Never mind the chitchat. I've got the
  mediscanners ad set up for a Vulcan. I have
to recalibrate every time I run
  13 6 STAR TRBR LOO ONE
  a check on you, Spock." He made it sound like
the biggest job since the hammering out of the
Federation-Klingon peace treaty.
  "Dr. McCoy," said Spock, moving towards
the closed doors, "you do not know the half of your good
fortune. If things were only slightly different you
might have to recalibrate for, say, an Andorian."
  He and Kirk activated the call switch
  simultaneously.
  "What's that supposed to mean?" McCoy
  inquired. When neither man replied. "If that's
supposed to be a joke, I have to remind you that
Vulcans don't tell jokes." He followed
them into the waiting elevator.
  "Times change, Doctor," suggested Spock
meaningfully, "times change."
  McCoy grunted, sensing something more than mere
argument in the first officer's voice.
  "Just give me time enough for a physical, that's
all."
  "All the time in the world, Doctor." Kirk
grinned as McCoy hit the necessary button and they
began to descend to lower levels.
  It wasn't often he enjoyed something as much as that
simple elevator ride.
  PART 111
  ONE OF OUR PLANETS
  IS MISSING
  (adapted tilde from a script by Marc
  Daniels)
  lx
  Precisely two and a quarter ship-days after
leaving the Time Planet the crew of the Enterprise
received a general emergency call. There were
undoubtedly rarer things in the universe than general
emergency calls but not many.
  "What I'd like to know," Kir right-brace
inquired of no one in particular, from his seat in the
bridge-command chair, "was why someone
didn't notice and chart this thing before it slipped
into inhabited Federation space?"
  Lt. Arex was seated next to Sulu at the
helm-computer. Now he lifted all three arms
in a popular human gesture and swiveled his thin
neck so that he was facing the captain. Bright,
intelligent eyes stared out from under projecting
ridges of bone.
  "Quien sake? Who knows, Captain?"
  Uhura's reaction was more reasoned. "Maybe no
one thought it worth an emergency alert, Captain,
until it did move so deep into Federation
territory. It hasn't made any aggressive
moves. Why should it attract much attention while in
free space?"
  "liven given its benign nature,
  Lieutenant something of which we have as yet no
proof," countered Spock, "the fact that a cosmic
cloud of this size and density not to mention its other
peculiar characteristics has never been observed before should
have been sufficient to pique the interest of at least a
couple of astronomers. I cannot help but wonder if
there are other reasons why it was not detected."
  Kirk grunted. They'd been examining and
  reexamining 139
  140 STAR TREK ONE
  these same arguments ever since the call had been
received. He didn't make a point of it, but he was
upset. They'd been returning to starbase from the
planet of the time vortex when the call had diverted
them. RandR for the crew, not to mention needed
ship-servicing, had to be postponed yet again.
  "Just our usual luck the Enterprise being the
only starship of any size in the phenomenon's
vicinity. Sometimes I get the feeling Starfleet
Command picks on us."
  "I suspect, Captain," Spock suggested,
"that if we were to Derform below expectations a few
times, Starfleet would be in less of a hurry
to select us for such tasks."
  "Don't tempt me. Mr. Spock."
  "I was not tempting you, Captain. I was merely
proposing an alternative mode of operation with an
eye toward alleviating your apparent discomfort at
being so often chosen by Starneet Command for such his
  "Oh. never mind, Mr. SAID-OCK." If he
thought SDOC-KNOWLEDGE was capable of ironic humor,
he'd have suspected that no, ridiculous.
  "Mr. Sulu. Iet's see the grid."
  "tilde Yes, sir." Sulu's hands
moved over the complex navization console. A
brilliant star-chart appeared on the main
viewscreen. The overlying grid network permitted
fast, crude calculation of speed and distances.
Kirk's interest was on the Pattas XIV
system. The exaggerated diagram showed close to one
side of the moving white dot that was the Er tilde rpr
tilde se.
  Three planets tilde Bezaride,
Mantilles, and Alondra, plus a fair-sized
asteroid belt extended outward from Pallas I and
II. Att were smart, inner-system type worlds.
There rere no gas giants.
  The system revolved around a double star. Double-star
systems were far from unusual, but those with planets
were. And those with inhabited worlds were very much o. The
Pallas system was very carefully studied before
settlement was recommended. Not that Pallas II
Mantilles was not a hospitable world. Quite the
contrary. But Federation authorities wanted
to metre, well, double certain that the twin-star system
was stable enough to sup"
  STAR TRBX LOG ONB 141
  port MantiMian life for at least a
minimal period of time. Say, four or
five hundred million years.
  In addition to being blessed vnth two shadows per
person, Mantillians enjoyed the notoriety of
being the most remote inhabited world of consequence in the
entire Federation. And while the planet was now
safely populated and well beyond the initial stages
of colonisation, the MantiUians still Iiked to think
of themselves as pioneers their backs to the populous
Federation and galactic center, their faces turned
to the beckoning gulfs of intergalactic space.
  They were a proud, self-reliant people. But the
sudden appearance of Ibis strange cloud had made
them nervous. So the Mantillian government had
shouted loud enough for Stardeet Command to hear, and
Starneet Command had shouted for the
  Enterprise.
  And Kirk Kirk could only shout at the gods of
coincidence and bad timing. At least they didn't
shout back, they only snickered.
  He sighed. They were here. Find out what the thing
was, reassure the Mantillians, and head for
starbase once again with closed channels this time,
maybe.
  "Mr. Sulu, let's have some timings." The
helmsman's reply was quick and crisp.
  "We will intercept the cloud in the Vicinity of
Pallas m Alondra. The outermost planet,
sir. It is not inhabited. There are only a few
automatic scientific stations." Spock looked
up from his hooded viewer at the computer-library
console.
  "Also, Captain, I might add that we are now
ap- proaching sensor range of the cloud."
  "Initial readings, Mr. Spoclc? Stardeet
wasn't very specific. I kind of got the
impression they expected us to dig out our own
information." He tried to show some interest as Spoclc
looked back into his viewer and adjusted controls.
Probably the cloud was a loose piece of
nebula, a relatively harmless collection of thin
cosmic gases.
  Spock's report changed all that. There was
nothing ordinary about this cloud.
  "It is an irregular shape with shifting,
undefined boundaries, Captain. On the mean, I
would estimate some eight
  142 STAR TREK ONE
  hundred thousand kilometers across and perhaps half that
in depth. And it is quite dense." The soft-spoken
Arex looked up from his seat at the helm and
whistled, impressed
  "Immense! Twice the diameters of Sol
m's three biggest gas giants combined!"
  "tilde We're all well grounded in basic
astronomy, Lt. Arex," said Kirk drily.
"Put up our present position, please."
  Arex, looking slightly downcast, went to work at
the console. "Yes, Captain."
  Inwardly, Kirk chastised himself. There was really
no call for coming down on Arex like that. He was only
expressing a sense of awe and wonder at the sight
of the peculiar intruder, a feeling everyone else
probably shared. It was a liberty Kirk couldn't
permit himself. Captains weren't supposed to be
awed.
  Anyway, it wasn't the thing's size that had
suddenly worried him. It was Spock's information that
the cloud was "quite dense." Sizewise it was small
stuff compared to even a little nebula. But if the gas
was thick, and could actually have some effect on an
atmosphere
  The scene on the screen shifted. The vast mass
of the cloud now appeared on the screen. It bulked
to the right, galactic inclination, of Alondra. Now
it was very close to the uninhabited outermost
planet.
  Then further, more worrying sensor readings started
coming in. According to the Enterprises detectors, the
cloud divas composed of gaseous matter so thick in
some places that it bordered on the solid. It was
too thick to be a nebula, too thin to be a world.
It neither rotated nor tumbled, showing splendid
disregard for all the usual effects of motion and
solar gravitation. Pallas I and II should be
having all kinds of effects on it now, yet
sensors continued to claim the cloud ignored the twin
SUDS com pletely.
  And it moved rapidly. Much too rapidly.
  There it was, then. The seemingly bottomless
Pandora's box of the universe had confronted them with
yet another surprise.
  "Come, Mr. Spock. Keep at the computer.
Let's have
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 143
  further information," and, he didn't add, information
that made a little more sense. Spock paused, looked
up from his viewer.
  "I'm sorry, Captain. I find myself quite
intrigued by the phenomenon. There is both matter and
energy active in the cloud, it seems. But
to say the least, the combination is highly unorthodox.
lyor example, the quantities of each do not
appear to remain constant, but rather exist in a continual
state of Box.
  "This would impb that matter within the cloud is being
steadily converted to energy. Yet it does not
radiate more than a trickle of thy apparent
production."
  "You're right, Spoclc, that's very intriguing."
Kirk pondered. The closer they got, the more information
they obtained, the more impossible this thing became.
""It's very odd. It almost suggests . . ."
  "Lookl" Everyone whirled to face the screen at
Sulu's abrupt shout.
  The cloud had reached Alondra. Sulu switched
hurriedly to long-rango visual pickup and before
their horrified eyes, the cloud slowly crept
amoebalike across the face of the planet. It
traveled over the planetary surface patiently,
inexorably, and one couldn't help but feel
deliberately.
  Only Arex, mindful perhaps of Kirk's earlier
reproof, kept his eyes on his instruments.
  "Captain," he announced finally, "Aloridra
has disappeared from navigation scan." That
sent Spock's gaze back to his library
viewer.
  Uhura suggested, "Tho cloud has come between us
and the planet. Somehow that's interrupting scan."
  'ationo, Lieutenant," said Spock quietly.
"The cloud has engulfed Alondra." A long
paws followed. The bridge was silent except for the
tiny,
  nonconversational ticks and hums of various
instruments. The next time he spoke, the science
officer's voice conveyed an unmistakable feeling
of alarm.
  "Captain! The planet seems to be breaking
up. Sensors indicate a definite and rapid
reduction of planetary mass."
  A hurricane of thoughts had roared through Kirk's
  144 STAR TREK ONE
  head in the past few minutes. Now he found himself
voicing the least palatable of them.
  "Spock," he asked quietly, "is it
possible that this 'cloud" cons planets?"
  "Captain, I believe that your question is
unnecessarily replete with emotional overtones."
  '4This whole situation is unnecessarily
replete with emotional overtones, Mr.
Spoclc. Please answer the question."
  "extrapolating from all available sensor
information, sir," his Fist officer replied,
argumenative to the last, "it would seem a reasonable
assumption."
  "Sir?" Kirk looked over at Sulu. "The
cloud is changing course."
