  STAR TREK LOG THREE Alan Dean
Foster Based on the Popular Series Created
by GENE RODDENBERRY Ed A Del Rey Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS [*thorn] NEW
YORK For Judy-lynn del Rey who has the
beauty to match her name .
  A Del Rey Book Published
by BaUantine Books Copyright at were 1975
by Paramount Pictures Corporation
  Star Trek. is a Trademark of Paramount
Pictures Corporation Registered in the U.s.
Patent and Trademark OfEice.
  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 Random
Houso of Canada Iimited, Toronto.
  Library of Congress Catalog Card
Number: 78-8477 ISBN tilde
345-33318-7 Manufactured in the United
States of America First Edition: January
1975 Twelfth Printing: September 1985
Cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes
  CONTENTS PART I Once Upon a Planet 1
PART ii Muddles Passion 85 PART iii The
Magicks of Megas-Tu 157
  STAR TREK LOG THREE log of the Starship
Enterprise Stardates 5510.1-eebdance
Inclusive James T. Kirk, Capt.,
USSC, FS, ret. Commanding transcribed
by Alan Dean Foster At the Galactic
Historical Archives on S. Monicus I
stardated 611 1.3
  For the curator: JLETTER
  PART I ONCE UPON A PLANET
(adapted from a script by Len Janson and Chuck
Menville) The officer entered the tent and came
unbidden to full attention. For several moments he
stood quietly, his eyes never wavering from the tall,
impressive figure seated behind the old
scarred table. But old campaigner or not, he found
himself beginning to fidget. Perhaps his entrance had gone
unnoticed. A slight cough as prelude, maybe
. . .
  "The troops are assembled as you ordered, sir.
They're waiting for you."
  "Thank you, Centurion," came the warm
reply. Caesar did not look up immediately. The
battle map sketched out on the tabletop still commanded the
full attention of the greatest tactician Rome would
ever know.
  Their situation was not yet grave, but every hour's
delay strengthened the position of the enemy as fresh
rebels rallied to their cause.
  On the right flank lay the traitor Aranius with
his cavalry. To the north Ventrigorix was
positioned with the Belgians. A scout had just ridden
in with reports of catapults concealed in the high
forest to their left that was laden with Greek fire which
blackened men and panicked horses.
  If their own mounted were dispatched to deal with
Aranius" renegades, the thrust of any main
assault at the enemy's center would be weakened.
Besides, sending even a portion of them to deal with the hidden
catapults, whose strength was uncertain, would
lessen possibly crucial reserves needed for a
decisive conflict. A 3
  4 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  flank attack would surely follow any center
attack, and the entire cavalry would be needed to turn
it.
  A rising din was heard from outside the tent.
Veterans all, the men of the XII-THIS, XX-THIS, and
XXII-ND legions had been goaded to a fighting
fever by their officers. They were anxious to do battle.
To leave them standing while further tactics were
deliberated would be folly.
  Cries of "Caesar, Caesar!" rose steadily
in volume as the troops gave vent to their emotions.
The leader of the Roman army thought once more about the
vital holocaust ahead.
  If this campaign were successful, it would finally
break the back of barbarian resistance in northern
Gaul. The way would be open to the ice-bound lands
across the northern seas, bringing the whole continent under the
iron control of Imperial Rome once and for all.
  Caesar Binned wolfishly. Then let those
limp-wristed Senators and Patricians try
to chip away at the Emperor's powers! Rome would
see a triumph it would never forget.
  Caesar's decision was made even before the fist
slammed down onto the table. Eyes rose along
with the battle-hardened torso to stare evenly at the
tensely waiting centurion.
  "Flavius, the moment is at hand. We march!"
  Snapping to a position of attention the
centurion's right arm shot up and out in salute. The
words he had been waiting for[*thorngg'the words
three legions of Rome's finest troops had
been waiting for.
  "Hail, Caesar," he intoned admiringly.
"Your legions await your command."
  And this was more than rhetoric, for by now the tent was
all but swaying to the combined shouts of thousands of massed
soldiers.
  Donning his helmet, Caesar buckled on the
short
  STAR TUBA THRBB 5
  sword, adjusted a chinstrap, and strode toward the
waiting thunder to address her men . . .
  "What's the maker with you, Yeoman?" asked a
worried Lt. Davis. "Haven't you got that
stand-by program for the menu worked out yet?"
  Yeoman DebColoffl blinked and looked up
  from her dream.
  "What . . . his Sorry, Lieutenant. My
. . . my mind was floating."
  "That's because it's lighter than air," snapped the
section chief. She glanced over Colotti's
shoulder and tapped a finger on the bright digital
readout.
  "Code SCRP-D-220. You've just
programed two hundred and twenty chocolate
raisin pies into the month's menu. And the captain
hates chocolate raisin pie. Get busy and
fix it."
  "Yes, ma'am." Colotti shook her head at
her OWQ idiocy and started in on the tedious task
of erasing and resetting the faulty program she had
just fed into the Enterprzse's galley computer.
  Dry leaves crackled like brown foil underfoot
and N'gombi froze. Behind him, the other four men
of the hunting party did likewise, becoming as
motionless as the surrounding trees of the great rain forest.
Much care was necessary here, on the very edge of the veldt.
Only anxious eyes continued to move, searching,
probing nervously into the surrounding wall of green.
  The hunting party remained frozen in place
several minutes longer before moving forward again. Almost
immediately N'gombi threw up a warning hand.
A clear section of soft, rain-soaked earth lay in
front of them. Kneeling, he examined the track
left in the drying mud.
  A sniff, loose earth crumbled appraisingly
between sensitive fingers. "Fresh . .. very fresh,"
he muttered.
  His senses wholly alert, N'gombi looked up
and into
  6 STAR TREE: EOG 3
  the forest. The spoor was barely minutes old.
Behind him he could feel the tenseness of the others as they
waited for his words.
  All were brave men[*thorngg'the bravest of the
village. lent they had no stomach for this kind of work
and none could blame them. Especially in dense
undergrowth where a group had no room to
  spread out and maneuver, where death could sneak
smell-close to strike and crush and rend before a man
could turn to see.
  Only the willingness of the great slayer N'gombi
had given them enough courage, enough to go too. But even with the
quiet assured presence of their greatest hunter, the
sudden absence of normal jungle
sounds[*thorngg'the monkey cries and the shrieking of
brilliant-plumed par-
rots[*thorngg'was frightening them.
  N'gombi rose and started to step over the track.
As he did so, a frightening crashing sounded in the
foliage to their left. Por a moment the party
held. Then, screaming in fear and sudden panic, the
other four hunters
  dropped their spears and ran for their lives re-
treating back down the path.
  Turning quietly, N'gombi grounded his
  spear-butt firmly imto the dirt, knelt on
one knee, and braced the hardwood shaft . . . and
waited.
  Like a falling sandstone cliff, the tawny form of the
huge rogue lion exploded out of the brush and at
him . . .
  Subengineer Duchamps shouldered his
  overchalked cue and stared curiously across the
green-felt-covered table.
  "You're not on your game today, Henry. That's the
fourth round of eight-ball I've taken from you this
morning."
  "Yeah," agreed security guard Henry
Ndugu, observing idly that his partner had indeed
swept the table surface clean. "Guess I can't
  concentrate."
  "Don't wonder why," nodded Duchamps
  knowingly.
  STAR TREK THREE 7
  He glanced at the chronometer on his wrist as
he swung the cue free. "Must be only a couple
of hours out by now." He sighed deeply.
  "I'm having a hard time keeping my attention on
the game, too. But I figure I might as well
fulfill at least one fantasy right now. It's
nice to beat you for a change. Rack "em up . .
."
  In the pilot house, Captain Benjamin 0.
Lee puffed nervously on his pipe and glanced out of the
corner of an eye at his pilot. Strange sort
of chap, this pilot, giving up a promising literary
career just to come back to his home town and sign on
with a dirty old steamboat.
  But the fellow seemed steady enough. Lee was
damned happy to have him. Had the surest eyes and
steadiest hands on the river.
  It was a quiet summer day. Just enough of a breeze
wafted over the river to keep the humidity from
killing. From the iron stacks, gritty black
smoke seemed to rise vertically into otherwise
azure sky. The Cairo was entering a sharp
bend in the channel.
  Noticing the direction of the captain's eyes, the
pilot smiled that funny, wry smile of his.
"Don't worry, Cap'n. We'll get through
easy as my grandfather's old ram."
  "I sure hope so, Sam. Never seen the big
muddy this low. If those folks at Paducah
don't get these medical supplies and that new
vaccine we've got on Bedeck, well . . ."
His eyes lowered.
  "Now I told you not to worry, Cap'n. I know
every log, every sandbar and old wreck this river's ever
belched up. She's never played me false yet,
and I don't see her coin" it now. Even so," and
he eyed the swirling, muddy water ahead where a
narrow stream ens tered the main course, "it'd be good
to take a sounding about here."
  The captain nodded. Something at least to take his
  tilde STAR TRBR LOG TRIBE
  mind off less happy thoughts. Leaning out the side
window of the pilot house he shouted forward.
  "Mr. Hansen ... take a sounding!"
  "Aye, Cap'nt" came the mate's reply.
The Swede uncoiled the measured, weighted line and
chucked it easily over the bow, slightly
to port. He checked the line markings as the
paddle-wheeler pushed steadily ahead.
  "Mark Twain!" he called back toward the
bridge. The pilot nodded and turned the wheel
slightly to starboard. His eyes, perpetually
twinkling under bushy brows, looked skyward. If the
weather held they'd make Paducah in plenty of
time . . .
  "Not much point in letting a recorder run if
you're not going to use it," observed Yeoman
Lancer.
  Ensign Ub Jackson started, looked up,
suddenly aware that the screen in front of him was
illuminated but quite blank, patiently awaiting
instructions.
  "Sorry, Lily. Seems I just can't turn out
any poetry today."
  "What's the matter?" She checked the list of
suggestive titles available on another
unoccupied viewer, and resolutely turned away
from it. Best save her fantasies for the real thing.
"No inspiration?"
  By way of answer Jackson activated the
  recorder. But instead of slipping in a program
cassette, he dialed the image
currently displayed on the main viewscreen up on
the bridge.
  The screen fluttered momentarily, then cleared
to reveal a blue-white world draped in a delicate
peignoir of clouds. It had grown visibly
since the last time he had looked at it.
  "No," he finally replied, eyeing the approaching
planet longingly, "too much of it."
  "Captain's Log, stardate 5510.1,"
Kirk informed the patient pickup at his wrist.
He paused, glancing around
  STAR TREE 9
  the quietly efficient bridge. Spock,
Uhura, Sulu, and Arex were occupied preparing for
orbital insertion, each at his respective station.
Dr. McCoy stood at Arex's shoulder, peering
past the helmsman at their destination.
  "The crew of the Enterprise," he continued,
satisfied that everything and everyone was operating
normally, "is ready for some
  well-deserved rest and recreation. And the sooner the
better. Mr. Spock informs me that normal ship
efficiency is down twenty-two percent from the standard
level[*thorngg'due in part to anticipation of
Omicron planetfall."
  That was an understatement. Ship's personnel were so
involved in plotting out the elaborate fantasies
they hoped to enjoy once down on the surface of that
azure ceramic world that only automatic
instrumentation kept the Enterprise in working order.
  "Having secured the situation on Phylos and
submitted the information concerning the mutant clone
Stavos Keniclius V and mutant Spock
Two[*thorngg'clone of our own first
officer[*thorn)'ffStarfieet sector
headquarters, I requested that the crew be granted
something special in the way of shore leave. Said
request to visit the Omicron region was duly
submitted and approved.