  "Ridiculous, Mr. Sulu. It's not a powered
vehicle. A natural object should not his
  "Course change verified, sirl" added Arex
excitedly. 41nitial course computation
revision indicates was he paused, triplo tilde
choc right-brace + his figures, 'allyndicates it
is moving now in the direction of the second
planet."
  "4But if * continua on that course was
Uhura called.
  Kirlc'a voice was grim. was Eighty-two
million people will die."
  Very quiet it was on the bridge then.-Only the
computers continued to converse.
  "Mr. Tutu, prepare to increase speed to warp
tilde eight. Push it to the limit. deform Engineer
Scott of the reasons, if he so Inquires."
  "Yes. sir was Sulu nodded. Kirk
continued.
  "At tilde varp tilde eight. Mr. Sutu.
we will intercept the cloud." At that Sulu loolred
back hesitantly towards the command chair, his gaze
full of questions.
  '4Wo . . . will . . . intercept . . . the
. . . cloud," Kirk repeated distinctly. He was
well aware everyone on the brides was staring at him.
Well, Splat the hell did they expect?
44And before it reaches the inhabited planet
Mantilles. Despite the fact that we are still
uncertain as to the cloud's trao nature.
Despite the fact that it masses many millions of
EntcrpAse's.
  ""Ready, Mr. Sulu!""
  "Course plotted and set" Captain."
  44War tilde eight, please,
Lieutenant."
  STAR TRERL tilde 0 equals 145
  Sulu did a small thing. Only God and
helmsmen could warp the very fabric of space and at
times like these, some helmsmen got the two confused.
  That's why navigation officers and chief engineers
had the highest rate of turnover and mental
crackup in Starneet.
  The Enterprise responded and leaped ahead.
  "If we can't stop it, Jim millions of people will
die."
  Kirk swiveled his chair. "Hello, Bones.
I know. Perhaps more."
  "True, Doctor," continued Spock. "If
planetary annihilation is indeed a part of this
shine's nature, it might seek out woridq tic
instinctively as any animal seeks out food. It
may even consume stars as well as planets though it
seems woefully small in comparison to even a
small star."
  "Almost as small as we are in comparison to it?"
Kirk mused. Snack. naturally. did not
smile.
  "Almost. CddaDtain. Yet we Icunw nothing
of the cloud's limitations. If it has such
selective ability, it could prove a threat to every
world in our galaxy."
  "Bones?" McCoy moved to stand close
to Kirk. Everyone on the bridge could imagine, or
thought they could what was Heroine on in the captain's
mind right now. So they resolutely ignored the
resultant conversation.
  "Bones, I need an expert medical
opinion on mass psychola tilde you. tilde ,
  "Then you've come to the wrong place, Jim." The
jest fen flat. "Seriously, I can venture
opinions, but not expert ones."
  "tilde You're the best I've got, Bones.
Ten me do we dare ten the people on Mantilles what
we know? So that they can attempt to save at least a
portion of the population? They have instruments, they can
guess but they won't know until it's too late."
  McCov looked up at the screen at the moving
cloud. The distant view showed no bulging eyes,
no gaping jaws. In appearance-it was no more threatening
than a cloud of steam.
  "How much time do they have?"
  Arex supplied the answer, and Kirk didn't
even think
  146 STAR TRBR[OG ONE
  of reprimanding the lieutenant for evesdropping.
"Four hours, ten minutes, sir."
  McCoy looked at Kirk. "I suspect the
people on Mantilles are organised,
well-educated, civilised, thinking human beings,
Jim."
  Kirk nodded in confirmation. "That's how I see
it, too, Bones. They'll panic, an
right." McCoy grinned tightly.
  "On the other hand, Captain," reminded
Spock, and it was natural that he should be the one
to voice the thought, "they may still manage to save some
small portion of the populace."
  "A great deal could depend on the executive in
charge, Jim," McCoy continued. "Who's the
governor of Mantilles? Do you know anything about
him?"
  "Robert Wesley," Kirk murmured, thinking
back in time to a long-past incident. "He was in
Starfleet once. Left it to accept the
governorship." He glanced meaningfully up at the
doctor. "He's no hysteric."
  McCoy didn't hesitate. "Then tell
him."
  "Coming up on the cloud," interrupted Sulu.
"ETA five minutes ten seconds."
  "Very well, Lieutenant." Kirk whispered
back at McCoy, "Thanks, Bones." Then he
raised his voice and gave orders to Uhura
  "Lieutenant, send a priority one call
to Governor Wesley on Mantilles."
  "Aye aye, sir."
  As the Enterprise gained distance on the
cloud, viewscreen perspective had to be forced
down once, twice yet a third time. Then it was
impossible to widen the view or reduce it any
further.
  There was nothing in the screen now but the shifting,
enigmatic, threatening cloud-shape. It blotted out
the universe.
  Bland as the actual picture was, it exerted a
tremendous fascination. Everyone stared at the nearing,
gaseous form. Everyone but Spock. He found more of
interest in his computer readouts.
  "Captain, I'm getting anticipated readings
from the chemical analysis sensors."
  STAR TREK L tilde ONE 147
  "Anticipated, Mr. Spock? Oh, you mean
. . ."
  "Yes, Captain. They are most unusual, in
keeping with the unique nature of the cloud."
  "Well. keep us in suspense any longer,
Spock. What kind of readings?"
  "There are indications of elements present in the
cloud that are utterly unknown in our periodic
tables, sir both natural and artificial.. I
am now ninety percent certain of what has heretofore
been only theory."
  "Which is7" Kirk prompted.
  "That this object has originated outside our
galaxy."
  "Captain!" yelled Sulu abruptly. They
all turned back to face the screen.
  A segment of the massive shape was twisting,
bulging with ponderous speed. Prom the bulge long
tendrDo-like spiral streamers of thick cloud
suddenly reached out. out, in the direction of the
FeanterprJse. Once formed, the fluffy
pseudopods moved with uncanny speed and
flexibility.
  "Evasive action!" Kirk shouted. hands
reflexively trying to die into the metal of the command
seat.
  "Aye, sirl" shouted Arex as he and Sulu
worked frantica11v at the helm.
  But this close to target. evasive action was
nearly imDossihie to coordinate. The
Enterprise was no humminabir tilde like.
to SAID-IN on its own axis or suddenly fly
backwards. Even if the fabric of the ship could have
survived such a makeover, everyone and everything on
board would have been thrown out through the forward
superstructure by sheer inertia.
  It was like being attacked by a ban of loose
cotton. The long streamers entwined themselves gently
about the Ens terprise. Then, warp tilde eight or
no war tilde eight, space-twisting engines or
no space-twisting engines, the ship began
to retract steadily back into the cloud.
  "Full reverse thrust," ordered Kirk, more
hopeful than sanguine.
  "Full back engines, sir," Sulu confirmed.
The bridge shuddered under the strain.
  Except for computer-field compensation, the
Enterprise would have been torn apart by the titanic
convicting
  148 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  stresses suddenly imposed on it. But the
immense power of her engines was insufficient to pull
her free.
  "Not enough it's not enough," McCoy said tightly,
verbalising the obvious.
  "Some sort of antiplasma," Spock informed
them, as if he were analysing the composition of a candy
bar. He looked up from the viewer. "It generates
an unusually powerful attractive force. Not
gravity as we know it, but similar." Kirk hardly
heard him.
  "Prepare to fire all phased into the cloud
mass. If possible, aim at where these tendrils
connect with the mass itself."
  "Locked on," said Sulu mere seconds
later.
  "Phasers ready," added Arex.
  "Firer"
  "Meg phasers.""
  Ravening, destroying beams of pure force lanced out
from the Enterpnse tilde nly to vanish with no visible
effect into the cloud mass. They might as well have
been beaming at the sun.
  "Nothing, Captain," reported Sulu.
Spock supplied an answer for the incredible.
  "The cloud appears to have the ability to absorb
energy, Captain. This is not surprising in view of
what we already know about it. The beams of our phasers
were not reflected by any sort of shield. Of
course, anything that can manage the breakdown of a
planet's molten corecom n
  There was no need to finish the thought. Try to harpoon
a whale with toothpicks!
  The streamers continued to pull the Enterprzse
closer to the cloud. Sulu was the first to notice the
rippling in the surface of the roiling mass.
A small opening appeared, expanded.
  Its warp-drive engines still fighting in reverse,
the starship disappeared into the cloud.
  Kirk's stomach, on the other hand, was moving
upwards and any minute now he was sure it would pop
right out his mouth. The lights on the bridge
fluttered, dimmed, and fluctuated wildly.
Uhura was thrown out of her chair by an especially
violent concussion.
  Sulu was tossed a meter into the air before being
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 149
  slammed down to the deck, while Kirk and
Spock held onto their respective chairs for
dear life.
  Only Lt. Area, his three arms and legs,
managed to retain anything like a stable position.
  Fortunately, the severe shaking lasted only a
few sec- onds. Buffeting became rapidly
less and less violent. In a little while the ship
had completely recovered its normal
equilibrium.
  ""Uhura?"
  She scrambled back into her seat, grimacing at
the lin- gering pain, and started checking her console for
break- age.
  "Sore backside, Captain, that's all.
Nothing vital dam- aged."
  "That's a matter of opinion," McCoy
disputed. Every- one was too tense for a really honest
laugh, but the sortie took the edge off their initial
shock. Kirk even managed to smile. As usual,
Spock stared blankly at his chuckling comrades.
  "Mr. Sulu?" Kirk called when the stifled
laughter had stilled, "are you operational?" He
tried to make a joke of it. The navigation officer
was in obvious pain and just as obviously trying to hide
it.
  "I believe there is a possibility my left
leg is broken, Captain."
  "Report to Sick Bay, Lieutenant." But
Sulu showed no signs of leaving.
  "If you don't mind, Captain," he replied,
already checking his computer to establish their position,
"I'd like to stay at the helm." Another flash of
pain showed on his face, but he turned away from the
others and Kirk had only a glimpse of it.
  McCov n1'iected loudly, heading in
Sulu's direction. "Lieutenant, I order you
to was Then he paused. Now more than ever Kirk was
going to need the senior navigation officer's
abilities. "All right, Mr. Sulu, you can
remain at station as long as I can put that leg in a
temporary
  plint n " -
  McCoy set about his task.
  Sulu watched his viewscreen, wincing only now
and then.
  150 STAR 1 tilde Ktoa ONE
  "AD right, Mr. Sulu," Kirk caned. The
viewscreen had gone blank. "See what you can
get on the scanners." Sulu worked several
controls.
  Nothing happened.
  Emergency backup, Mr. Sulu." Immediately
Sulu was manipulating an alternate set of
switches. The screen started to clear, a picture
to form and there was a concerted gasp from the bridge.
  The scene in the main screen divas weird and
beautiful. They appeared to he Boating in a misty
fog over a wavering, fantastic landscape of muted
grey and brown. Huge, monolithic iceberg
tilde shards of the planet Alondra drifted with
them in the mist. Many of the fragments were the size of
large asteroids. They dwarfed the Enterprise whenever
they moved clove.
  McCoy found further reason for amazement
  'We're still intact," he mused wonderingly,
""but we must be inside the cloudl"
  Uhura checked in. "AU decks report
  considerable shaking up, Captain, but only slight
damage." Sulu looked up from his station.
  "Captain, objects approaching off the bow.
Coordinates, well," ho gestured at the
viewscreen, "there they are."
  A moment later a pair of huge, irregularly
shaped blobs hove into view. I[trk didn't
need sensor readings to tell him that they were heading
towards the Enterprise. They wore moving with
impressive speed. Their size increased to threatening
proportions as the distance between them and the trapped starship
decreased.
  "Deflector shields up and operating," informed
Arex. He'd initiated defector operation without
Kirk's command in this cave, the sign of a good
officer.. There was a time and place for
  protocol and a time and place to ignore it.
  "More objects approaching aftl" added Sulu
excitedly. " Rirk studied the clumsy, growing
shapes intently. There was nothing to mark them as
belligerent. They were utterly devoid d
stinger, Law, fang, or for that matter, any other
surface feature. It was the deliberateness of their
approach, ache indication of clear purpose in the
way they
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 151
  moved towards the Eriterprzse that hinted at
unfrly intentions.
  The cloud was also devoid of surface features.
  "Analysis, Spock?"
  'ationothing elusive or concealed about these,
Captain," the science officer responded. "They
are some organlzed form of highly charged
antimatter."
  At Mat point the highly charged voice of
Chief lingineer Scott filtered over an intercom.
  'engineering to Captain Kirk." Kirk hit the
broadcast switch on the arm of his chair.
  - "Kirk here. What's up, Scotty?"
  "Captain," answered Scott ominously,
Ibis drain on the deflector shields is too
great for them to hold for any length of time."
  "I know, Scotty." Kirk took another quick
glance at the screen. Now the distinctive bright red
of the blobs was pulsing visibly. As their color
heightened in brilliance, one couldn't
escape the impression that they were readying something.
  "Scotty, prepare the shields to deliver an
antimatter charge. I can't tell You how strong it
has to be, but you can be ready to give more than a
tickle."
  There was a brim pane, as though Scott was thinking
about saying something. But only a firm, "Aye,
Captain," came from the speaker.
  Sulu shifted his eyes from the screen, kept them
glued to the console until a rarely activated
light winced on.
  "Antimatter charge ready, sir." The
gigantic blobs were almost on top of the ship.
  'mischarge!" Sulu lammed in the switch.
  Instantly, although there was no visible explosion,
no blinding flare of light. the two amorphous
masses fell back from the Enterprise. There
divas an isolated cheer from Uhura, but it died
quickly. Their relief from the alien as-sault was only
temporary.
  A short distance away the blobs slowed, paused,
and stopped. Everyone on the bridge waited
breathlessly. Then they began to advance on the starship
once again. But there were hopeful signs. The powerful
antimatter charge the Enterprise's
engines had delivered had had some effect.
  152 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  The bright crimson color of the two aggressive
forms had faded, the sharp pulsing seemed weaker. Now
both were a light shade of pink.
  "Double the charge, Mr. Sulu."
  'iSir?" Sulu looked doubtful. Kirk's
reply was not.
  "I said double the charge."
  Sulu did things with the console. ""Ready,
sir."
  Kirk watched, waited until the two monstrous
shapes seemed ready to envelop the ship, then,
"lggischargel"
  The lobs hesitated, shuddered Hand began to fall
away from the Enterprise. As they did so their color
shifted from pinlc to light pink, to white. Then the
massive shape" started to brea right-brace up,
to dissolve into smaller and smatter pieces which then
vanished into nothingness.
  Nervous conversation filled the bridge. Everyone
seemed to have something to say, except Spoc
right-brace . His mind was obviously elsewhere.
  "tilde Well, Spoc right-brace , any
conclusions
  "Only the beginning of a theory, Captain. A
hint of a hypothesis." He dropped the bombshell
with maddening calm. "lit is possible that this cloud in
which we are entrapped is a living thing. A conscious,
animate entity. It is my considered opinion,
barring future data to the contrary, that it is
alive."
  Area whistled. There were similar exclamations of
surprise and shock from the others.
  "That's a sweet one, Spock." Kirk's
initial impulse was to reject the incredible statement
out of hand. A living being eight hundred thousand
ldlometers acr1 Insanel
  Yet Spock, while unshockable himself, would be
fully cognizant of the effect such a pronouncement
would have on the rest of them. He might call it a
theory, ho might call it mere hypothesis, but he
wouldn't mention it unless he felt pretty damn
sure of trig supportive evidence. So Kirk
swallowed his natural reactions and instead turned
calmly to Bones. Such caution had saved him
embarrassment more than once.
  "How about you, Bones? Any opinions?"
McCoy, he noticed, had been using the
library-computer annex to run some questions
of his own.
  STAR TREK L tilde ONB 153
  "There's certainly some resemblance, Jim. I
don't know how much eve can depend on that. But I can
tell you one thing. We have to get out of this area. Those
mists out there," and he nodded in the direction of the
screen, which showed only a thin grey fog, "have, according
to the latest readoub from our chemical sensors, many
of the characteristics of macromorphase enzymes.
  "If the shields should failsiond they won't stay
up forever, not under this pressure the hull will be
rapidly corroded through and we'll all be broken
down into nice, bite sized, digestible particles."
  'I am inclined to agree wail the doctor,
Captain," said Spock, staring into Uhe computer
viewer. "I have been running continual check on
tile planet Alondra Its ruptured mass
has been steadily growing smaller ever since we
entered She cloud. Energy levels, concurrency,
are up. The obvious analogy is inescapable."
  'It's converting mass into energy, of course,"
Kirk agreed, startled at how easily the stunning
words came. 'Liven 80, we his
  Everyone glanced up in alarm at a loud,
raucous blast of sound. It came from
Uhura's station. She recovered from her initial
surprise, checked her station, and hastily lowered The
volume.
  "Captain, I have a subspace message from
Governor Wesley on MantiUes." She
paused, looked away in mild embarrassment. 'I
forgot. I was able to initiate the requested can to him
before we were pulled in."
  Kirk considered. He could tale Ule call right
here, of course. But a e fewer people who knew of The
ultimate de" cisions falcon with regard to the
doomed world, the better. Word could always slip out
somehow, and there might be personnel on board the E
tilde erprrse Ah relatives or close friends
on The outpost planet. He had enough crises
to handle.
  He rose. "I'll take the call in my
quarters, Lieutenant."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Mr. Sulu, Mr. Spock utilize our
scanners to assemble a chart of the cloud's composition
and interior structure. Then give it to the library
for analysis and preparation of
  154 STAR TRBK LOG
  initial diagrams. It's time we
knew where we were."
  He turned and was on his way to his cabin before the
two "yes, sirs" reached him.
  The short walk from the elevator to his quarters
gave him a few precious seconds to think. The
number of options open to him now was severely
limited, and growing smaller by the minute. It
didn't take much time to examine them an.
  Eighty-two minion souls.
  Poof.
  He shook his head and cursed the vilest curses
he could think of. There were times when he wanted to take
the old, antique projectile weapon out of its
protective case in the offlcer's lounge and blast
away at everything fragile and delicate in sight.
That was the trouble with modern weapons. Phasers had
no recoil, made no more noise than a door
buzzer. Their destructive capabilites were
considerable; their psychological value to the
wielder, nit
  Eighty-two million. The death of ten or
twenty intelligent beings at one time he could
grasp, could comprehend. But this it was too
overwhelming, too enormous a figure to terrify.
An entire world reduced to a loose
mathematical abstraction.
  Only the people who lived on it were real.
  Bob Wesley was only slightly older than
Kirk His manner as he stared out from Kirk's
private screen was calm, steady, competent. His
face held a few more lines
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 1SS
  and his hair was greyer. The subtle assassins of
politics could be harder on a man than all the
terrors of space.
  Now he looked even older than his years. He
made no attempt to conceal the burden he was
feeling, to hide the agony he felt. When the
image first materialised on the tiny screen,
Kirk was shocked. Kirk tersely gave Wesley
the facts.
  "Three and a half hours, Jim," said Wesley
slowly, each word rolling and booming like the clang of a
great bell. "It's not enough. Not nearly enough.
Oven if I hadthe ships available to really
evacuate."
  Kirk tried to think of something encouraging to say,
could only come up with honesty.
  "You have time to save some people, Bob."
  Wesley mumbled a reply. "If the
word gets out and it will, no matter how hard we try
to keep it secret it will only start the panic
sooner." He coughed softly. "But you're right, of
course. We must do what little we can."
  Kirk had never seen a man look so helpless.
He wondered how he'd be standing up to the pressure
if their positions were reversed. Strong men had
committed suicide out of inability to cope with far
less crushing situations.
  Self-destruction, at least, was not Bob
Wesley's way.
  "How ," Kirk found himself choking on the Words,
"how are you going to choose?" Wesley's answer was
expected.
  "There is no choice, Jim. We'll save some
of the children." He made a tired gesture of
dismissal.
  "And now if you'll excuse me, Jim. I'd like
to talk it's been a long time but live many things to do.
There's not much time left."
  "Sure, Bob." Kirk strove to sound cheerful.
It came out false. "Ill talk to you later, if
there's anything new." Wesley shrugged slightly.
  "E you want." He sounded like a dead man
already. Composed and resigned to an inevitable
fate. The screen abruptly went dark. Kirk
stared at it for long minutes, thinking. Gradually his
brows drew together, and his teeth
  ound against one another in silent anger.
  By the time he'd reached the bridge again the cloud of
  156 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  depression that had begun to overtake him, too,
had been thrown aside by an invincible
  determination, a resolve to do son tilde thinB.
  But how?
  In three hours and twenty minutes the cloud would
reach Mantilles. If that were permitted to happen
millions of people would die. The elevator reached the
bridge, and he stepped through the doors.
  Very well it must not be permitted to happen.
  It was as simple as that.
  He stopped, returned stares of each and every one
of the officers present. When he finally resumed his
seat again and spoke, the words were directed at
Spock and McCoy.