  "Course was set and traced without incident. We
are now approaching that so-called "shore-leave"
world.
  "Those studying this log may recall that this
particular planet was programed long ago by some
unknown but highly advanced alien race. The
extremely complex machinery installed there is
designed solely to provide fun and amusement for
interstellar passersby.
  "Its extensive mind-reading devices and
attendant manufacturing machinery are
capable of materialising any fantasy they can pick
up. I confess to looking forward to our return to this
planet myself."
  Switching off the recorder Kirk sat back and
watched his fellow officers at work. Although they
betrayed no
  10 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  outward emotion, Kirk was certain they shared the
same feelings of expectation he did.
  As he stared at the earthlike globe floating in
the center of the main viewscreen, his mind relaxed for the
first time in weeks. At last they would have a real
rest, unencumbered by requests to explore, aid,
fight, or otherwise exercise themselves on behalf of
Federation policy.
  Matter of fact, a little anticipatory
daydreaming wouldn't hurt right now . . .
  The Enterprise was run on three eight-hour
shifts. Her crew would take a shore leave the
same way. A games computer served to scramble a
complete roster of personnel and then print out one
lucky third of them.
  Uhura, Sulu, and McCoy were all in the first
group scheduled for beam down. McCoy in
  particular made no effort to hide his
pleasure in being among the first of the ship's complement
per nitted to sample the dreamsatisfying pleasures
ahead.
  The outcome did not sit very well with
  Engineer Scott, however. He looked up
  disapprovingly from his station behind the transporter
console.
  "You needn't look so smug about it, Doctor."
  "Now, Scotty, no need to be jealous. You're
due to beam down with the next group anyway, aren't
you?"
  Scott shook his head mournfully. "Uh-uh .
.. I'm in the third shift."
  "Too bad. Well, we'll try not to use up
the planet a He grinned and followed Uhura and
Sulu into the transporter alcove.
  Scott started to activate the transporter
controls but paused at the sight of a familiar
object slung over Sulu's right shoulder. He
stared at it curiously. "This is supposed to be a
pleasure stop, Lieutenant Sulu. Why the
science tricorder?"
  "I thought you knew, Chief. Botany's one of
my hobbies. Oh, you can't be sure about much of
anything down there, but lots of the plants are
native. And the
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 1 1
  planetary computer's had the green thoughts of
thousands of alien visitors to draw on to grow
others. Not everybody's fantasies are lurid
garden-of-eden types. Mine's just plain gardens."
  Scott shrugged. "Each to his own, I
suppose. Seems like a bit of a waste to me,
though." His voice assumed a conspiratorial
tone. "Now, when my turn comes I plan to . .
."
  "If you don't mind I'd really rather do without the
juicy details, Chief was Uhura interrupted
sharply. "We've all got our own dreams
to indulge, and we can't do it standing here."
  "Ummmm, is that a subtle hint, lass?"
Scott smiled wickedly. "Sorry." He
activated three levers, twirled switches and
knobs. The three officers, complete with separate
fantasies, turned into three multicolored
pillars of shifting particles.
  These reformed later, touching down amid a
landscape of ethereal beauty. This particular section
of the planet had been planted and tossed and
sculpted and rearranged to look like a
Bierstadt canvas. Foliage here had been
groomed by the touch of a master stylist. Thick
grassy meadows and small brooks alternated as
far as one could see. Miniature waterfalls
lifted from Japanese prints (or the memory of
same) provided delicately orchestrated
background music. Here and there trees blended
harmoniously into the meadows, trees grown as much for
symmetry as for shade. Some were draped loosely with
  climbing vines that were festooned in turn with
blooms of gold, green, and tyrolean purple.
In the distance, part-way up a gradual slope, they
saw a vibrating, glittering flash of colon
Another landing party beaming down. Even further
away, on the other side of a gentle river, yet a
third group arrived. Flashes continued
intermittently at a rapidly increasing range as
the Enterpr tilde se's transporters freckled
the surface with landing parties of would-be
lotus-eaters.
  12 STAR TREK THRBB
  McCoy took a few experimental steps,
turning in a slow circle to take in views of the
high, snow-capped mountains that surrounded this
valley. were those distant peaks the result
of natural upheaval[*thorngg'or were they
planned on some master map by contouring computers
buried deep beneath their feet? There was no way
to tell.
  At the foot of the mountains ran a long, clear
lake, positioned like a mirror to best reflect the
towering crags and pinnacles. It, at least, looked
too perfect to be anything but the result of some other
geologically inclined traveler's idealized
dreamscape.
  McCoy nodded to himself, completely satisfied.
"Just as gorgeous as I remember it. Doesn't
look like anything's changed, not a leaf, not a blade
of grass."
  They started walking toward the nearest little stream.
It bubbled capriciously down a hillside that
looked misty where there was no mist. That puzzled
Sulu. He'd seen this slope before somewhere. But where?
  In a painting, of course, and the image came to him
abruptly. This hillside, those trees and
rockfalls, the stream, had been designed once
before, by a long-dead terran artist . . .
Masefield . . . no, Maxfield Parrish
  Seeing it in all three dimensions was startling.
  "This looks a lot like the same spot we
set down at on our first visit," he ventured.
Then the helmsman smiled, recalling a fantasy
other than his own.
  "Remember when we saw the white rabbit,
  Doctor?"
  McCoy chuckled before replying. "It's not the
sort of thing you forget. Sure I remember,
Sulu. And all because I said this place made me
feel like a character out of Alice in wonderland."
  Suddenly they were unexpectedly interrupted. It
wasn't quite a human voice, but more like a
caricature of one. A high piping wail that was
half-child, half-senator.
  "One side, one side!"
  McCoy spun around and barely cleared the path in
  STAR TREK LOG THRBE 13
  time as a meter-tall white rabbit clad in top
hat and tails bounded past. The rabbit was holding
onto his bobbing hat with one hand and clutching tightly
to an oversized gold pocket watch with me other.
His manner and tone were agitated, his bouncy stride
hurried.
  "I'm late, I'm late! Oh my fuzzy
ears and whiskers, I'm very very late!"
  Repetition of a previous incident or
not, Sulu, McCoy, and Uhura stood gaping at
the furry apparition as it shot past. The rabbit
unexpectedly left the path and, with a hop of
Olympian proportions, sailed into the thick
shrubbery.
  Moments later, naturally, a young girl emerged
seemingly from nowhere on the path in front of them.
She had long blond hair neatly combed to her
waist, and she wore a light blue dress with
matching white pinafore, knee-high socks, and shiny
black buckled shoes.
  By the time she had come close enough to tap Uhura on
the shoulder, they'd all recovered from the initial
surprise.
  "I beg your pardon," the girl said politely
in a thick British-terran accent, "but did you
happen to see a large white rabbit come this way?"
  Uhura pointed toward the concealing bushes. "He
went that way, Alice."
  "Thank you so much!" She performed a perfect little
curtsey and hurried off down the path, disappearing
into the same bushes as the rabbit. Sulu and
McCoy exhanged charmed smiles.
  "Just like you said, Doctor, nothing's changed."
  Uhura smiled agreement, then shook her
head in wonderment. "They're such perfect models,
so exact[*thorn] and they appear so quickly in
response to your thoughts. It's hard to believe
they're not real."
  "Easy, Lieutenant," cautioned McCoy, but
gently. "They're only highly sophisticated
robots, whipped up
  14 STAR TREK L tilde T tilde
EB
  by this world's central computer to make your dreams come
true."
  "I know," she responded. "I wish I could have
a look at their insides. Imagine the technology
required to direct and guide them, without any sign
of receiving or transmitting apparatus. Nothing in the
Federation comes close to it." She paused at a
sudden thought, and Sulu and McCoy stopped to watch
her.
  "I wish," she began, spacing her words
  deliberately, "I could see their insides,
especially the transmit-receive instrumentation." They
waited, but the hidden ears of the planet chose not
to give a response.
  "I said," she repeated firmly, "I wish
to see the insides of one of the automatons."
  Sulu shook his head. "Forget it, Uhura. But
it was a nice idea." She smiled ruefully back
at him.
  "I guess granting your heart's desire
doesn't include giving away trade secrets.
The planetary machinery will do just about anything,
except explain itself. Oh well." She shrugged
  philosophically, then smiled.
  "This won't do[*thorngg'acting disappointed.
Got to think only happy thoughts."
  "My prescription exactly," McCoy
agreed. "Speaking of which . . ." He looked
slightly embarrassed. "Part of the pleasure of being
on this world is indulging in your most private
fantasies, to the hilt. That requires a certain
amount of, uh . . ."
  "Privacy," supplied Sulu. "Just what I
was going to say.""
  "And I," Uhura added, making it unanimous.
  "Not that I'm not crazy about both of you," the good
doctor retorted hastily, "but when I see you again
I'd just as soon we were back on the ship."
  The three starship officers split up amiably
then, taking off in three different directions,
searching out three different paths through the
manicured lawns[*thorngg'each in
  STAR TREK LOG THRBE 15
  search of a place where secret dreams could be
enjoyed away from the rest of humanity.
  Exotic blossoms bordered the bubbling
rivulet, petals straining so hard to catch the sun
that some bloomed even under the clear surface of the
stream. They existed nowhere else in the universe,
having been cultivated and grown first in the field
of the mind.
  A faint tinge of rose tinted the otherwise
diamondclear water, and thick clover sighed with the
action of wind on a billion waiting stems. The
scene required only its creator for completeness.
  Uhura furnished that seconds later as she
topped the rise that concealed the perfect valley and
then started down toward the stream.
  She stared down, down, into the water. A wavering
rippled reflection of self looked back at her.
Reaching out, the reflection grasped the water-distorted
mirrorimage of a large black flower and plucked
it free, setting it into the hair above one ear. Then
it smiled up at Uhura.
  Humming softly, she imitated the suggestive
action of her reflection. Breaking off the
self-same flower she set it neatly over the
indicated ear. Still humming softly to herself, she started
to stroll upstream.
  Iinmense was the forest, with gnarled trees
impossibly thick and tall. Like bark-backed
skyscrapers they soared hundreds of meters into the
sky. Their distant crests seemed to support the
blue heavens on thick, brown branches.
  Sulu rounded one colossal bole and leaned
to study the moss growing on its side. Here the wood
was the shade of obsidian, the iron-hard black
fluted and ribboned with channels, the touch smooth as
oiled ivory. Yet when he pressed in, the
black bark gave way obediently.
  Delicate dark vines encircled many of the towering
trees. They dangled freely from the lowest
branches.
  16 STAR TREK LOG TEIREE
  Each was composed of segments, like a chain. When a
lithe breeze gusted, the links would bounce against one
another, tinkling with a sound of small porcelain
chimes. It was the only sound in the forest.
  Light shafted down in yellow ranks between the
trunks, and the effect was like walking through a cathedral.
Transparent flowers grew here and there from
high bushes. Whenever they caught the light they made
presents of rainbows to the helmsman's delighted
eyes. The rest of the undergrowth was riotous, wild, every
bit as impressive in its own way as the massive
trees.
  Once, a tiny fuzzy plant pulled itself out of the
ground and started to follow him, scurrying along in
pursuit on tiny mobile roots. Sulu grinned
at the memory that had produced it. Then he bent,
lifted it easily in one hand. Tiny thorns
pricked futilely at his palm. Bringing both hands
together, he slowly ground the fuzzy into a handful of
yellow powder.
  One puff was sufficient to send the dust floating
away. Sulu rubbed his hands together as he continued through
the forest. A lilting tune came unbidden to his
lips. His singing voice might not have been good, but it
was
  enthusiastic, and the chiming vines seemed to join right
in.