  "Come on, gentlemen. I need your help. Your
analyses, evaluations, opinions no matter how
wild, how outrageous. Exercise your minds,
dammit! We're going to find a solution tilde
nd no one on Mantilles is going
to die."
  To an outsider familiar with the situation, it would have
sounded futile. But somehow, at that point in time on
the bridge, it didn't. In fact, it seemed almost
reasonable.
  "Start with basics," he finished. There was silence
on the badge.
  "If we assume the cloud is a diving being,"
said Spock slowly, "then it must follow that it
requires some form of continual nourishment to sustain
itself."
  Kirk nodded. "And eve have postulated that the
cloud lives on the energy it converts from the mass of the
planets it consumes in this case. the planet
Alondra. Though as yet we have no firm proof of
this."
  "Quite so," Spock added. "But it is apparently
like some huge animal grazing here and there in the
pasture of the universe."
  That poetic phraseology caused Doctor
McCoy to miss twelve full lines of computer
biological analysis. He had to back up the
tape and rerun the information.
  "All right," agreed Kirk, hand caressing chin.
"Let's follow that line of thought through.
Bones, what about those antagonistic blobs?"
  "Offhand, judging from the way they reacted to our
  STAR TREE: LOG ONE 157
  presence, I'd say they perform essentially the
same function as teeth, Jim. They break up the
largest chunks of matter for easier digestion.
Maybe they sensed us as being larger than we were,
because compared to those chunks of planet floating around in
here, we're digestible-size already. Possibly our
engines give off enough energy to fool them into thinking
we're more nutritious than we really
  are."
  Kirk nodded, turned to face Sulu.
  "Lieutenant, the computer scanners should have come
up with something on the cloud's internal composition and
makeup by now. Let's see it."
  "Yes, sir." Sulu turned to his console.
"Computer schematic readied. Coming on."
  He hit a switch. On the screen, for the first
time, they had an overall view of the interior of their
massive host.
  In shape it was rather like a fat pair of disembodied
human lungs, joined directly together. Instead of a
trachea or esophagw there was a bottle-shaped
bulge in its middle. Rising from the top of
this pear-shape was another long, narrower cavity.
  From the top of this area a long cylindrical
passage appeared to open into space at the top of the
cloud.
  Thus reduced to screen-size and roughly drawn,
the diaBram looked insignificant, almost
comical, like a child's drawing. But after what had
happened to Alon*a, no one felt inclined
to laugh.
  The problem was that the chart put the alien into tooeasy
perspective. The tiny white dot representing the
Em fcrprtse, for example, could not be shown
to scale. It was much too big. In reality the cloud
was too big to comprehend. As a diagram, it was
reduced wrongly to a harmless crude shape.
  Still, there were things to be learned from it, and Kirk
studied the *awing intently. For him, at least, the
drawing induced no false sense of security.
  The outlines of the cloud's interior were not fixed, but
appeared to flow and change as befitted a mostly
gaseous organism. Anyhow, it was still solid enough for
him to comment, "It seems to have some kind of regularised
  158 STAR TREK [equals 0 tilde
  anatomy. That opening where we were first pulled in
doesn't show. It must have closed fast right
behind us.
  "But there looks to be some kind of permanent opening
up near the top."
  'if don't know, l m," chipped in McCoy,
immediately picking up the captain's line of thought.
"If this thing also has some bud of co10's tilde
sal digestive system ahead of us, I don't
see how we could make it that far."
  "Three hours, five minutes, sir,"
announced Arex disna tilde qIonately, tilde
11 the cloud reaches
  Mantilles." Kirk nodded acknowledgment of this
information. He'd already made his decision. If nothing
else, time dictated a move at this stage.
  "Since we appear to have only one way out, we
must try it. Mr. Sulu. take us to that central
core area."
  "Aye. arm sir." Kirk put his fight elbow
on the arm of the control chair and rested hits chin in the
waiting palm. A slight smile resorted his
lipa
  "And if this thing does have a stomach, we just might
be able to give it a bad enough case of indigestion
to make it turn from Mantilles his
  It didn't tales long for them to reach the
edge of the area the computer had pinpointed as the cloud's
central cavity. There was only one bar to further
progress.
  The entrance to that cavity W88 closed.
  Closed by a pulsing, vaguely irLdike
valve.
  'we've reached the entrance to the central core,
Cap" fain," confirmed Sulu. McCoy laughed
nervously as he studied their intended path.
  "tilde What do eve do DOW knock?"
  The ship gave a sudden lurch. But this one was
bearable and no one was hurt. It was nowhere near as
violent as the severe jolts that had pounded them when
they were first drawn into the cloud mass.
  "'ationo need, Bones," murmured Kirk
tightly. "Here we
  go . . ."
  The iris was opening.
  Swept like a leaf on a tidal bore, the
Enterprise was tossed into the core area, along with
floating mist and sev
  STAR TR-EKnowledge LOG ONE 159
  eral still gigantic chunks of the planet
Alondra. Then the iris closed ponderously behind
them.
  The scene in the central core was as radically
different from the areas they'd already passed through as it was from
the Salted blackness of space itself. This core
section was a kaleidoscope of colors, a flaring,
scintillating, rainbowed chamber spotted with constant
awesome explosiona
  Hugo slender pyramid shapes protruded from the
tide of the core wall they were drifting near. As they
stared at the screen, a large section of planet
drifted close by one, seemed to hesitate in
space, touched
  A detonation that would have shamed arly tilde bing
smaller than a sunspot filled the viewscreen with
blinding, pure white light. The glare faded
rapidly. If the scanners hadn't automatically
darkened to compensate for the shocking flash their eyes could
have been seriously damaged. As it was, they were
only impressed.
  When they could see clearly again the first thing everyone
noted was that the section of Alondra had dippy
peered. But the slender pyramid it had impacted on
was gloving incandescent with residual energy energy
produced by their meeting and the resultant explosion.
  A shock wave struck the Enterprise soon
after, but the first flash had given the ships
computers necessary sect ends to brace for the powerful side
effects. After alp they were still operating at
planetary distances from the walk The ship wasn't
damaged.
  Explosions continued to occur at regular
intervals, some weaker, some more powerful than the first.
While the EN
  terprise rode the resultant shock waves
easily, the constant rocking and buffeting hampered
  observation and made accurate navigation
  increasingly difficult.
  Still, the starship managed to pick a path through the
central core. By keeping it in one piece and on
course, a sweating Sulu and Arex were earning their
rank.
  Uhura watched the pyramid destructionstgrowth
cycle wonderingly. "What are those things?"
  McCoy had been making analogies as wed as
observations. "I'm going to make an educated
guess." He took a deep breath, let it out
slowly. "I think we're now moving
  160 STAR TREK tilde OF
  in what corresponds in man to the small
intestine. Those shapes growing out of the core wall
seem to be somewhat similar in basic
function to human villi."
  "Villi?" Kirk looked back questioningly at the
doctor. Physiology, human or otherwise,
had never been one of his favorite subjects. It
comteemed he'd spent too much time on spatial
physics,
  astrodynamics. sod administrative operations.
True, a starship captam is supposed to have at
instant heck and call only slightly less
information than a shin'q computer banks, but even so .
. .
  M'ov padded. ""The human qmaBut intestine
is lined with millions of them, although they are more or
less permanent. They don't destroy themselves on
contact with food, so these seem to. They absorb
nutrients into the body by his
  As McCoy droned on with his biological
  comparisons, everyone on the bridge had plenty of
time to study the actual Drollness. Though it was hard
to compare the titanic forces at woe* on the screen
to what was taking place beneath He's own stomach.
  A section of some great mountain was drawn to a
villas amblea following the now familiar pattern.
disintegrated brilliantiv on contact. The
villus crew alarniingly as it absorbed
the energy generated by the explosion.
  At the comtame time the Inne Pyramid shape
disappeared. Or more accurately, shrank back into the
core wag. Immedintelv. a new Dyramid
heean to fawn and stretch out" wool qli tilde
htlv to the left of where the first had vanished.
  That'q when Spock looked up excitedly from his
position at the library.
  "Captain. according to conclusive sensor readings, those
villi-analogs are composed of solid
antimatter! If the EnterDrlVe qhnnld touch
one . . ."
  "dis . . we'll disappear faster than a piece of
chocolate in a phaser beam," Kirk finished.
"Mr. Sulu, keep those shield," UD at an
costsl"
  "1311 try, sir."
  Kirk returned his affection to the screen. The
Enterprise continued to drift through the chaotic core.
In some ways, the continuous mass-energy conversion
cycle re
  STAR TREK L tilde ONB 161
  minded him of a thermonuclear reaction slowed down
many times.
  "Incredible, simply incredible," he
whispered. "So much power was He watched another
chunk of world vanish in a shattering display of energy.
There was enough power being produced here to drive endless
fleets of starships, to light entire inhabited
worlds. AD wasted.
  However, he reminded himself, the creature would
consider it otherwise. If it was capable of considering
anything, which he sincerely doubted.
  "The villi reabsorb with the energy they take in and
immediatelv begin to regenerate preparatory to repeating the
cycle." Spock agreed.
  "It is clearly an part of the natural
digestive process in operation here, Captain.
Sensors indicated when we first entered that a
natural force-field of vast dimensions was in
operation in this core area At first I was unsure as
to its purpose. Now it is perfectly clear. The
field serves to contain the matter-antimatter
contactst.solution sequence and keep it within
manageable bounds.
  "Otherwise the creature would quite literally eat itself
to death."
  A telltale on Uhura's main board winked
for attention, was instantly shunted to the main speaker.
  "Eneineerine to badge." Kirk hit the
reply switch.
  "Yes. Scotty?"
  "Keepin" the deflectors this high is putting
an enormous strain on the engines. Captain.
Especially on our antimatter power supply.
What with the continual maximum pow" er demands on the
shields as wee, our reserve energy supplies are
faDin' fast. Too fast."
  Too fast, too fast I Everything was happening
too fast. Damn a universe which had infinity at
its command and yet no time to spare!
  "How much time have we got left, Scotty?"
  "Twentymne minutes, Captain and there's no
safety margin figured into that. That's everything. But
if the popover indicator drops below two
antikilos, we'll not have even that. The engines
won't have enough antimass to sustain reaction. We'll
lose motive power as well as shields and
deflectors."
  162 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  "Thanlfyou, Mr. Scott. Ill keep that
information in mind." He snapped off the intercom and
looked to the helm. "tilde Push our speed,
Mr. Arex. I know it isn't easy to maneuver in
here, but we must make our way through the opening
at the other end of this core."
  Arex'is voice was tight in reply. "tilde
Yes, sir. We'll make it, cr."