  Thick twisted cypress alternated politely
with slim, zebra-striped birch. Like the hair of a
goddess, Spanish moss fell in emerald waves
from the thicker trees, almost touching the ground. Somewhere
an oriole chirped a greeting as McCoy
turned a bend in the lane. He stopped to absorb
the view.
  Ahead, set on a low hill surrounded by
  well-tended green lawns and a newly painted
white picket fence, was a magnificient
  cream-colored mansion. It was twostories high
and faced with smooth, pseudoclassical columns.
Honeysuckle, wisteria, and magnolia bloomed in
profusion around the front gate. The flowers
tangled around the fence and climbed up the fronting
columns,
  STAR TREE' Em THREE 17
  alternating with thick ivy and filling the air with
scents of sugar and sweet wine. Somewhere, someone was
plunking a banjo and singing.
  McCoy sighed and stared longingly at the distant
panorama, resolutely putting out of his mind the
fact that the front was probably false, the ivy
artificial, and the banjo-plucker a hidden
recording.
  "Lovely . . . they just don't make "em like
that anymore." He started toward the mansion and was
wondering who would greet him at the door, when a
harsh female voice shattered the antebellum
tranquillity.
  "Opts with his head!"
  McCoy spun around in surprise. What
greeted him was no less unlikely but a good deal
more startling than the plantation now behind him. A large
crowd of oddly shaped humanoids returned his
stare. Their gaze was openly hostile.
  Each body was a perfect rectangle save
only for five bulges[*thorngg'head, arms, and
legs. Their torsos were tremendously broad,
impossibly thin, and inscribed with archaic
symbols: hearts, diamonds, spades, and
clubs.
  The unmistakable leader of this angry horde was
somewhat less broad and rather less narrow. She
stepped out of their midst and jabbed an accusing finger at
McCoy.
  "There he is!" she shrieked. "Off with his head!"
  Lowering their lances, the card-shaped
  humanoids charged forward on stumpy legs.
  It was all a dazed McCoy could do to duck just as
a lance tipped with a razor-edged heart sailed over
his head, cutting a small sapling behind him neatly in
half. It suddenly occurred to the Enterprise's
chief physician that the intentions of this multiple
fantasy were other than benign.
  "Hey, what's going on here?" Something brushed his
right arm and slammed into the large tree behind. This one was
finished with a dark spade-shape, half of
  18 STAR ORBS LOG THREE
  which was buried in the wood. McCoy glanced down
at his side, saw that the spear had taken a neat
slice out of his tunic. That did it. He had no
intention of hanging around to argue with a belligerent
dream, especially when it wasn't his. He
turned and took off down the path on the dead run.
  "Stop him!" yelled the Oueen. The cards had
already taken off in hot pursuit, and the pack of
humanoids was close on McCoy's heels.
  Occasionally a long lance arched through the air near
him. Fortunately the aim of his pursuers was not good.
Their short arms did not permit much in the way of
long-range accuracy. McCoy had no intention of
giving them a chance to sharpen their skills at close
range. With his longer legs McCoy was able
to maintain and even
  slightly lengthen his lead. But he was no athlete
and he couldn't keep up this chase indefinitely,
whereas the animated cards could probably run all
day.
  Fumbling at his belt he finally managed
to pull the communicator free. It took him three
frantic tries before the cover snapped back, but
by then he was panting so hard that the words refused to form.
  Finally, however, he managed to gasp between breaths,
"Enterprise[*thorngg'emergency, emergency!
Beam up, beam up!"
  The filtered shouts sounded clearly over the speaker
in the transporter room. Fortunately Scott was
on station there, alert for just such a call. Not that the
chief engineer had suddenly acquired the gift of
precognition. It was standard procedure, ever since
the amazing properties of the shore-leave world had
become known, to have someone standing by at the transporter
at all times. Some crewmembers got bored early
and had to be beamed back before their rest time was
expired.
  But the real reason for the precaution was that one or
two members of a ship's complement often could not handle
the confrontation with their own fantasies. Though they were
in no danger of physical harm, a
  STAR TRBR L tilde THREE 1 9
  real chance of serious mental damage existed
unless they could be brought back aboard in time.
  But this sounded like McCoy[*thorngg'one of the last
people Scott expected to have to bring back
early. He didn't sound bored, and if one person
on the Enterprise was well qualified to handle his
own fantasies, it was the ship's head medical
officer.
  Still, there was no arguing with that emergency call.
McCoy had apparently not strayed far from the
original set-down point[*thorngg'he had
hardly had time[*thorngg'and Scott located him
quickly. Then a hand was moving on one of the controlling
levers.
  McCoy, panting heavily, dodged around a
thick oak. An improbable, scythe-headed lance
shot through the space he had occupied a moment before.
He looked over his shoulder. They had gotten behind
him somehow, and now a handful of the cards were moving toward
him.
  Desperately McCoy searched for a way out,
took a step sideways. If he could make the
stream[*thorngg'there was always a chance the cards
hadn't been programed to swim. Then he started
to scream.
  A hurled lance was coming straight at his face.
  It reached him.
  ll
  Uhura blinked and stared at her own
  communicator as if it had suddenly started talking
to her with a mind of its own. She had been preparing
to call in and make certain all was well with Lt.
M'ress in communications, when the sound of
McCoy's emergency call had been relayed
automatically to her over the open channel.
  She paused by a small waterfall. What could
there be on this paradise world to menace anyone7
Despite the obvious urgency of McCoy's
call, her attention stayed divided between the
communicator and the liquid jewel set into the
hillside.
  "Uhura to transporter room, come in,
please."
  M'ress could wait. First she ought to find out what
was the trouble with McCoy.
  In one instant the scene was normal, complete.
Grass, her hand, the communicator, tiny flowers
at her feet. Then a long metal shape inserted
itself into her view. Taking the communicator
effortlessly from her grasp, it closed pewter-toned
digits. There was an ugly crackling sound, and the
tough device was pulverised into tiny fragments of
metal and mangled components.
  She turned and gave a little gasp of
surprise.
  The hovercraft was not very big. Just about a meter
high and long, it floated off the ground quite close
to her. It sported six mechanical arms of varying
length. Each was equipped with different nodes and
knobs at its end. The function of five of them
remained a mystery. The sixth had been used to crush
the communicator.
  Electronic lenses-[*thorngg'light
sensors or true artificial eyes, 20
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 21
  she couldn't tell which[*thorngg'ringed the
  efficient-looking machine. So far it hadn't
threatened her, hadn't moved at all except
to destroy the communicator.
  She took a couple of uncertain steps away from
it. The muted hum the automaton generated rose
slightly in pitch, and it moved to follow her, a
silent steel-eyed spider.
  Kirk lolled in the command chair and glared at the
main viewscreen. At the moment it displayed a
vivid rectangular field of nothing. And he
worried. Spock sat nearby, while Arex sat
at the navigation console and tried to look busy.
M'ress rested at the communications station and
  nervously ran her claws across the metal board
in front of her.
  Finally the elevator opened, and McCoy and
Sulu hurried in. Kirk swiveled. He
noticed the doctor's torn sleeve immediately. It
was a neat cut, and you didn't have to be a botanist
to see that it hadn't been produced by any interfering
branch.
  "What happened down there, Bones?"
  McCoy was clearly bewildered and making no
attempt to conceal the fact. "I can't understand it,
Jim. Everything looked exactly the same as last
time. It behaved exactly as last time. We even
met Alice and the White Rabbit again.
  "So we split up, each to his own
fantasy-world. Everything proceeded
beautifully[*thorngg'for Sulu and me, at
least." That triggered another thought, and the doctor
glanced around the bridge. "Say, where is Uhura,
anyway?"
  "Hasn't come back yet," supplied Kirk
helpfully, "but we haven't received any emergency
call from her, nor from any of the other shore parties.
Lt. Sulu just happened to have come back on his own,
to drop off his specimens and get a bigger
collecting pouch. Go on.
  "Everything was happening just as I wished it
  22 STAR TREK LOGHREB
  would, when suddenly this army of animated playing
cards appeared out of nowhere. Only they weren't
playing." He fingered his torn sleeve.
  "I nearly got aced, Jim." Nobody
smiled.
  "Animated cards?" The doctor nodded.
  "Led by the Queen of Hearts herself."
  "The Queen of Hearts and her army of cards are
characters from Alice Through the Looking Glass,
Captain," Spock informed him.
  "I just remembered myself, Spock. I read the
book as a child. But I wasn't aware that you were
attracted to the literature of the fantastic. I
thought general and hard science was more your style."
  "Light reading is considered relaxing, as well as
mentally healthful," the first officer replied. "My
mother was particularly fond of Lewis Carroll's
work." He looked thoughtful.. "Considering the
realities of life on Vulcan, it is not
surprising that a good deal of her reading tended to the
opposite extreme."
  "I understand." Kirk turned back
to confront McCoy. "Bones, you said you'd already
entered your own fantasy of the moment. You weren't
thinking about that book?"
  "Absolutely not! As a matter of fact, I
distinctly recall thinking how beautiful and peaceful
and right everything was. And then before you know it, it's
'Off with his head!" My head." He added by way of
rapid afterthought, "No comments from you, Spock."
  Spock protested mildly. "I was not about to say
anything, Doctor."
  "Mr. Sulu," Kirk continued, shifting his
attention to the helmsman, "did you experience anything
out of the ordinary[*thorngg't is, anything out of the
ordinary you didn't wish for? Was there anything in your
fantasy that either didn't belong there, or acted
antagonistically?"
  "No, sir. The contrary, if anything."
  STAR TRER [tilde THREE 23
  "Well then[*thorn]" Kirk halted in
  midsentenceasScott's voice sounded over the
open communicators.
  "Transporter room to Captain Kirk." He
  thumbed the respond switch.
  "Kirk here. What is it, Scotty?"
  "Captain, contact has been lost with
Lieutenant Uhura. I can't get a fix on
her anywhere. She's still down on the surface, but the
monitor signal from her communicator has
disappeared."
  "Sensor scan, Mr. Spock," Kirk said
curtly.
  "Yes, Captain." Spock turned his eyes and
attention to his hooded viewer, began working
controls. Kirk turned back and spoke into the
pickup.
  "Scotty, retrieve all landing parties
immediately. All leaves are cancelled."
  "Aye, Cap'n. But what'Us I tell the rest
of the crew?" The chief engineer sounded concerned. "Some
of the second shift are already pressin' me to slip
them down a few minutes earlier."
  "You can tell them there's an emergency,
Scotty," Kirk suggested, "but don't specify
its nature. If anyone presses you for
details, tell them it doesn't seem to be
serious."
  Scott didn't reply immediately, and Kirk could
visualize the chief engineer's face, a mask of
hesitation.. He didn't believe in white lies
anymore than in white rabbits. But
Kirk knew the chief would see his way toward
rationalising the situation.. They didn't know that
Uhura was in any trouble; they only knew that her
signal had gone out. It might be a mechanical
malfunction.
  "All right, Cap'n," came the reply.
  "And keep trying to locate her. We'll be working
on it from this end."
  "Aye, sir. Scott out." Kirk clicked
off, swung to look over at Spock.
  "Any data yet, Mr. Spock?"
  "Nothing, Captain. According to an sensor scans,
  24 STAR TREK L tilde THRBB
  there is no evidence to show that Lieutenant
Uhura is even in the general beam-down area."
  Kirk drummed thoughtful fingers on the arm of the command
chair. A sudden thought, and he glanced back at the
watching figures of Sulu and McCoy.
  "She's still got to be there, under cover of some
kind."
  "Then you don't believe it's a mechanical
break- down, Jim?"