  Long minutes passed while the Enterprlse
picked its way at high speed through the weWill
jungle of gigantic vile, smrounded by unceasing
detonations of unimaginable power.
  Por a while it seemed they'd make the core
exit with no trouble. Thea perhaps Arex or Sulu
miscalculated slightly, or maybe their speed was
simply too great for a particularly tight
passage.
  Spatial gyro' screamed in sudden protest as
computer emergency overrides strove to correct
position. They were drifting towards one of the waiting
viUi.
  '1 can't hold * on course, sirl" Sulu
yelled desperately. 6Tomorrow using full power)"
  Increase deflector screens to maximum."
  "DeBector screens to maximum," Arex
  acknowledged.
  The starship shuddered, straining to pun away. One
of the huge slender pyramids seemed to leap out at
them, reaching hungrily and growing gigantic in the
viewscreen. Enormous
  It Hayed enormous, but abruptly was growing no
larger. And then it began to move, to shift out of view
as the Ehterprisc shuttled pass.
  Kit* tried to relax a lithe sod found he
couldn't. His muscles revere knotted fighter than
a reaction coiLike Another pasts that clove
to Otto of the villi and the deflector shields would
surely collapse under the immense load. Once
that happened, 80 would every atom that comprised the Enters
prism and her crew.
  The spealrer cleared again. Another cat from
Scott. Kirk was half expect)" it. That last
narrow escape had used up any safety margin they
might have had.
  The question now was, did they have any margin at
all?
  6"Take over, Mr. SpocLike," he said when
Scotty had fin
  STAR TREK LOG ONB 163
  ished detailing their present status. "I'm going
down to Engineering."
  "Very well, Captain."
  Scott was waiting for him fallen the elevator
opened onto the main engineering deck. The chief said
nothing, but went instead to a nearby console and
indicated an especialty eloquent gauge. The
instrument said everything for him It showed the level of
reserve power currently available in the central
antimatter reaction chambers.
  Showed it hovering uncertainly right around the
twokito mark.
  "There it is, Captain. All the wishin' in the
world won't change that level. If we don't stop
the excessive power drain right now, it'll be the end
of us."
  "It'll be the end of us if we do, Scotty.
You're a master engineer in many ways this is more your
ship than it is mine. Think of something!"
  "Welt," Scott's expression showed that he'd
been pondering an idea for some time but even now was
reluctant to voice it.
  "Come on, Scotty if it's anything more concrete
than prayer, I'm witting to listen to it." He'd
already tried the former, to no avail
  "Captain, all our sensor reports indicate
that those Anti' pyramid converters are antimatter
antimatter of high energy potential, to say the
least.
  "If we could somehow obtain a bit of it an
infinitesimal amount to the creatur tilde
it might serve just as well as normal antimatter
fuels. Put it in the engine, and unless it has
utterly unique physical properties, it ought
to regenerate reaction. We'd have enough power to drive the
ship at maximum and hold both shields and
deflectors at same."
  Kirk looked thoughtful. "That would take care of
our lack of antimatter, sure. But we also need
matter engines regenerated."
  Scott smiled. "Matter's no problem, sir.
I've already had my people working on bearaing aboard some
of the loose planet ftoatin' free around us.
There's enough matter here to power a million starships.
  "As for the antimatter, we can't touch it or let
it
  164 STAR ll backslash BlCan LOG
ONE
  touch anything solid, of course. Eve the
difficultia fully, Captain. It's not like
cuttin' firewood. But I think there's a good chance
we could cut it with a neutral tractor beam and then
transport it aboard."
  ""Transport it aboard?" Kirk looked
uncertain. "If it contacts the inside of the ship or
any of us, for even a microsecond,
it'll be the finish dust as surely as if we'd
rammed one of the villi."
  "That won't happen, Captain," Scott
objected eagerly. 'Tomorrow sure I can rig a force
tilde field box that will hold the antimatter
suspended in its center. A smaller, cruder version
of the machinery normal fueling stations use. Then I
can shift the whole thing by portable tractor beam into the
antimatter nacelle. The small generator and
controls for the field itself can be disintegrated the
second the engines start to regenerate.
  "Once we manage the initial
transportin", the rest should be a simple
matter." He noticed the odd expression on
Kirk's face. "Sorry, sir, no pun
intended."
  "won't give it a thought, Scotty it
doesn't matter." They smiled together. Then
Kirlc gave the chief engineer's proposal some
serious
  consideration.
  "My. Scott, this idea qualifies you for
incarceration as a mental case. You realize that,
don't you?"
  "Yes, girl"
  "You've been under tremendous pressure lately
and it's affected your thinking. Obviously you've been
operating with several circuits loose."
  "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
  "Let's try the goddamn thing his
  Seconds later Scott was at the main engineering
console, communicating his needs forward to Sulu. Then
the two men headed for the transporter room on the
run.
  The Enterprisc began to leave its weaving, bobbing
course. It shifted as near as it dared to one villi.
This protrusion had been selected because it was a little more
isolated from its neighbors than most.
  As Arex positioned them carefully, a tractor
beam its normal radiance lost in the glare of
nearby eruptions
  darted out from the ship and neatly excised a
two-meter square chunk of the villi.
  STAR TREE LOG ONB 165
  If the cloud-being felt this minute biopsy, it
gave no sign.
  "Got it, sir," announced Scott. Kirk was
standing next to him in the main transporter room.
"Mr. Kyle," Scott said to the transporter
chief, "bring 'er aboard."
  Kyle nodded. A large, dull metal cube with
handles set into two sides rested on one of the
transporter disks. Another side of the cube was
filled with dials, switches, naked components and
generating equipment. These produced and
  regulated the invisible force-field inside. The
field-cube Divas not impressive, but it would
hold with stability enough antimatter to destroy a
fair-sized continent.
  A familiar little multicolored glow appeared just
above the upper rim of the box. Kyle made a
hurried adjustment of the controls. The glow vanished.
  Slowly. he brought down the single transporter
lever in operation and let out a relieved sigh as it
hit bottom.
  "Sorry, sir," he said to Kirk. "Close.
Almost materialized it Outside the field."
  "Good thing You didn't," Kirk agreed
calmly. Meanwhile his insides were still jumping.
All the antimatter had to do was contact the air in the
room. That would have been enough to set it off.
  "I Dresume it is inside now?" Kyle
felt secure enough to nod even without checking his
  instrumentation.
  Kirk, Scott, and a pair of
technicians moved forward towards the placid yet
threatening box. Scott held a small control
device in one hand. They mounted the transporter
platform and one by one, took a look into the open
cube.
  Inside, floating easily in vacuum, Divas
the loose piece of virus.
  "So that's what antimatter looks like," whispered
Kyle uneasily. Like most of the Feanterori
tilde e tilde s personnel, his job never
brought him in contact with the incredibly dangerous
stuff. He could have done without this novelty, too.
  'doesn't look real, does it?"'" murmured
Kirk. "It belongs more properly to the imagination.
This material used to be the unicorn of atomic
Physics."
  He glanced abruptly at his chief engineer and his
tone turned urgent. "Scotty, we've got ten
minutes left."
  Scott was checking the small instrument he held.
  166 STAR TREK ONE
  "Just wanted to make sure there was no
  oscillation in field strength, Captain. It's
holding fine. Lot's go."
  He clipped the tiny rectangle to his
belt. Then he and Kirk moved to stand on
apposite sides of the cube. They gripped the
handles and lifted. A tractor beam would have been
easier, but nslder, too. Scott didn't want
to use one field to move another. Funny things could
happen sometimes when energy fields d different
properties and fund lion intersected.
  Theoretically. the cube was full of nothing. There
should be only the weight of the force-field box itself.
But dammit" it seemed heavier!
  Dropping it would have no effect on the field
inside, of course. Nevertheless, they wallced very, very
carefully. Certain sections of the human mind were
sometimes select tent to believe what another part
might eeBut it.
  When the elevator door" dilated and they stepped
into the main engineering room again, it seemed lilts the
whole technical section was waiting for them. No one
offered greeting. No one made idle conversation.
They knew what was in the cube.
  Still moving cautiously, lurk and Scott angled
towards the door marked:
  ACCESS ROUTB-ANT-NMATTER CONTROL
  And underneath!
  ABSOLUTELY AUTHORISED
PERSONNEL ONLY--Still tilde Bet
Reg.e-11634."
  One of the engineers operated the automatic
safety door, and they entered the smart service
lift thus revealed. Neither man said anything as the
lift carried them down and forward. It was a short
ride. The door slid back.
  They were in the antimatter nacelle.
  A narrow walkway led down the middle of the
chamber. Like the lift exit it "towed faintly with its
own unceasing, permanent force-field.
  If everything else on the Enterprlse was to shut
down, all power including tife-support systems
to fade phasers, lights, engines the small
prelocked power supply that maintained this most
vital function of the starship would remain activated
and functioning.
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 167
  If the entire crew were killed and every instrument on
board destroyed, the starship would still be salvageable.
  The field was necessary because nearly everything in the
huge, caverr tilde like chamber except the lift
exit and walkway and themselves, of course was composed of
antimatter. This was the greatest accomplishment of
Federation
  technology engineering in negativity. The main-
tenance Hallway they were on was suspended from valls,
floor, and ceiling by force-field insulators.
  Cell-lilce bins lined the wags like the inside of
some enormous insectoid hive. Each had simple
red, yellow, and green indicator lights on the
outside. Everything in here was ample and functional.
Antimatter was difficult to work with. and there was no
room for extraneous detail. It would have been too
dangerous.
  Red lights gleamed on an of the bins except for the
one closest to the lift-exit door. As they passed
it, this single remaining green light faded out. At the
same time, the middle indicator began to glow a
bright yellow.
  Scott glanced quickly at it and then ahead down the
valkway.
  6'Well, that gives us two minutes." They
moved as fast as they could. almost running now. They had
to be careful. Normally the force-fields surrounding
the waUc tilde vay formed impenetrable barriers
even a ground-car couldn't break through.
  But now, as the main engines of the Enterpnse began
to die. the separate Dower supply that maintained the
protective fields started to shift over
to salvage mode. That meant using only enough power
to keep the matter of the walkway, say, from contacting
the antimatter of the cham
  If they slipped and felt they'd never feel the
final impact. never know the moment of death. Because
touching the door here Cold mean destroying the
instrument of touch, the attached you, and the entire ship.
  It was a place for people with the patience and
maninulative skill of surgeons. That's why the
personality profile requirements for antimatter
engineers were among the highest in the
  Federation.