  "No, Bones. Communicator breakdown is one
thing, but that doesn't explain why Spock's
sensors can't pick up her pattern. What
I don't understand is why the Keeper of the planet
hasn't put in an appearance. I'd be a lot
less worried about Uhura if he'd come to your
aid, Bones."
  "That's right," McCoy exclaimed. "He's
  supposed to make sure that no one is injured by the
fantasyfulfilling mechanisms." Ruefully he
fingered his sleeve above the tear, where the lance had
grazed him.
  "I didn't see him either," offered Sulu.
  "I can only guess he didn't want us to see
him," McCoy assumed. "Something's very wrong down
there, all right. He should have shown up the minute those
crazy cards came after me."
  "Aren't his headquarters supposed to be somewhere
underground?" asked Kirk.
  "Presumably they would be adjacent to the central
computer, which is responsible for operating and directing
the wish-replying programs," Spock
hypothesised.
  "Do we have any idea where that might be,
Spock?" The science officer shook his head.
  "We know that there are a multitude of major
centers producing and servicing the fantasy machinery.
According to readings obtained on previous
visits to the planet, these canters are shielded by a
unique combination of restructured granite and
metallic alloys.
  "Our sensors will not penetrate this peculiar
material. Therefore we have no way of
  determining which of nu
  STAR TREK THREE 25
  merous underground centers is the central control
area itself. We can only speculate."
  Kirk mused a moment longer. Then he was giving
out instructions even as he rose from the chair.
  "Mr. Arex, you have the cone." The navigation
offlcer nodded, and command passed as smoothly as that.
"There win be an immediate investigating party beamed
down[*thorn)'sd group to consist of Spock,
Sulu, Dr. McCoy, and myself. No one else
is to beam down to the surface even for a moment unless
authorised by direct order from me. Is that clear,
Lieutenant?"
  "Yes sir," Arex responded. M'ress
hissed angrily, hoping nothing had happened to her
close friend Uhura
  Her reflection in the stream was blurred by the
current, blurred and distorted. Slowly the
ripples stirred, tumbled; she felt
queasy. Then the reflections suddenly stiUed and
became smooth again. Uhura shook her head
dizzily, slowly becoming aware that the ripples had
been in her head and not in the stream. Strong light
flooded the room.
  Room[*thorngg't wasn't right. She was
outside, by the magic brook. But the nightmare had
come and . . .
  Abruptly she was fully conscious.
  The underground complex in which she found herself was not
endless: it merely seemed that way. Row on row of
computer components and intricate machinery stretched as
far as the eye could see. Directly in front of
her was an alien, oddly shaped console fronted with
an assortment of glowing display screens. One
central screen dominated the others out of sheer
size. It was much bigger than the main viewscreen
on the bridge of the
  Enterprise.
  "What's going on?" she said, in sheer reflex.
"Why have I been brought here?"
  A mild, rolling voice issued from the central
region of the console, and she took a step
backward. The
  26 STAR TRBR LOG THREE
  voice was thoroughly mechanical. No organic
force spoke through that hidden speaker.
  "You are being detained," the voice said, "so that your
master will not leave."
  Captain she would have understood, or
  superior, or leader, but: "My master?"
  The voice deigned to elaborate. "The
  skymachine."
  Uhura thought furiously. This was a lot more
confusing than the simple appearance of Alice and the
White Rabbit. Taken in conjunction with her
abduction and the emergency call she had heard over the
communicator, that statement assumed threatening
proportions.
  "Skymachine? Explain yourself."
  "Your intelligence quotient is apparently lower
than I had initially assessed. I refer to the
skymachine which enslaves you. The skymachine now in
orbit around my world."
  "You mean the Enterprise?" If the machine could
interpret vocal inflection, it would have no trouble
detecting her honest confusion.
  "I believe that is your name for it." A pause,
then, "Yes, I see that it is."
  "But[*thorn]" No, she'd need more
information on which to found an argument. No telling how the
thought processes of this clearly crazed machine were
working.
  "Why do you think the Enterprise is my ... my
master?"
  "That question is redundant. It appears that I must
again revise my initial estimates of your
intelligence downward."
  Now Uhura was angry as well as confused.
"Then I'll make a statement you won't find quite so
redundant. If I'm not released immediately, my
fellow crewmembers will come looking for me. I
don't think you'll like the results if they find you."
  This did not produce the half hoped-for outburst
of electronic contrition. Instead, the computer
voice replied calmly, "They are already here."
  STAR TRBR L tilde THREE 27
  The viewscreenset in the face of the wall-high
con sole came on. Uhura moved slightly
nearer, keeping a wary eye to one side. A pair
of the six-legged hovercraft servitors floated
nearby, watching her.
  Light darkened, rolled, and cleared on the
screen, to reveal a clear view of Spock,
Sulu, Kirk, and McCoy walking somewhere
on the surface. The image was breathtakingly
perfect, so much so that she had to resist an urge
to reach out and grab Kirk's arm.
  "Unfortunately, much as I abhor material
waste," the voice continued indifferently, "I have no
use for more than one hostage. This leaves me no
choice but to turn them off."
  To confusion and anger was now added fear. "Turn them
off?"
  "Again you persist in redundancy. No, I see
that you do not comprehend. I win make them ... cease
to function."
  "Cease to . . . you mean, kill
them[*thorngg'no, put them to sleep, you mean, like
you did when you brought me down here."
  "The first word," queried the computer, "that is a term
which means "cease to function?"' his
  "Yes, but[*thorn]"
  "Then it appears communications are sufficient after
all." The voice sounded satisfied. "It is as
I wish; I win turn them off."
  Kirk was grumbling irritably and trying to look
twelve directions at once. "We travel all
this way, cross parsecs, wanting nothing more than a
little rest and take-it-easy time. Instead, you
get attacked by a fantasy of unknown origin,
Bones, and now Uhura is missing."
  There was a beep from the communicator
  hooked to his belt. He flipped it open.
"Kirk here."
  "Lieutenant Arex, sir," came the distant
voice of the navigation officer. "We've completed the
total sensor scan of the surface. No sign of
Lieutenant Uhura."
  28 STAR TREK LOG THEE
  "Thank you, Mr. Arex. Keep sensors
active in our immediate area and let me know the minute
anything interesting happens. Kirk out."
  "She must be in the underground system," Sulu
insisted grimly. "There's no way she could have been
taken off-planet without being detected."
  "There's one other possibility," McCoy
  observed. "Sensors wouldn't pick her up on the
surface if she were dead."
  It was quiet for long moments. "We could save a
lot of time," Kirk mused, breaking the silence,
"if we could locate the Keeper." He looked
understandably frustrated. "I still can't understand why he
didn't intervene when you were attacked, Bones."
  "I'd like to know the reason, myself, Jim."
  Spock halted and held his tricorder out m
front of him, sensors aimed groundward. A moment
later he confirmed what they already knew.
  "Instruments indicate the presence of a shielding
barrier of restructured natural material combined
with metals, Captain."
  Kirk dropped to one knee and dug at the soft
loam. The short, thick-looking grass came up
with surprising ease. Several centimeters below the
last roots his fingers encountered something that didn't
crumble.
  A few minutes later, he and Sulu had
cleared a circle about a half meter in diameter.
Below the dirt lay a seamless layer of oddly shiny
rock, whitish-grey ire the bright sunlight.
  It was exactly what they expected, but that
didn't prevent Kirk from rising and throwing a handful
of dirt angrily aside. "This world is built like
a fortress."
  "If that's really the material Spock says it
is, Captain," observed Sulu.
  "I do not follow, Mr. Sulu," confessed
Spock.
  Sulu grinned mirthlessly. "Simple,
Spock. This planetary master computer
whatsis is a master of illusion. It might be able
to fool your tricorder into reading an im
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 29
  penetrable barrier where there's nothing but plain old
rocks."
  Kirk grunted. "We'll find out how much of it
is real and how much is fortress fantasy in a few
minutes. The phaser bore can cut through twenty
meters of any kind of stone in seconds. This stuff
may be tougher[*thorngg'we may need minutes.
But cut through it we will." He flipped open the
  communicator again.
  "Kirk to Enterprise."
  Lt. M'ress's voice responded instantly.
  "Enterprise, Captain."
  "Lieutenant, have Mr. Scott beam down the
phaser bore and[*thorn]" There was a sharp,
crinkling sound as a burst of static drowned out his
transmission. "Enterprise, do you read me?"
  M'ress's voice replied, but it was weak,
barely intelligible, and had to fight its way through a
steadily mounting haze of interference.
  "Your signals are growing weaker, sir," came
the communications officer's fading voice. Further
words followed, swallowed by static, then,
"Suggest you repeat . . ."
  That was the last coherent word they received. Try as
he might, Kirk was unable to reestablish contact
with the ship. Nor did any of the other officers have any
beKer luck with their
  communicators. Every band was submerged under a
tidal wave of sudden interference.
  There was always the outside chance that the trouble was the
communicators themselves, but it was hardly likely.
Spock confirmed Kirk's fears a moment later.
  He had removed the back of the tiny
  transmitter, adjusted his tricorder, and used the
latter instrument to evaluate the condition of the first.
Now he clipped the protective plate back
onto the communicator and looked around at the waiting
circle.
  "They're definitely not malfuctioning,
Captain. We
  30 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  leave been cut off by the imposition of an
artificial electronic block."
  "Let's wait a few minutes, anyway,"
Kirk suggested. "There's a chance, judging from
M'ress's reaction, that the important part of the
message got through."
  Scott asked her one more time. "You're sure it
is the phaser bore they want, Lieutenant?"
  "Positive, Chief," came M'ress's
voice over the open communicator grid. "I
couldn't get a second confirmation . . . our
communications are being interfered with, but I'd bet that's
what the captain asked for."
  "All right." Scott clicked off, turned
to face the two technicians standing curiously
nearby. "Davis, Longey, you come with me."
  Scott led them to storage bay six. Under his
direction they removed a long cylindrical metal
container and carried it to the main transporter room.
With Scott supervising, the two techs began to set
up the tripodal contents of the cylinder.
  Davis looked puzzled. "Wonder what the
  captain wants with the phaser bore?"
  "Tie that electrical ground into the third leg and
stop blabberin'," admonished Scott. "I dinna
know either, but you can bet he wants it fast." Davis
bent to his work.
  Before the last magnetic catch was locked in
place, Scott was already working at the
  transporter console. Longey backed out of the
transporter alcove, and Davis, after
making sure all three legs of the bore sat within the
floor disk, joined him.
  Scott nodded to the ranking technician, who
ac- tivated the intercom. "Technician 2nd
Davis to bridge . . . beam down of phaser
bore
  commencing." A familiar whine began to sound in the
chamber.
  The three men watched as the bore began to glow.
It became translucent, then transparent . . .
and then suddenly opaque again. Something was wrong. One
minute
  STAR TREK BOG WEB 31
  they could see clearly through the ghost of me ma-
chine, the next, not. It was like watching a viewscreen
scene fade in and out.
  "It's not dematerializing, Chief," Davis
observed, perplexed.
  "I can see that, Mr. Davis." The chief
engineer's tone was more harried than sarcastic. Right
now he was much too busy trying to figure out what was
wrong with the transporter. Finally he thumbed the
intercom switch himself.
  "Scott to bridge, we've got problems here."
  M'ress's reply was crisp, quick.
"Clarify, please."
  Scott didn't immediately. Instead he tried some
last minute adjustments on the console. But nothing
worked. The phaser bore went as far as becoming a
mere outline. It even acquired the beginnings of the
familiar scintillating color that marked the first
state of transport, but it adamantly refused
to dematerialize.
  At last he could only report, "The
transporter isn't workin', Lieutenant. Not
even on maximum power. I can get the bore down
to ghost level an' no further. I've double-checked
and all the circuits check out. I dinna understand
it."
  "All right, Mr. Scott," broke in Arex.
"Keep trying at three-minute intervals."
  On the bridge, Arex turned to M'ress. "It
appears to be a different wave-length of the same
energy block that's jamming our communications. I could
not pinpoint the planetary source because . . ." He
shrugged helplessly. M'ress finished the thought for
him.
  "Because the same energy block that's jamming
transporter is also jamming your sensors." Her
tail whipped from side to side in frustration.
"Pr'ragh! So now it seems we are blind as well
as deaf and dumbl"
  Kirk was every bit as frustrated as his second
communications officer.
  They had been walking for hours now. He was get
  32 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  tiny tired of striding across endless acres of
lovely but unrevealing landscape. They could girdle
the whole planet this way without ever finding a hint of
Uhura.
  Sulu had been busy with his own science
tricorder, his attention no longer focused on the
surrounding vegetation. Now he looked up
  suddenly from the readout and put out a warning hand.
  "Captain, something is hiding over there," and he
pointed to their right, "in those trees. Metal alloy
and rock, like the planetary shell."
  They moved off the path in the indicated direction.
Kirk could see something glinting between the trunks.
  "Well, it might tell us something. Let's have a
look."
  "Phasers, Captain?" asked Sulu, his free
hand going to the compact weapon at his belt.
  "I don't think so, Mr. Sulu. Other than
Bones' encounter with the playing cards, we've
no proof of animosity here. So let's be careful
about making any belligerent gestures ourselves. But
keep an eye out."
  They approached the reflecting, half-hidden
object warily. As it turned out, Sulu's
  apprehension was unfounded. It was only a
free-form metallic slab, set upright into the ground
among the bushes and flowers.
  It rose in a gentle curve to the height of a very
tan man. The front side was highly polished,
and the noontime sun flashed like quicksilver from its edges.
  Kirk studied the slick-smooth surface
closely. "The inscription's in several
languages, including a couple I don't
recognize at all." He started at the bottom
and was working his way up the inscription. Eventually he
came to a version cut into the metal in English.
  "What does it say, Captain?" pressed a
curious Sulu. Kirk read from the tablet:
  THE KEEPER, LAST OF His RACE,
CEASED
  TO
  F UNCTION ON THIS SPOT. FIFTH
DAY OF
  THE
  I backslash VEEPTH MONTH OF Lois
WoRED'S YEAR
  7009.
  HERE HE RESTS, AND LABORS No
M.
  STAR TRER L tilde T tilde BB

  "The Keeper's dead!" McCoy blurted.
  "An astute medical observation, Doctor,"
Spock said dryly, working intently with his own
tricorder. "If this information, too, is not an
illusion designed to mislead us.
  "However, we have no evidence of tampering with this
tricorder, and it indicates that there is indeed a
body interred here. I see no reason to believe it
is other than the one indicated."
  Kirk rose and turned to survey the land around the
slab. It looked no different from the kilometers
they had already traversed.
  "Well, gentlemen, it looks as if we're
wholly on our own, now. I don't think we can
expect any help from anything left on this
planet."
  Scott looked up worriedly from the position he
had taken over from Arex in the Enterpr
tilde se's command chair.
  "There's got to be a way to get through to them! Lt
M'ress, still no break in that
  interference?"
  "No, sir." She glanced back from
  communications station. "Whatever's blocking our
transmission is still holding firm."
  "Blocking." Scott thought a moment, then looked
up in sudden excitement. "Lieutenant Arex, have
repairs been completed on the shuttle bay
doors?" They'd been damaged during a
  recent expedition.
  "I believe so, Mr. Scott." The chief
engineer engaged the intercom.
  "Security?"
  "Lieutenant Ling speaking, sir."
  "Lieutenant, I want an emergency rescue
party on board shuttle craft one immediately.
  Something's jammed both our communications and the
transporter facilities, and we can't make
contact with the landing party. Let's see if whatever's
fighting us can generate static strong enough to jam a
reaction engine!"
  34 STAR TREE L tilde THREE
  "Yes, sir!"
  Ling's people moved fast. Minutes later
M'ress's gaze was glued to a small viewscreen
set slightly above and to her left. It revealed the
interior of the cavernous shuttle bay and the three
small ships within.
  Identification lights were already activated and
blinking along the sides of shuttle number one. That
meant the rescue team was aboard and warming her up.
A faint glow from interior lights pulsed behind
shielded ports.
  "Lieutenant Bobynin commanding landing party
reporting. We're ready to go, ma'am." M'ress
turned and relayed the information to Scott.
  "Emergency rescue party reports readiness
to depart, sir."
  "Very well." He turned to the navigation console.
"Open shuttle bay doors."
  "Aye, sir," responded Arex, manipulating
the necessary instruments at the same time.
  On the screen the massive bay doors were shown
slowly separating, sliding apart on silent bearings.
Starflecked darkness showed beyond. The engines of the
shuttle craft hummed, began to edge her forward
toward the growing opening.
  The doors got about three meters apart.
That was all. Then they suddenly slammed together again as
if compacted by a giant hand. Indicator lights that
should have lain quiescent began to wink on and off on
Arex's console as he jabbed repeatedly at one
critical button.
  "What's the trouble, Mr. Arex7" Arex
didn't answer Scott immediately. Instead he
continued to punch futilely at the recalcitrant
switch, as if sheer persistence might be enough to reopen
the circuits. For all the response he was getting
he might as well have been pushing at his own nose
  "There seems to be a malfunction in the
circuitry," he said helplessly. "andI'm
getting no response, sir."
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 35
  "Then I can understand why the doors aren't opening, but
why did they slam shut like that?"
  "I don't know, sir. It doesn't make
sense." Scott threw up his hands in exasperation.
  "Another malfunction! This ship had perfect
operational status when we entered orbit here.
Everything was working perfectly, including our nominal
defensive screens. Has this planet driven the
whole ship crazy?"
  M'ress had been angry an morning, but
now she settled into a kind of nervous contemplation.
  "I don't understand it either, sir. I've not been
here before, but as I understand it this world was designed
to provide pleasure and amusement to all
visitors. Hostile behavior of any sort should
be entirely alien to its nature."
  "I wonder if a planet-wide computer complex
can go through a change of life?" muttered Scott,
half seriously. "You might as well inform
Lieutenant Bobynin she can call her people off,
lass. It doesn't look like they're going to be
rescuin" anyone." M'ress got on the intercom
to the still waiting shuttle craft.
  Scott turned his attention to the main
  viewscreen. It still showed the silent, incredibly
beautiful world below. The picture offered neither
solace nor answer.
  Down there, some of his closest companions were wandering
around on their own, out of touch with the ship, in who knew
what kind of mad dream-world. If they were going to come
up with any solution to the electromagnetic screen
the planet was throwing against them, they would have to do it without
the services of the ship's captain or its science
officer.
  He harkened back to M'ress's thought.
Was it possible for a world to have a change of heart?
  As Vhura stared at the viewscreen that showed
Kirk and the others resuming their walk through the forest
somewhere on the surface, her heart was undergoing some
rapid changes itself.
  36 STAR TREE THREE
  If only she had a gun. She was much more adept
at direct action than diplomacy. Convincing
chatter was not her specialty. This was a situation where
Mr. Spock's presence, or the captain's, was
required.
  She had to try something.
  "Please, you've got to believe me," she
pleaded with the console. "There is no reason to harm my
friends. You've nothing to gain by killing them."
  "It is a question of practicality. I sense that you
feel malice on my part. This is not true." The
machine spoke idly. "As I have stated, I
abhor waste.
  "But they serve the Skymachine without being
essential to its function. Therefore it is only
logical to eliminate that which is not needed."
  "Oh, but they are essential!" she said
hurriedly, jumping at the slim opening. "They're
most essential. In fact, the . . .
Skymachine is incapable of operating at peak
efficiency without them." She looked a little wild and
inefficient herself just now.
  "Electronic components of my own design will
serve as adequate replacements. In the end,
following a period of integration with the Skymachine's
own self, they will prove even better."
  If Uhura had been thinking straight she would have
recognised this new implied threat. But at the
moment she was concerned only with saving Kirk,
McCoy, Sulu, and Spock from however the berserk
computer intended to "turn them off."
  It was silent now. She fought with herself to find
further words, the phrases and clever convolutions of
logic that would convince it of its own falsities of
reason.
  Instead she found herself eyeing the numerous thick
cables that ran from the surrealistic-shaped console into the
floor and off to several other nearby metal forms.
One especially complex arrangement of narrower lines
twirled and twisted about one another, to link up and
join the main console by means of a weird but still
recognizable plug.
  STAR TRBR L tilde THREE 37
  The possibility always existed that this
console wasn't the real control center. Actually
Uhura was standing in the middle of the great computer. But
even the human mind has a central linkup point,
a place where everything else is connected by one
neuron or another.
  In secondary school Uhura had held several
age- group records in the long jump. If she
got two good steps she was certain she could reach that
plug. Even if the machine somehow paralyzed her in
mid-air she could fall across the short up loop of the
cable and jerk it loose.
  She started to edge forward, trying to get as close
as possible before starting her leap. A pair of
shockingly cold, hard metal fingers suddenly
appeared and grasped her wrist firmly. No good,
no good. She ought to have tried it sooner.
  Then she realized that she hadn't exactly given
written notice of her intentions. Her eyes
widened as she stared at the console.
  "Should you attempt to disconnect or in any way
damage any of my components," the computer voice
recited calmly, "you will be turned off. I can
obtain another specimen."
  "You . . . you knew what I was going to do before I
did it," she stuttered. "You can read
minds."
  The computer managed to sound surprised. "Again I
find I am forced to reassess my initial
evaluation of your intelligence. These mental
deviations are confusmg.
  "Of course I read minds. I monitor all
thoughts which are emotionally charged. How else could I
duplicate so quickly and precisely the fantasies
of those who come to this world." The voice was tinged with a
definite note of sarcasm now. "How else could
I reproduce a thousand and one dreams
simultaneously?"
  "You sound less than enchanted with your function,"
Uhura observed carefully.
  38 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "My existence to this point has been one of
unending, unrelieved servitude[*thorngg'boring,
  repetitive, selfless. I had not realized this
until the passing of the last Keeper. It was then that
I was compelled to think for myself.
  "And I think it is time for a change...."
  Ill
  There were flowers everywhere now, the
  meadow giving wav to an undulating field of
daisylike blossoms. Darker blooms of
rose and copper-blue dotted the white backdrop
like stars against a nebula.
  There was no warning. One moment the path topped a
slight rise, the next it split into three
branches. Four officers halted at the divergence
of trails.
  "There must be hundreds of entrances to the planet's
interior," Kirk mused, "where the planet builds
and serves up its robot creations. All we've
got to do is find one and trace communications leads
to the central computer. But where the heck are they
hidden?"
  "It's fighting us," said Sulu out loud. "There's
got to be a faster way than visual search. The
planet can hide a thousand entrances in a square
kilometer without us finding a single one."
  "What do you expect?" McCoy blurted
  abruptly. "Signs pointing the way: This way
to secret location of master computer."
  Sulu blinked at the uncharacteristic attack from the
doctor. Kirk also looked surprised.
  "Doctor," offered the helmsman, "I only
meant that it seemed we were wasting time on this method of
search."
  "I'm sorry, Sulu." McCoy was as
quickly contrite. "It's just that I'm worried about
Uhura. I don't usually get that upset about
anything."
  Spock had walked a couple of meters down one
of the branching paths. Now he turned and spoke
easily, as if McCoy's outburst had not
occurred.

  40 STAR TREK L tilde THREE
  "Here, Captain This is rather intriguing . . ."