  At the far end of the walkway, which had seemed
kilom
  168 STAR TREE LOG ONE
  eters away, was a huge,
unspectacular-looking circular chamber. Tubes
radiated from it in an directions. An insulated
instrument panel was set into the walkway nearby.
Scott used his free hand to trip the comm switch.
  "AII right, Davis, we're hero. Open it."
  The single door of the chamber slid back with
agonist ing slowness They carefully put the box
inside the inner antimatter acceptance alcove. The
door slid back automatically. There was
a pause while the field cube was transferred to the
inside of the main chamber.
  Speck and Kirk hadn't waited to check on the
automatic process They'd dashed back to the
lift door. Once there, Scott took the small
control device from his belt. There was no time for a
procheck, no time to see if the automatic
partitioning device would dissolve the matter of the field
cube in time.
  A thumb descended at the same time as the yellow
light on the nearby bin faded out.
  A loud crackling noise like a ton of tin foil
being crushed came from the area of the main chamber. There
was a breathless pause. Then, a gentle violet
hue appeared around it, seeming to issue from the chamber
wall. Another crac right-brace iing, softer, and
suddenly the myriad webbing of tubes and lines
extending from the central sphere also shone with violet
radiance.
  The luminescence reached to the bins. Rapidly, the
indicator lights began to change from red, to yellow,
to bright emerald green, winless on in a reassuring
fugue of colon
  Even more reassuring was the steady hum of energy that
had been nearly absent when they'd entered.
Now it filled the antimatter nacelle.
  "Scatty," breathed lOrk slowly, too
exhausted to feel satisfied, "you've just given the
Errterprise and Mantilles a chance to live."
  Scott looked totally drained. "Thank you,
sir. I don't think I want to go through this sort of
thing very often. I'd much rather do it in theory."
  STAR TUBE LOG ONB 169
  Xl
  Kirk was feeling rather optimistic unreasonably
so when he resumed his position on the bridge. They
had coped with a seemingly impossible power situation;
they could cope with anything else. He spoke to his
left.
  "Situation update, Mr. Spock?" Spock
looked up from the computer again. As usual, the recent
emergency had had no visible effect on him. His
expression was neither elated nor
  discouraging only neutral.
  "The cloud is now only forty-two minutes,
fourteen see" onds from Mantilles. Captain.
And while you were with Mr. Scott in the antimatter
nacelle, I was able to ascertain an important
fact. I might venture to say, even, a vital
fact." His eyebrows went up, and as
usual Kirlds attention intensified at that
inadvertent signal. Something significant vas
up.
  "This creature does have a brain."
  If the creature had a brain, that implied the
chance that no, no it was too much to hope for. Mad, in
fact.
  But then, this whole situation was mad.
  Why mightn't it be consistently mad?
  "Could . . . it possibly be intelligent,
Spock?"
  "It is far too early to guess, Captain.
We really have no basis for such a supposition.
Our information thus far is of purely anatomical
nature. It has made only one action which might
  conceivably be interpreted as intelligent. It
changed course from Alondra to move towards
Mantilles."
  Kirk shook his head bustratedly. ""Not
enough. We
  170 STAR TREK OF
  can't go by that. It might just have been an involuntary
response to a new source of food."
  What now?
  "Let's see what the computer
cartographic sensors have put together. Mr.
Spock."
  The first officer adjusted controls. A diagram
of the cloud's interior appeared again on the screen.
It was much enhanced since the last time he'd seen it.
Considerable information had come in since then.
  "A great deal of electrical activity
emanates from that big, irregular-qhaped object
at the top of the core, Captain. Dr. McCov
has been studying that activity and I be" lieve
he has something to add."
  "That'q right, Jim. The impulses fan in
regular patterns to an extent that would seem
to preclude random generation. They might be normal
for where this thing comes from, but . . . I'm inclined
to regard those patterns as similar to those I've
comteen before."
  "Before? Where. Bones?"
  "tilde verywher tilde whenever I take a
cranial check on any crew member. They sure
look like intelligent brain waves."
  "let's so big"" Kirk muttered.
"Hellishly big." He paused thoughtfully.
""But if we can reach it before the creature reaches
Manblles, we might be able to save the
planet, Whether it's intelligent or not."
  "Jim? I'm not sure T follow you."
  "I'm not surDnsed. Bones. You're a
physician. Your mind, Devour thoughts, your
instincts are geared towards Dreservine life. You
wouldn't think of using photon torpedoes to destroy
a living mind."
  "Captain," interrupted SHOCK, "this is as you
say, a living creature. I am compelled to mention
that Street regulations tilde was But Kirk had no
time to listen to a lecture on regulated morality.
  "Sometimes, Mr. Spock, through no conscious
fault of your own, your recourse to logic in every
matter makes you sound something of an idiot. I am
aware of the regulations regarding the killing of
intelligent life-forms,
  ""But as you yourself admit, we don't loom that
this life-form is intelligent. When I have to balance
that re
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 171
  mote possibility against the lives of
eighty-two million Mantitlians welt how
long would you hesitate?"
  "Of course, you are correct, Captain,"
replied Spock quickly. In moments like these
he was reminded that he was a Vutcan speaking
to humans. In such emotional moments it was often
better to say nothing to them than to be logical. "I
did not mean to imply that his
  "I know, I know, Spock," admitted Kirk
tiredly. "iallyou really had no control over what
you said."
  "Are you implying, Captain, that my reaction was
emotional?" Even tempered or not, Spock
managed to sound outraged. Tense moment or not, there
were some things that couldn't be permitted to go unquestioned.
  "No. no, no. Spockl You could only say the
first logical thing that this being being oh heft; lefts
drop it."
  "A most logical decision, Captain."
  Kirk started to retort, then remembered that
Spock had no emotional need to resort
to sarcasm. Faced with disaster after disaster he was
Pennine to retreat into inanities. That was no way
to inspire the confidence of his crew.
  Kirk stared resolutely at the screen and thought.
  l tilde ventua11y they reached the borders
of the area the computer had labeled a brain. The new
sector turned out to be made up of deep yellow
cloud crisscrossed with putsing white
cables and lines thee vanished in all directions.
Spock and Uhura were using the sensors to prepare a
detailed chart of the brain interior so that the
Enterprise'a powerful torpedoes might be used
to best advantage.
  Scott was still keeping a close watch on 0a
precious engines. so Uhura was handling the basic
programming. McCoy remained on the bridge.
He always felt though Spook would have considered it
absurd completely useless in such moments.
  At the same time McCoy hoped fervently his
talents wouldn't be required. This constant paradox
in tight situations was rough on even a
well-balanced individual. That was one reason he
made so many jokes. Laughter's therapeutic
value was vastly underrated. But he wandered aimlessly
about the bridge, trying to stay out of everyone's way
and for the most part, succeeding.
  172 STAR TREK LOO ONE
  In fact, this kept him free for one of his
primary tions.
  "Am I doing the right thing, Bones?" Kirk
asked him quietly. "Stardeet prime directing
number two prohibits the tatting of intelligent
life. I once Ad myself that man would not
rise above primitiveness until he stood up and
vowed, "1 wilt not kilt today."
  his
  "tilde You also said you couldn't let this thing wipe
out over eighty million lives," McCoy
countered gently. "tilde ertai tilde y that
takes precedence owr the second directive."
  "at know, I right-brace nowl Viewed
objectively, or logically, as Speck would
prefer there is no choice. But I'm the one who
has to live with the decision to Icilt."
  Spock spared him farther introspection.
"Captain, I've completed the analysis of the
target ares. T am afraid your Initial
estimation of the destructive capability of the
8hip'But photon torpedoes was badly
overrated. According to my calculations, our entire
offensive armament is in8ufflcienccment to insure the
creatore's destroy, let done incapacita.
tion." He paused.
  "4Howewr, there tilde one ather
possibility. The brain could be completely
destroyed if we aimed the Enterprise at its
canter and then converted the entire ship to energy. Such
a single overwhelming strike should prove
mortal. It voutd certaluly cripple the
creature sod remove in ability to hunt out
specific worlds."
  "That sounds lice you're telling us to blow up the
ship." messed McCoy incredulously.
  "I believe that is what I just said, Doctor."
McCoy had no argument to counter with. Like the rest of
them he'd been caught completely unprepared for the
science offlcer's words.
  Only Rir right-brace wasn't shocked.
  "y expect those figures on the limits of
our photon torpedoes are accurate. Mr.
SpockThat" he queried. "Youths checked and
rechecked them. no doubt."
  "NatoTalty." Spock replied. '1 do not
profess to be en. amored of the idea of destroying
ourselves Csptain. I have no more wish for self
destruction than anyone else. I merely report
the facts as they exist and suggest slternative
lines of operation for your consideration."
  STAR TREK ONB 173
  "But that is your recommendation?"
  Spock nodded. "We seem to be left with no
other alternative$7'
  "Thank you, Mr. Spock." Kirk
drummed fingers on the arm of the command chair. Spock
was right. They'd run out of options and were rapidly
running out of time.
  Even so, he hedged.
  "You're sure it would do the job?"
  "Yes, Cptain. Quite sure."
  Kirlc leaned over and spoke into the
  communicator grid. "Kirk to engineering."
  "pioneering," mine the distant voice. "Scott
here."
  Kirk composed himself and rehearsed the words in his
mind. He wanted Scott to get it right the first time.
  He remembered the last time he'd uttered the
words, when they'd battled the strange energy-being in
orbit around the bulls of a dead star. But in his mind
he'd known that was a feint. A desperate one, but still
a feint. A trick to frighten their unwanted
passenger away. It had worked.
  This time, however, it was different. He had no
tricks in his mind, no hidden surprises to spring
on this lumbering, alien entity. It was to be a
kamikaze strike, plain and simple.
  Idly, he wondered where that strange-sounding word
had come from.
  "Mr. Scott, prepare the
self-destruct mechanism in the engines. Computer
control for triggering the device will be here, on the
bridge.. Rig it with Lt. Uhura." There was a
long pause at the other end. "Mr. Scott?"
  "Aye, sir." Kirk clicked off and sat
back. The following comment turned the atmosphere in
the room topsy-turvy. It was typical of
McCoy.
  "tilde Well, gentlemen, that's one decision
you won't have to live with." right-brace Iven Kirk
smiled.
  "Wait Ill you hear the next one, Bones.
It'll kill you."
  "What on Vulcan is the matter with you two?"
queried Spock blankly.
  "Nothing, Spock," McCoy was quick to counter.
"You're right, as usual. As a comedy act, we're
dying."
  174 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  Kirk chuckled. "Stop it, Bones. That's an
order."
  He paused, grinned even wider. "You're
ldllingme."