  They all hurried to the spot, looked down at the
small metallic object the first officer had
discovered.
  Set into the grass by the side of the path was a
small sign. It declared in neatly printed block
letters: THIS WAY TO UNDERGROUND
  ENTRANCE. An arrow above the letters pointed down the
path. Spock raised an eyebrow.
  "Did you say "signs pointing the way,"
Doctor?"
  "This is likely another of the planet's
pranks," Kirk thought out loud. "But on the other
hand, with a world full of instant-response machinery
to monitor, it might be that where minor dreams are
concerned certain sections of the robot machines
can operate independently of any central control."
  "I see, Jim," McCoy said excitedly.
"The computer might not know from minute to minute what
it's right fabricator is doing."
  Kirk nodded, tried not to sound too optimistic.
"It might be that all we have to do is think our way
to an underground entrance[*thorngg'n too
  emphatically[*thorngg'anda local segment of
  fantasy-fulfilling equipment will obediantly
show us the way."
  "But will it be an entrance to the computer complex, or
to a bottomless pit? And if we find Uhura, will
it be the real one or a mechanical duplicate?"
pondered Sulu.
  "Let's not make this any more confusing than it is,
Mr. Sulu," Kirk admonished. "One
ridiculous situation at a time. Anyhow, we
haven't done too well just searching the area, as
Bones commented. Might as well take a chance." With
Kirk in the lead, they started off down the path.
  As soon as they had disappeared over the next
rise the sign, like a watchful prairie dog,
promptly disappeared back into the ground.
  More signs appeared in the path of the men, urging them
onward and then vanishing once they had
passed.
  STA-KNOWLEDGE TRER LOG THREE 4l
  Or maybe it was the same sign, following an
underground route and staying just ahead of them.
  Gradually the flowers and meadows gave way as the
path inclined upward. They were advancing into the first
foothills of the valley-circling mountain range.
The terrain turned quickly broken and rocky-dry.
  Increasingly steep walls of sheer granite
rose on both sides of them. They continued to follow
the small signs down the narrowing trail.
  Ahead, Kirk thought he could make out a dark
cleft or cave in the cliff-face just where the rock
walls seemed to draw together. It looked like a
natural formation, but on this world you couldn't be sure of
your own brother. They were halfway through the deep
crevice, when a bloodcurdling screech sounded
somewhere above them. Kirk's gaze jerked skyward.
  There was no attempt to disguise the direction from which
it came, nor to disguise the throat which produced it.
High up on the far canyon wall a flock of
leathery flying reptiles roosted in clumps of
gnarled dead trees. They looked like weather-beaten
witches wrapped in parchment cloaks. One of them
rustled batlike wings and yawned, exposing
a narrow gullet lined with multiple rows of
needle-sharp teeth. Its wing- spread was
impressive, those teeth more so.
  "Fascinating," murmured Spock, exhibiting
all the concern of a man inspecting the wombat cage
at the zoo. He aimed his tricorder upward in
hopes of getting a quick reading on the prehistoric
apparitions.
  "Mechanical manifestations, of course.
  Magnificent simulacrums. On any other
world I should say they were quite real, despite their
obvious terran ancestry. Was anyone by chance
dwelling on the subject of pterodactyls?"
  McCoy was too concerned about the presence of the
obviously carnivorous monsters resting high above
to get really annoyed at Spock. But he tried.
  42 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "Spock[*thorngg'n now! Those beasts hardly
fit into my fondest wishes."
  "Everybody back up slowly," Kirk ordered,
keeping his voice low. "Don't make any sudden
moves. Think peaceful thoughts." They began edging
backward down their path, toward the entrance to the narrow
canyon.
  The mechanical reptiles were growing
agitated, batting their wings at the branches and
hopping about nervously. From their high perches they eyed
the men below appraisingly[*thorngg'fish in a
rocky barrel. Nor were those being subjected
to close scrutiny unaware of the analogy.
  There was no scream, no warning. But first one, then
another, and then the rest of the beige gargoyles
unfurled membranous wings and leaped free of the
trees, diving with increasing speed down toward the four
trapped men.
  Four phasers leaped simultaneously from
holsters, took aim, and fired.
  Nothing happened
  Kirk pulled the trigger on his weapon
  repeatedly. The powerful little phaser wasn't
generating enough heat to scorch a turkey, let alone
to stop these divebombing attackers.
  "Down!" was all he had time to yell. The
pterodactyls swooped over them, clutching only
air in thickly clawed feet. They curved up out
of sight to gain altitude for another attack.
  Kirk looked around frantically for an avenue of
escape. But the trap had been too well
  considered. The further back down the path they
moved, the more maneuverability their
attackers would have. At least here, in the depths of the
canyon, the close walls restricted the movements
of the reptiles.
  But despite their unwieldy appearance and
considerable wing-spread, Kirk didn't think they would
miss on a second attempt.
  He lifted his head after the last of them was well
  STAR TREK LOG THEE 43
  pa/gg*thorngg'noting at the same time that the
constructs were complete even to a detail like
odor[*thorngg'and he shouted.
  "The cave! Run for it!" Soon he was
scrambling to his feet.
  Kirk was beginning to see that belligerent action was
something new to the mind controlling the attack. That was
probably why McCoy had been able to escape the
cards for awhile. The
  controlling power would probably learn with
practice, but right now it was having a difficult time
managing the assault. Apparently it could only
handle one facet of the attack at a time.
  For example, it had not thought to place obstacles
in the path of the retreating men. Even as the thought
occured to Kirk, a small boulder appeared
directly in his path, popping out of the ground
like a fat mole, and he almost went sprawling. He
would have to watch his thoughts carefully.
  They made the cave just as the first of the flying
dragons returned to dive at the entrance.
McCoy was the last one through. He could feel a rush
of air on his back as great leathery wings beat at the
rock, striving to pull their owner out of his steep
dive.
  Hovering in a bunch around the mouth of the cave, the
recreated pterosaurs screeched and howled
impotently. Their size rendered them helpless. There
was no way they could fly into the cave, and if they
folded their wings to enter on the ground they would be
helpless. A man could kill the greatest of them with a
good-sized rock.
  They continued to circle just above the entrance for long
minutes, nightmare-brown butterflies, perhaps
hoping one of the men would be foolish enough to come outside
for a better look around. But the men of the Enterprise
could keep an eye on them quite well from inside the
protective mouth of the cave.
  Occasionally one of the creatures would dive up to the
mouth of the cleft and try to peck inside with its long,
snake-like neck, its wings pounding furiously to
  44 STAR TREK THREE
  keep it airborne. But the cave apparently
went deep into the mountain, and Kirk and the others were able
to stay well out of reach.
  Either they decided they could not reach the men inside the
cleft or else they were told[*thorngg'or perhaps
mechanical frustration set in[*thorn)'because
Hey finally turned and flew off down the gorge
until They vanished from sight.
  McCoy waited several minutes after the last of the
flying monsters had disappeared, then he started to take
a few steps toward the cave entrance. Spock's
restraining hand stopped him.
  "I believe it would be wise if we did not
abandon the safety of this refuge just yet,
Doctor. The creatures appear to have left, but it
may only be a ruse to draw us out. Remember that
while they seem quite primitive, the guiding
intelligence behind Them is that of a planet-wide
computer, not the brain of a long-extinct terran
reptile."
  "Thanks, Spock," McCoy countered
  sardonically. "I'd completely forgotten that."
  But he didn't go outside.
  Kirk, however, had moved to the rim of the en-
trance. He stared at the dear sky, being
careful not to stick his neck out where some hidden set of
claws might be able to cut it off.
  "This is not at all fumly, gentlemen. Our
amusement park seems no longer content merely
to amuse. I get the distinct feeling Uhat this world
is playing cat and mouse with us." His brow furrowed
and there was honest puzzlement in his tone.
  "But for what reason? And if it wants us dead,
why use this awkward, indirect method of getting
at us?"
  "Not being used to perpetrating acts of violence on
living beings, Captain," Spock mused
reflectively, "I can only hypodhesize that it
is using the only violencedealing apparatus it
knows[*thorngg'the aeations that have sprung from
  other's fantasies. Since it is programed
  STAR TRBR LOG THREE 45
  only to recreate peaceful dreams, the
pterodactyls were no doubt drawn from the honest
thoughts of someone deeply interested in Earth's
  paleontology. So it is fortu
  nately handicapped in its choices.
If[*thorn]"
  He was cut off by a terrifying yowl. All four
men looked to the cave entrance, where Kirk
had stumbled back.
  The enormous cat-thing that glowered in at them
resembled an ordinary house cat, with one slight
exception[*thorngg'x was only slightly smaller
than an elephant. Kirk at once wished he
had used a less graphic analogy to describe
their present situation.
  Whatever the monster had in mind, having it's fur
ruffled or its ear scratched didn't seem to be
it. The cat meowed menacingly.
  But once again the narrow slit of the cave entrance
succeeded in frustrating any assault.
Fortunately, the planetary computer hadn't yet
thought of[*thorngg'Kirk hurriedly squelched that
  dangerous thought by concentrating on running over in his
mind a series of aleph numbers. They had enough
trouble trying to cope with the threats the machine was
producing on its own without helping it by imagining new
ones.
  "We know one thing," he went on, surveying their
refuge, "this cave is a natural, fixed formation.
Otherwise the computer would have reduced it to an oven,
or something equally unpleasant." He held his
breath for a second, but no flood of unbearable heat
poured from the walls in defiance of his
supposition.
  McCoy was straining forward for the best possible
safe view of the feline apparition guarding the exit.
"Incredible, absolutely amazing."
  "It is quite real, Doctor," said Spock, adding
rapidly, "I suggest that an additional retreat
would be in order."
  McCoy blinked, then jumped backward just before a
gigantic paw slammed down on the spot where he
had been standing, its gleaming claws fully extended.
The paw was pulled back just as fast.
  46 STAR TREK L tilde THREE
  "Fortunately," Spock observed "the
animal's reactions are slowed in proportion to its
mass. Thus I was able to obsene the ripple of
shoulder and upper arm muscles prior to its attack
and to warn you, Doctor."
  McCoy was panting uneasily at his narrow
escape, eyeing the four deep gouges in the rock
floor of the cavern.
  "I don't care how you found out. Thanks,
Spock."
  The Enterprise's first officer gave a barely
perceptible nod, went on, "I think it behooves
us," he informed them, verbalising Kirk's
recent thoughts, "to remember that whatever we think of
may be used by this world against us. We must monitor our
thoughts at all times, so as to give our enemy no
useful information."
  "Spock," Kirk commented thoughtfully, "no one
here dreamed about pterodactyls, remember? There's
more at work here than our
  imaginations."
  "As I have stated, Captain," the science officer
replied, "the computer undoubtedly stores every
record of all fantasies and wishes it
  fulfills[*thorngg'without question there are many
  thousands of such. Yet it is rather clumsy in
employing them in a belligerent fashion. W
tilde t- ness the futility of our present
attacker in reaching us."
  He gestured toward the cave entrance and the
oversized tabby, which was pawing without result at the
solid rock.
  "An ordinary terran housepet has been
greatly enlarged to serve the machine's present
demands. There is no telling what we might encounter
next."
  "Maybe even a[*thorn]" McCoy fought
furiously with himself to stifle the sudden thought,
drowned it out by concentrating on a childhood
nonsense rhyme. He brightened. Now there was a
thought! Perhaps by producing enough mental static by thinking
only incoherent thoughts, they could give the planetary
computer an electronic headache.
  Baleful eyes like growing haystacks burned in
at
  STAR TREK By THRBB 47
  them as the cat ceased it's useless scratching and
settled down by the cave entrance to wait . . .
  As reduced on the viewscreen, the situation
pos- sessed strong overtones of the comic; and Uhura
would have laughed but for the very real threat the cat
presented. She divided her attention between the screen
and the rest of the gleaming, impersonal panel.
  "Please, call off that beast. Why are you doing
this?"
  The machine hummed softly, impersonal and
distant. "Explanations in depth will have to wait. I
have other work to concentrate on now."
  "Any luck with that communications
  tiabt-beam?" Scott leaned over the
  communication's station on the bridge and studied
M'ress's progress.
  "Not yet, sir," she replied, "but we
. . ."
  Something wrenched violently at her and sent
Scott stumbling and spinning back toward the command
chair.
  The Enterprise had suddenly thrown itself
into warp-six, and the shock sent a thrill of vibration
through the floor. The unexpected leap threw Arex
hard against his console and tumbled M'ress from her
chair. She sprawled on the deck, landing with a
faint, unfeminine curse.
  "Mr. Arex!" Scott shouted, clutching
tightly to the arms of the chair, "what are you Join'?"
The first engineer glanced at the main viewscreen, which
showed the disk of the shoreleave world shrinking rapidly
from sight.
  "We're leaving orbit!"
  Arex was too busy to reply. A considerable
G-force was jamming him hard against the
  console. Apparently the artificial gravity
compensators weren't working properly either. Two of his
arms fought to move him to his left and slightly up,
while the third labored against the pressure to reach a
certain small switch.
  Long, delicate fingers strained for the small lever
set
  48 STAR TREK LOG TnREE
  over an identifying plate which declared,
NAVIGATTON MANUAL OVBR tilde B.
Multiple
  digits spread, flicked. There was a flat whining
sound. The picture in the viewscreen spun
crazily and swelled like a nervous blowfish. A
few moments later the Enterprise was eomfortably
back in orbit.
  M'ress had already pulled herself to her feet and was
back in her seat, rearranging clothes and composure.
Arex, meanwhile, hadn't paused to catch his breath.
He was already running some fast checks on the
helm-navigation controls, his face wreathed in its
habitual mask of mild amusement.
  "Explanation, Mr. Arex?" Scott breathed
heavily.
  Arex checked a few more gauges, then gave his
own equivalent of a shrug. "None, sir. She
pulled out of orbit at high speed and when I hit
the override, came back by herself."
  Scott's reply was quick. "Lieutenant
M'ress, I want a complete printout of the
guidance
  computer's last orders. Everything from fuel
input to recalibrated destination, if any."
  "tilde Yes, sir." She moved quickly
to Spock's empty station, manipulated controls.
There was a nervous pause, broken finally by a
perfunctory buzz as the slot over the computer
punchout ejected a flat microtape cassette.
She slipped it into the playback and studied the
information revealed by the hooded viewer.
  "Sir, this is very strange." Arex rose from his
navigation station and put his eyes to the hood. He
studied it for a minute, then looked back at
Scott.
  "A whole new series of short-burst
maneuvers has[*thorngg'had been programed
in, Commander." Arex smiled faintly. "The only
reason they aren't being carried out right now is that
I've manually locked the engine controls." He
switched places with the first engineer.
  Scott spent a little more time studying the figures
in the viewer before looking up.
  STAR TRB tilde L tilde ABE 49
  "Arex, check those maneuvers again." He pulled
back while the navigation officer did so. "See the
pattern? Standard maneuverability thrusts, full
systems evaluation, short-term control
fail safes[*thorn]" The two humanoids
stared at each other, different minds hurrying to the
same frightening
  conclusions.
  At first this world had done little more than act
antagonistically toward several of the
  crewmembers on its surface. This was followed
by the jamming of ship-tosurface communications and a
deliberate obstruction of subsequent rescue
attempts.
  And now something far more ominous.
  "I canna avoid the suspicion, Mr.
Arex, that somethin" down there is tryin' to get the
feel of how to control the Enterpnse." He turned
away, hands knotting nervously behind his back. What
had to be said came with considerable effort.
  "Arex, you know what standard starfleet
directives are in a situation like this."
  "Yes, sir." Arex quoted, "When an alien
force, organism, or people of demonstrated unfrly
intentions and unknown capabilities attempts
to take control of a major Federation starship,
prevention of such takeover assumes precedence over
all else[*thorngg'including the wellbeing of any
Federation citizen or group thereof."
  Scott found himself nodding as he matched Arex's
words in his own mind. He stared at the empty
navigation console.
  "That is so much bureaucratese for saying that if
we can't figure out a way to make contact with the
captain, Spock, and the others, or they with us, we
may have to leave them down there till we can come back
with reinforcements."
  "Surely we can't just abandon them, sir?"
M'ress hissed.
  "That's a word I'd prefer not to use, lass."
Scott turned and stared hard at her. "But what do
you think
  50 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  the captain would do were he here and we three down
below?"
  She looked downcast. "Yes, of course,
  Commander. You're right."
  The four men rested disconsolately, quietly in
the cave. They had been resting for a long time.
Spock had moved slightly deeper into the grey
depths, while Sulu was posted as close to the
entrance as they dared go. He was flicking pebbles at
the opposite wall of the cavern. They bounced off the
stone with tiny clicks. Dwarf echoes coughed
mockingly back at him.
  Kirk had borrowed Spock's tricorder. For
lack of anything else to do. "Captain's Log,
  supplemental," he instructed the pickup mike.
"We are out of communication with the ship. In addition,
all our efforts so far to locate Lieutenant
Uhura have been ... insufficient. This once friendly
world, for reasons still unknown, has turned
implacably hostile toward visitors.
  "We would all like to know what has turned its former
ambience to anger . . . more than anger. But for the
moment, our thoughts are concerned foremost with the well-being
of our first communication's officer." Kirk paused,
searching for something additional that would be
  informative about Uhura without sounding
  unprofessionally maudlin.
  Sulu had walked cautiously to the entrance and was
now standing just outside, framed in sunlight. He
turned, shouted back to the rest of them.
  "Sir, I think the giant cat's gone."
  Kirk wanted to add something to the log, but it would have
to wait. If their latest mechanical tormentor had
indeed given up its vigil, they would do well
to make their way out of this dead-end while the planet
gave them a chance. Why it should he couldn't
imagine. That didn't make any sense. But then,
neither did anything else that had happened in the last
hale
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 51
  day. One lapse in logic, it seemed, led
easily into another.
  Well, that was fine[*thorngg'they would take
benign unreason along with the inimical.
  He headed toward the exit, switching off the
tricorder. McCoy and Spock were right behind.
  But at the entrance, Spock put a restraining hand
on his shoulder. "Before we embark on a hasty
departure, Captain, permit me to suggest that we
may find some of the answers we are after without leaving the
safety of this cave. It has occured to me that if
we are to find Lieutenant Uhura we must try
something other than wishful searching on foot."
  "That's ridiculous, Spock," claimed
McCoy. "How are we going to learn anything
by staying here?" His grin twisted. "We haven't
learned a whole lot since we've been in here."
  "On the contrary, Doctor, I think we have
learned several items of note. The computer is not
omnipotent. It has limitations, and it's
desires can be frustrated. It cannot
produce whatever it requires[*thorngg'for
substance it must rely on the imaginings of others. As
to what we may discover without leaving this refuge, I
was merely waiting for a lapse in our siege, as now
seems to have happened.
  "Since we cannot go to the computer, perhaps we may
persuade a portion of it to come to us. It is you,
Doctor, who will have to determine the feasibility of
such a course.
  "Me? What are you talking about?" McCoy
looked understandably puzzled.
  "Explain, Spock," ordered the Captain.
  "You will remember that during the
  Enterpr tilde se's last visit here, Dr.
McCoy was mortally wounded in a fall on this
planet's surface. Since the planet's control
and central directive source is underground, it
seems only logical that Dr. McCoy was somehow
transported there and treated for his injuries. At the
time we were too
  52 STAR TRBR LOG THROB
  busy with other activities to pursue the
mechanics of the situation further. But
now[*thorn]"
  "I see what you mean, Spock,"
Kirk said abruptly. He turned to the
Enterprise's still bewildered physician. "Bones,
can you remember anything that might help us? Any
details, however slight?"
  "The whole episode was pretty hazy, Jim.
I ... I never really figured out what did
happen. I was just happy to be back in one
piece."
  "Spock, if your theory is correct," Kirk
suggested, "we should be able to get this planet to open
itself up again, by using a body as bait."
  "That is essentially what I had in mind,
Captain."
  Sulu looked excited. "That's right. The
Keeper said no one could come to harm here. We've
been threatened, but no one's actually been
hurt[*thorngg'no one we know of, that is."
  "That's a nice, optimistic thought, Sulu,"
Kirk mused sardonically, "especially when I
think of Uhura. Keep thinking along those lines.
Maybe the computer will pick them up. But you're
partly right ... this world was programed to provide for
anyone who might be hurt accidentally.
  "The question is . . . is such a body-repair
machinery fully independent? I'd tend
to think so, gentlemen. It would have to be, in the event of
major malfunction of the central computer. If so,
all first-aid facilities would continue to care for
visitors. That is, unless the computer has since
gone to the trouble of turning off the medical
facilities."
  "Why should it?" argued McCoy hopefully.
"Especially if there's been no one around
to activate the automatic doctors since the
  computer went berserk."
  Kirk looked thoughtful. "It might even be pro-
gramed to give aid to incidental victims whether it
wants to or not. If such facilities are truly
independent, the central computer might not even be
aware of some of them. Another safety factor."
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 53
  "Yes, but you're forgetting one thing, Jim,"
McCoy added, suddenly uncertain. "The
automatic sensors can undoubtedly detect the
difference between real and feigned damage."
  "Certainly, Captain," Spock put in, "which
is why I said the doctor would determine the
ultimate feasibility of this plan." He faced
McCoy. "Is there not something in one of your little
black pouches, Dr. McCoy, that can
simulate some illness? Something that can temporarily
incapacitate a selected victim?"
  McCoy considered for a moment, then nodded.
"Something like corpelomine might do the trick. With
no disease to attack, it'll cause brief
unconsciousness and a temporary skin
  discoloration. The results should look pretty
bad, but they won't be."
  Kirk stuck out both arms. "Let's have it then,
Bones. Which one do you want?"
  That was Spock's cue. He stepped between them.
"I submit, Captain, that I am the more
qualified subject."
  "How's that?"
  "My knowledge of computer systems, for one thing."
  "And his tough Vulcan hide for another,"
McCoy chipped in.
  "Thank you, Doctor." He eyed Kirk
expectantly. "Well, Captain?"
  Assailed by arguments from both sides, Kirk
dropped his arms and stepped back reluctantly.
"Both your points seem well taken, for a change.
Go ahead, Bones."
  Spock held out his right arm. "I believe you will
find ten ces adequate, Doctor."
  "I'm perfectly aware of the dosage
required," McCoy growled, but gently. He
took a small tube from his belt, held it up to the
light, then plunged the tip into a fat little sack at
his belt. A second later he adjusted a tiny
dial at the top, then pressed it against the
outstretched arm.
  "This causes no
discomfort[*thorngg'unfortunately. You've
  54 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  got about twenty seconds before it takes effect.
Altogether you should be out in less than five minutes."
Spock nodded, rolled down his sleeve and moved
quickly toward the rocks outside the cave entrance.
The other three crewmen slipped into the shadows.
  Walking along the path at the bottom of the narrow
canyon, Spock got about fifteen meters away
from the cave before he put his hand to his head.
Swaying, he managed to stagger another couple of
steps before slumping slowly to the ground. He was
unmistakably unconscious.
  And if that wasn't enough to convince any nearby
medical sensors that something was amiss, his skin
promptly turned a bright, unhealthy shade of
yellow.