  Spock shook his head wonderingly. "Humans!"
There was no contempt in the friendly
exclamation. A little pity, perhaps.
  Kirk's smile faded. They didn't need pity
right now. They needed miracles.
  Meanwhile, Uhura had nearly finished
  programming the cerebral diagram. A light
flashed on her console as she was setting the
schematic for display. She checked it, then
swiveled around in her chair to look over at
Kirk.
  "Incoming communication, sir. It's Governor
Wesley on Mantilles."
  Kirk considered retreating to his cabin again
to take the call, immediately squelched the idea. BY THE
time the information reached the rest of the crew the fate of the
EN terprlsc and the eiehtv-two millions on
Mantilles would alreadv have been decided.
  "Put it on the viewscreen here,
Lieutenant."
  "Yes, sir." She made the necessary connections.
"Go ahead, Governor." Wesley's image
  strengthened on the screen.
  Verv little time had passed since his last conversation
with Kirk. but he seemed to have aged years, not hours.
  "Hello. Jim."
  Oh is the evacuation Drnceediner'
Wesley nodded wearily. His words were delivered in
a flat, even tone, interspersed with long sighs. The
fresh attitude of determination that had Dipped the
Eraerprise had no such counterDart on
Mantilles.
  "Yes, its started. We're chine as well as we
can. Oh, there was comtome hysteria at the h tilde
innin tilde Put the tilde overnment's been very
candid with them and they appreciate that. Thev've taken
it well. all things considered. Damn well. Much
hefter than we had am right to expect.
  "I think the announcement that wore going to take
only children made the wlentiallv dangerous ones sit
down and do some serious thinking. The few real nuts
we were ready for." His face was a study in
frustration.
  "But it's only five thousand, Jim. Five
thousand, out of
  STAR TRBK roe 175
  "I know," Kirk murmured compassionately. It
sounded woefully inadequate, even
  presumptuous but Christ, what else could he
say?
  Wesley's frustration found release in a burst
of anger. "The hell you dot You sit up
there safe in your starship and was He caught himself right
away. The anger vanished as quickly as it had come and
he slumped in his seat.
  "I'm sorry, Jim. I'm . . . sorry."
Kirk said nothing this time. It was amazing that Wesley
had managed to hang onto his sanity.
  "We can see the cloud approaching, Jim. We
have no more ships left."
  Sulu's voice intruded, charonlike.
"Thirty-one minutes, four seconds
to MantiUes, sir." Kirk nodded absently.
  "Bob, where's Katie?"
  "Hero." Wesley smiled and looked off-screen
to his right. "With me."
  That, somehow, settled things. He'd been ninety
percent sure. Now it was complete.
  "iDon't worry, Bob. She'll be all
right. I promise you that." Ho paused, tried
to think of something else to say. There were many things, going
an the way back to their days at Starfleet together.
And no time. No time for any of them No time for
anything more than a
  "Goodbye, Bob."
  "Goodbye, Jim." The image faded from the
screen. After a pause, McCoy spoke
up.
  "Who's Katie?"
  "Hmmmbleg"" Kir right-brace had been
deep in thought. Should he have told Wesley what they
revere going to try? No ... best not to raise
false hopes. The Mantillians, it seemed, were
resigned to their probable fate.
  McCoy was waiting patiently. "Oh, sorry
Bones. His daughter. She's eleven, I think.
Spock, you commented on the vast area of this brain.
Is there anyway at all we could contact a mind so
huge, any way at an we could determine if it's
intelligent? Perhaps a Vulcan mind touch ?"
  "I had not considered it, Captain," replied the
science officer, genuinely surprised. "I
expect I was too close to the idea. But it would
require physical contact. That is quite
impossible." He paused, thinking.
  176 STAR TRBRLOG OF
  "However, I might be able to reach out with my mind.
There is an enormous quantity of electrical
energy playing about the shipcomthe creature's thoughts.
E we focus our sensor pickups on them, the
resultant information could be routed through the library's
phoneticsstlanguages section for
breakdown in!comprehensible abstract idea
structures words. There is the strong possibility
that none of these impulses represent anything as
developed as reasoning thought . . ."
  "But it's damn well worth a try," agreed
Kirk. "Question is, can we handle it?"
  "I can link in the universal translator,"
added Uhura excitedly, "and route the results
through the audio systems from herel"
  "Too many complicated lineups," Kirk
  complained. "But that's all mechanical. What
really worries me is . . . can you do it in time?"
  Spock considered. "It is impossible
to calculate a" the variables, Captain. There are
a great many unknown factors. T make an
Dromises."
  Kirk noticed that he didn't mention another
possibility . . . that contact with such an enormous
mind might fatally overload his OWD.
  Sulu, "Twenty-six minutes exactly
to Mantilles, sir." Now who Iraq wasting time?
  "All fight, Spock. Get on it." Spock
and Uhura's stations became a center of feverish
activity as technicians poured onto the bridge
to held modify existing circuits and
systems for a task their designers never dreamed of.
  Kirk took a moment to take care of one other
detail.
  "CaDtain's foe, star date S372.1. This
may very well be the last entry in the log of the
U.s.s. Enterprise.
  "fit is only a matter of minutes before the
cosmic cloud referred to in previous entry
reaches Mantilles." He glanced back at
Uhura's
  commnnicatio tilde q alcove. As his or her
respective task was completed. the technicians
began to leave the bridge. There were quiet munchers
of encode agement for Uhura and the rest of the regular
bridge complement esDecia11v for Mock.
  "Science officer Spock has been working on the
problems involved in reaching the cloud's thoughts if it
has
  STAR TRBRLOG OF 177
  any. But even should he succeed, I doubt there is
enough time left for any meaningful exchange to take
place. The possibility that we could persuade it
to avoid Mantilles is . . ," He stopped.
  If Uhurs Ed Spock failed, no one would
ever read this entry. It would vanish with the rest
of the Enterprise and her crew in a matter-destroying
holocaust of stellar magnitude.
  If such a possibility appeared imminent while
they were in free qnace. he could have shot the too
clear. It was permanently mounted in a special.
super-fast courier torpedo equipped with a powerful
homing beacon. The entire setup waq qunDaqed
to insure that even if a starship was visited tilde with
total destruction. it lowland perhaps the reasons for
xeaq de tilde cti tilde ld survive.
  Its builders had not envisioned this particular
situation" however. --nce free of me
Feanternrisc tilde sustained shields and
deflector,, the torpedo would be barely a snack
for the cloud's energy tilde converting viBi and
amorphous drifting "teeth."
  No, he would finish this entry only if
SDOC-KNOWLEDGE and Uhura were successful. The entry would
conclude on a positive note, or not at an.
  Located on the helm-navitation console between
Sulu and Arex was a lards digital chronometer.
tilde ,fflciont and obedient * shifted a seven
out tilde sight and replaced it with tilde qix. It
took no notice of its impending aor tilde
ilation.
  Kirk dared only tilde brim glance at the
elevator when the last of me technicians filed out
and Engineer Scott arrived. He'd have to handle the
engineering from Oxbridge station now. Uhura would be
completely occupied with monitonne the complicated
commumcatio tilde s linkop tilde stem.
  Domineering report an tie-ins completed and
operatine. Or. The Procedure tilde ready."
  "Thank you. SC-OTTALLY."" He looked at
Snock and waited.
  Spock made two final connections, checked an
audio lead. and then moved to the library-computer
station.
  "Ready, Captain." Kirk and McCoy
exchanged looks . . . perhaps their last, though neither
man regarded it as such.
  178 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  "You may proceed, Mr. Spock," Kirk
whispered, not knowing why he did.
  Spock turned in his chair and swiveled it
towards the main viewscreen. Ho leaned back,
closed his eyes, and extended both arms, hands and
fingers together, straight out in front of his chest.
  Several seconds passed. They seemed like days.
Then his wrists began to torn 810wly from
side to side, rotating with near mechanical
precision. Kirk had seen this before, but he watched with
as much fascination as everyone else.
  No one dared make a sound.
  With a sudden move that starded everyone, Spot hands
jerked inwards and his tinged, still spread, started to shift
backwards. They moved back, back, until the
fingertips touched his head. The thumbs rested just under the
earlobe and both little fingers met in a connecting line
above the eyebrows.
  The other fingers revere funy extended and spread
over his head, from forehead to just above the back
hairline. He sat perfectly straight in the
chair rigid, motionlesseatilde even to the point of not
appearing to breathe.
  A voice spoke then . . . but it didn't come
from epoch It had an eerie, faraway quality and
emanated from a speaker in Uhura's console'. The
phenomenon was startling to hear. It was even more startling
to see.
  It was Spock . . . and it wasn't.
  "Listen To Me . . . Listen to Me. You Are
Not Alone Here. There is Someone Else. Listen
To Me ... Listen To Me . . . Listen to Me."
  Seconds. Gono. Now.
  Silence. The chronometer changing. Five
to Four.
  An explosion ... a tsunami of sound washed
over them, swilling, to fill the bridge.
  Uhura gave a little jump. Her free hand
rosined reflexively to her earphone. She'd been
prepared to detect, pick up the tiniest reply and
had taken the full force of the aural jolt. It
partially deafened her for a moment.
  She adjusted a dial and bmught the volume
down. What came over the intricate farrago of
circuitry and speakers was filtered Vile the
slightly feminine alternate
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 179
  computer voice. It was hesitant ... only one
word, but clear and recognisable . . .
  "dis . . WEIAT . . . ?"
  "You Are Not Alone Here," Spock repeated.
"There is Someone Else. Listen To Me . . .
Listen To Me . . . Listen To Me ....
  Silence again. Then the voice that could only come from
one place ... and every place. From all around them.
  "dis . . WEIAT . . . YOU . . . ?"
  "I Am Another Being," said Spockvoice from
the console.
  It was like watching a shadow play. There was the
silent, motionless figure of Spock. his lips
unmoving and his voice spealdag from a grid
halfway across the room.
  And another voice replying from out of nowhere.
Spock repeated the words. agam.
  "I Am Another Being."
  Vast immense slow voice.
  "BEING . . . 7 BBING . . . ORB . . .
?"
  "I Am Tnside Y."
  tilde NSIIGGB . . . t B equals
L tilde . V tilde ME . . . ?"
  "I Am Very SmaUs, And There Are Many of
Me. We Are Within a Starship Which Is Within
Y."
  "dis . . BXPLAIN . . . BLUCIDATB . .
. CLARIFY . . ."
  "A SmaUs Thing That Holds AU We
Smaller
  Things. We Beings."
  Somehow the great voice managed to sound
  astonished.
  "dis . . T right-brace I[S . . . WITHIN
MB . . . ?"
  "Within Y."
  And now, curious . . .
  "dis . . BXPLAIN. . . ?"
  Kirk and McCoy exchanged desperate
looks. At this rate it was going to be a long,
complicated process . . . too long.
  The digital chronometer read 04.
  "We Came To Think To You," Spock continued.
"You Consumed U. You Thought We were
  F-ood."
  "dis . . WHY . . . his wnally YOU THINK
TO . . . MB . . . ?"
  Spock explained. "It Was Needed Done. Many
of Us Live on Things You Consume."
  180 STAR TREK LOG ONE
  hi. . . YOU LIVE ON IAMB TONGS
tilde
  CONSUMB . . . ?"
  "Yee. Many of Us Lhre on One Such Thing
Near You Noiv. Do Not Consumo X."
  hi. . . BLUC1DATB n
  Who Spherical Mass Ahead of Y. The
Matter You Intend to Ingest. Sense It
Closely. Sense It ... As You Sense Mo.
Do This Now ...."
  There was a pause . . . they couldn't afford.
  "How near is Mantilles now, Mr. Ares'
Kirk whispered.
  "The cloud win impinge on the Mantillian
atmosphere in three minutes, twenty seconds,
sir."
  "YBS," came the voice finally. tilde
PBRCBIVB MANY SOMB tilde NGS. S.
. . SMALL . . . l"
  "They Aro SU-LITTLE Beings," pressed Spock.
"Alive . . . 1 tilde Y. It You Consume
Their
  Sphere-Thing-Homo They WE All Die."
  Another pause. Navigational control' all but
forgotten, both Sulu and Arex stared fascinated at
the chronometer. Their unwavering gaze failed
to halt 04 from shifting down to 03. Sweating cold
sweat, they looked back at Spot
  "dis . . TOO SMALL . . ."
  "Explain," said Spock.
  tilde AM SMALL . . .
SOMBTE-NNGS tilde
  PBRCBIVB . . . TOO SMALL. NOT
ALIVE
  BBINGS ...."
  Kir right-brace hammered once, soft, on the
arm of the command chair. There was no way, no way
Spock could explain to it in time. How cordage he
explain? Hoer could a creature that dwarfed
planets be convinced that there lived on those surfaces
an intelligent mold ceded man?
  "Listen To Me," Spocl tilde voice
murmured. "if Am Going To Como Into Your
Mind. At The Same Dime, You Must Come
Into Mino. Do You
  UnderstandThat"
  "dis ., RBASONGGSo) . . . ?"
  "Then You WE Be Able To Sense What Kind
of Beings We Are. You WE Sense We Are
Alive."
  "dis . . NBCBSSARY. . . ?"
  Was there a hint of fear in that voice? Was the
titanic, stellar-sized mass afraid?"
  "Yes, Very," Spock insisted
  STAR TRIER 181
  Yet another wait . . . Ionger, this time.
  A... PROCI-LIKE tilde Do...."
  The first ounces hands reached out from ho head again
HE arms remained outstretched in front of him,
fingers mead, palms ups No one bread
No one moved. Seasonal prayed.
  Churn forced herself to glance at her own console
chronometer. Saw the 03 become 02. she stared
at it, hm zag like a bird tilde rprlsed by a
snake.
  Spook tilde Iy relaxed. He opened his
eyes and looked around crossly blame Rlsing
slowly from his seat ho started to Ivan Mound the
bridge.
  Re stared at Kirk, Dr. McCoy. At
Arex and Sulu and Uhura, at the instruments on the
console, the floor, the viewsc tilde eem and then
at his own hands and feet.
  "Bones,. Birk whispered, reaHzing once more that
the va/s of the universe it was often the Par that was
truly awesome, "he's the cloud. Its thoughts are
here."
  Attracted by the sound of his voice, the
Spockstcloud turned and wallced over to him, stared,
examined. As though using a strange new tool for the
i tilde t time it put out a hand and touched
Kirks face. The hand moved awhardly, roughly, and
sensed what it touched.
  McCoy made a move as if to interpose himself
between Kirk and the Spockstcloud. Kirk's
order was sharp.
  Don't mover"
  Spockstcloud concluded its examination of Kirk
and walked around the command chair. It looked
curiously at the viewscreen. which sell showed the
diagram d the cloud's brain. Kirk kept his
voice low as he spoke to Uhura.
  "lieutenant. use the library computer. Put
some views of the Bard un there."
  'quotes, sir." She moved cautiously
to Spotty station, but it wasn't necessary. The
Spockstcloud was thoroughly engrossed in the screen.
Buttons were depressed switches struck. The
screen changed to a view of Earth talren from
space. R * rose and stood next
to Spockstcloud, talked to * smoothly.
  "his is the thing we come from." EITHER-EVERY backed up
a few steps, toned and whispered to Uhura
  182 STAR TRIM LOG ONE
  "Lieutenant, this is what I want . . ."
  The image on the screen changed, closing in on
Earth until the continents so familiar to Uhura,
Sulu, and Kirk showed. The picture moved in
tighter on the Western Hemisphere, then on
North America.
  Uncaring of the frantic controlled activity going
on around it, the chronometer adjusted from 02 to 01.
  Still deeper moved the scene, for aerial views of
cities. Closer and closer, as the timer began
ticking off seconds.
  People began to fill the screen . . . lots of people.
People working, people playing, people eating and producing and
reproducing and caring for children. Children playing as the
chronometer went to thirty seconds.
  "Awaiting your orders," said First Engineer
Scott calmly. He stood waiting at the
engineering console, his thumb over the flip-up
protecting the double combination self-destruct lever.
Kirk held up a warning hand.
  "A few seconds yet, Scotty. We have
to give Spock that much."
  The pictures flashing on the screen concluded,
fittingly as Mantilles might with children.
  The chronometer said twenty seconds. Uhura
wanted to scream.
  She backed away from the library as the
Spockstcloud turned slowly and walked back to its
chair. It sat down easily and leaned back a
little, slumped. Kirk returned quickly to his command
seat.
  McCoy's voice was husky. "Jim, it's
got to be now. If we don't self-destruct
now, all those people will be killed."
  At McCoy's words, something suddenly died
inside the captain. He felt amazingly calm,
unafraid. And tired, so tired. Just give the
command, James, and you can rest It'll be over in an
instant
  He turned to face Scott.
  Like a man gasping his last breath while suddenly
recalling his life, the chronometer went from 01
to 00 . . .
  Sulu nearly leaped out of his seat.
  "The cloud has stopped, Captain! The edge is
just touching the outer atmosphere, but it has stoppedr"
  "dis . . cot" boomed the thunderous drone from
Thatgg'hura's open speakers. "dis . . NOT
DESIRE TO CON
  SUME OTEIER BEINGS . . ."
  STAR TREK LOG ONE 183
  The cheering that erupted on the bridge was
spontaneous and thorouibly undisciplined.
  "Quiet!" Kirk shouted.
  "There Are Manv Things in Our Galaxy Like
The One You Now Perceive," Spock
continued, apparently unaffected by the outburst. He
hadn't joined the cheerioand
  "...TRUTH...?" rumbled the voice.
  Youth. You Do Not Desire To Consume Other
Beings. It Wauld Be Best Therefore If You
Returned To Your Place of Ongin The Way You
Came. Will You Do This?"
  "...A LONG JOURNEY..."
  ""wm You Retmn?" The console
Spockvoice was persistent insistent.
  Eventually the voice replied. Its tone was almost
indifferent, as though its decision were of no consequence.
  "...PBRCB tilde E. tilde nLITTLE
RBTURN TO ORIGIN PLACE..."
  There was a long wait. Then Arex spoke
excitedly without shifting from his place at the helm.
  "Sir, sensors indicate the cloud is moving
awn from Mantilles. And picking up speed
rapidly!"
  Kirk left his chair and moved quickly to Spock.
  "Lieutenant Uhura, contact Onvernor
Wesley and tell him he can bring his ships baclc.
If he asks how and why, tell him it seems that
annaggedon has a conscience."
  "Yes. Captainl" Uhura's voice
was alive with relief.
  Kirk studied his first officer. He started to put
a hand on Spock's shoulder. Maybe the slight
touch tilde but it wasn't needed.
  An exhausted Spock blinked his eyes, held
them open, and looked up at Kirk.
  "Soock, you did ill The cloud is leaving."
  "I believe so, Captain. There is no way out
from this sector. But there is a wehlike arrangement
of cloud-substance at the top of the brain. The cloud
uses this thick grid to 'sense" it is not
exactly like sight other things with. A combination eye.
ear, and many other senses too alien. ton strange,
to attempt description." He shook his head.
blinked again.
  "I have had but the slightest touch with it ,.. fortu-
nately. Its intellectual potential is
astounding, but * has developed in ways utterly
different from anything previously imagined.
  184 . STAR TREK L tilde 0 -- "This
web at the top is dense by its own standards, yet
comparatively empty by ours. We can escape through
it." No time for idle questions here.
  "Mr. Sulul Let's get out of here. That
"[id's on the schematic . . . take
us through."
  Sulu's response was ... well, agreeable.
His hands played the helm dike an organ. Kirk
started back to his chair, paused at a sudden
thought.
  "Spoclc, while the cloud was here, in you, perceiving
us, where were was His eyes widened slightly. "You must
have been in the cloud. What did you perceive?"
  Spoclc's mind had returned to his body, but
his thoughb were still elsewhere. He murmured sofay.
  "The wonders of the universe, Captain," he
shook his head at the incredible memories.
  Momenb later they were free of the cloud, having
encountcred no trouble in passing between the moon-sized
gaps in the cloud's sensing grid. Once baclc in
free space, Kirk ordered the Enterprise in a
tight circle that would bring her rapidly back
to Mantilles. The starship could help supervise the
return of the overcrowded evacuation ships.
  But for the moment, his attention was focused on the
screen. It showed the vast cloud-shape, now shrinking
rapidly M it picked up speed, heading towards
the outer fringes of the MiUcy Way. Spock was still
staring after it, his mind filled with wonders he'd never
be able to properly share with anyone else.
  "Someday, Captain, when we are able to protect
ourselves a little better, we may be fortunate enough
to meet it again, or others line it."
  "And when that day comes," lairs agreed softly,
caught up in Spoclc tilde own sense of
wondersiond his own emotional release "when that day
comes, Mr. SP-OCK, the ant will stand on its hind
legs and converse with the man . . ."
  Together they stayed watching the screen until the last
faint hint of cloud was gone.
  Only infinity and a few stars remained.














 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