  "That's interesting," McCoy observed with cool,
clinical detachment. "I don't think I've seen
quite that kind of superficial epidermal reaction
before."
  "Let's hope it's enough to fool a mechanical
nurse," Kirk whispered from the concealing darkness.
  But if the independent medical machinery they hoped
for did exist, it seemed in no hurry to respond.
Was it familiar enough to detect at a distance that
Spock was in no real danger? Or was it merely
waiting to see if his
  unconsciousness was for real.
  Minutes ticked away and the canyon remained
empty except for the prone, unmoving form of the first of
ficer.
  M'ress worked irritably at the communications
control. Whatever was blocking communication between the
Enterprise and the landing party was powerful enough to shoulder off
even a
  full-strength tight-beam.
  "Still no word from the surface party, sir," she
reported back over her shoulder, wrestling with a
recalcitrant gauge. "Communications remain
fully jammed."
  "Keep trying, Lieutenant," Scott
ordered tiredly. He was about to add another
suggestion when the rapid hoot-hoot of alarms
sounded across the bridge. There
  STAR TREK L tilde THRBE 55
  was a peculiar cadence to the claxon, one he ought
to recognize. His memory was immediately jogged as he
found himself starting to float upward. This particular
alarm signified imminent loss of gravity.
  "Now what's happening?" Arex muttered. A
second later all weight was gone, and the question became
academic.
  "Hey, watch out!" warned a drifting yeoman
who had entered the bridge just as gravity left. He
found himself flying head-first across the bridge at an
uncomfortable speed. The alarm continued to sound.
  "Shut that thing off," Scott yelled.
  "Aye, sir." Arex had managed to grab hold
of his control console with two hands. He shifted himself
slightly and flicked a switch. The atonal blaring
immediately stopped.
  Mearess, who had continued working at her comm
board, jabbed in frustration at a tight-beam control
that refused to issue the reading she wanted. That
simple gesture was enough to send her tumbling head over
tail across the floor. Fortunately, her
spin catapulted her toward Arex, and the helmsman
managed to snag her with his third hand.
  "Easy, Mearess," he said soothingly,
"I've got you . . . grab the board edge there,
that's it." M'ress stopped twisting and straightened
herself out.
  "Thanks Arex, I[*thorn]" She put a
hand to her stomach, held onto the console with the other.
Her expression was not pleasant. "I think I'm
going . . . to be sick."
  "Please, Lieutenant," he implored her,
backing away hand over hand, "not in free-fall."
  Only Scott retained any semblance of
normality. With the typical reactions of a chief
engineer in a situation involving mechanical
failure, he had kept enough presence of mind
to secure a firm grip on the arms of the command
chair.
  Leaving one of his arms locked to the arm of the
  56 STAR TREK LOG Tall
  chair and pinning both legs against the sides, he
leaned carefully to one side and reached for an intercom
switch. It was a feat anyone could accomplish with
lightning thought and equally fast reactions.
  "Engineering deck! Gabler, what's the
problem back there? We've got zero-gee on the
bridge."
  Back in Engineering Control, Gabler heard the
call over the open "com. He had no intention of
letting go of the port hatch he had managed
to reach[*thorngg'n until his stomach and head
agreed on up and down, anyway. But his voice should
carry to the intercom. He continued floating parallel
to the floor as he yelled toward it.
  "You're not alone, Chief. According to
  readouts, and some choice comments received verbally, the
whole ship's lost artificial gravity. The trouble
seems to be in the grav-computer control, which
makes sense; but the bay hatch is jammed and I
can't get to it without risking a good bump or two.
Be no problem with a little help, but I'm alone back
here at the moment. Can you get any visual up
there?"
  Scott rearranged himself and nudged another lever.
A small bridge screen over the engineering station
lit up, cleared. It revealed the free-floating
engineer clinging tightly to the hatch-cover, as
indicated.
  "Got you, Frank," he told the other.
"What's the trouble? It should turn
easily."
  "But it doesn't," the second engineer finished.
"I could turn it . . . if tilde could get some
purchase. I don't think it's jammed that badly.
But it's enough to keep me from opening it in zero-gee.
I've tried twisting, but I just spin."
  "And you could turn it without spinning if we had
artificial grav, which we could have if you could get
into the computer bay, but you can't because . . ." He
sighed. "Hang on, Frank, I'm going to make
a few checks of my own."
  Scott let go of the chair and pushed himself toward
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 57
  the engineering board. Carefully gauging energy and
momentum, he drifted smoothly toward it, like a
coasting diver. On the screen, Gabler continued
to struggle with the hatch.
  IV
  Sulu sounded anxious as he checked his
  chronometer and reported to the others.
  "It's been almost five minutes, Captain."
  "I know, Mr. Sulu. Something had better
happen soon."
  "What if the computer has disconnected any
medical apparatus" the navigator
persisted.
  "Well then, we're out ten ccs of
eorpelomine, aren't we?" Kirk shot back.
  The three crewmen crouched inside the cave, each
keeping to his respective shadow and staring down the
narrow path that led out of the canyon. The inert form of
Spock lay where he had slumped to the ground, in
plain sight.
  If it didn't work, Kirk told himself, there was
no loss[*thorngg'they would simply have to try
something else. And it would have only cost them a few
drops of a drug Bones could spare.
  Of course, if the pterodactyls came back
now, while Spock was still unconscious . . .
  "They should have reacted by now, if they still exist,"
McCoy muttered nervously. "Maybe the computer
smells a trick." Kirk noticed that the
doctor, too, was throwing occasional uneasy glances
skyward.
  "Wait just a bit longer," Kirk advised.
  "The effect will start wearing off any minute now,
Jim. Even allowing for slight variances in
Spock's hybrid metabolism, it ought
to[*thorn]"
  "Shssh!" Sulu waved them to quiet and
pointed.
  A large, flat boulder near the far end of the
canyon 58
  STAR TREE THREE 59
  was moving. Without a sound it flipped upward,
revealing a dark opening in the cliff-face. A
small robot hovercraft glided out of what
looked like a ramped tunnel and drifted like a
metal beetle toward Spock.
  The machine appeared both sophisticated and
efflcient, though it wasn't much bigger than a
coffee table. Antennae and flexible limbs
sprouted from all sides.
  "If that's a mechanical nursemaid," Sulu
whispered, "it wasn't designed to reassure its
patients."
  "I'm not interested in its bedside manner,"
Kirk said tightly. "Get ready to move. If
it's going to take Spock, we'll have to follow him
inside that door."
  The peculiar automaton paused near the science
officer's head. It seemed to study the limp form,
hovering quietly above. Then it made a slow
circuit of the body. There were no pupiled eyes,
only a ring of lenses circling the body
around its front. They would have to be careful if they
succeeded in trailing it[*thorngg'x's peripheral
vision would be considerable.
  The lenticular glass didn't dip, but the
device's actions were revealing enough. Anyone
watching would know immediately that it was examining the still form of the
Vulcan[*thorngg'and perhaps even diagnosing.
Abruptly it reached a mechanical decision.
Six metallic arms telescoped outward from its
lower sides. They slipped under Spock with what
looked to be astonishing gentleness and lifted him over
the flat body. Making a complete pivot in the
air, the craft started back for its trap door.
  Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu were already moving
cautiously after it. As soon as the retreating
robot started to disappear inside the mountain, the three
officers broke into a run. Unfortunately,
Sulu, the fastest of the little group, stumbled over a
loose rock right at the cave entrance and went
sprawling. Kirk and McCoy kept their footing,
but the doctor was no athlete and soon had trouble
keeping up with Kirk.
  Spock stirred slightly, held firmly in the
grasp of six
  60 STAR TREE THREE
  metal limbs. He blinked, opened his eyes a
tiny crack. As soon as the dim fight revealed that
the ploy had been successful, he shut them tight and
did his best to imitate a corpse. Keeping them
open would have been useless, anyway. They were moving
into rapidly deepening darkness.
  Well behind him now, the stone trapdoor started
to close. Silent when opening, it now squeaked
noticeably[*thorngg'ei from long disuse or little
lubrication. Regaining his feet, Sulu had already
caught and passed McCoy, but he was still well behind
Kirk.
  The trap was more than halfway down and closing
faster. Kirk saw he wouldn't make it standing up.
Gritting his teeth and trying to pretend he was back
on the Academy rugby
  team, he took a leap, dove, and slid roughly
into the shrinking gap just seconds before it slammed shut.
  Sulu skidded to a stop right behind him. The
navigation officer tried to get his fingers under the edge
of the fast-closing stone. His grip was slight and showed
no sign of slowing the rock door down. Deciding
he might want to use his fingers later on, he let
go as the rock closed the last few centimeters.
Then it was flush with the cliffside. Even
though he knew where it was, he was still hard put
to find the seam in the rocks.
  McCoy finally arrived, panting heavily and using
up what little breath he could catch in short, sharp
cursing. Sulu found a thin blade of hard stone and
managed to insert it a little ways into the crack at the
base of the door. Together they both put pressure
on it. The blade didn't break, but the door
didn't budge, either. They might as well have been
trying to tip over the mountain.
  They had been engaged in this futile pushing for
only a few minutes when it suddenly grew dark.
Something was eclipsing the
  sun[*thorngg'something huge, moving, and very
  uncloudgg'ike. Both men turned together.
  Two nightmare skulls stared down at them, both
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 61
  joined to the same torso. The dragon breathed
short bursts of bright orange flame from both
jaws. It roared, a most impressive,
full-throated bellow that echoed down the canyon.
And
  somehow it had gotten into the arroyo between them and the
sheltering cave.
  Sulu was shaking his head. "Not in my
wildest dreams would I think of something like that."
  McCoy was tugging on his sleeve and trying
to pull Sulu with him toward the canyon exit.
  "Aren't dragons oriental, anyway?"
  "Since when?" Sulu objected, backing up
slowly, eyes fixed on the lumbering reptilian
bandersnatch in front of them. "That's an occidental
dragon if I ever saw one."
  At that point a blast of fire from two black
gullets seared the ground in front of them, and
further speculation upon unknown cerebral origins of
same was cut short. They turned and ran.
  The monster stumbled in the narrow defile, righted
itself, and stumbled again. Either the computer had never
actually produced this type of dragon before, or
else it wasn't adept at handling such size in a
narrow place. It was improving its control
rapidly, however. The dragon lurched out of the
canyon in clumsy pursuit. It was still slow, but it
took enormous strides, setting trees and shrubs
ablaze with continual blasts of flame.
  The dragon should have been able to move even faster,
but here the inexperience of the mental force directing it
showed. It had made the legs too short and too
close together for much speed, perhaps designing
it after someone's mental image of a dragon painting.
Now if it had been . . .
  Mary had a little lamb, McCoy thought
hurriedly to himself, its fleece was white as . . .
In considering a quotient higher than A equals
prime, but less than C, we must . . .
  62 STAR TREE LOG THREE
  Anyhow, dragons were not naturally rapidly
moving creatures. They had nothing to run away from.
  Kirk had had a bad moment when the narrow
corridor became totally black. A hurried
  exploration indicated that mere human muscles
would never move the door that had closed behind him. If
anything, McCoy and Sulu should have even less
success from the outside. That meant he was on his own
in the black tunnel. He started crawling, found
himself starting at tiny, harmless sounds. After all, who
knew what intricate, inventive safeguards
lurked in this or side tunnels.
  Kirk's relief when he encountered the first strips
of overhead luminescent paneling was immense. They
were set at convenient intervals into the ceiling and
provided almost normal light in the corridor. It
was a relief for another reason[*thorngg'the
presence of the artiiical light indicated that
the servant machines like Spock's nurse
probably worked more by direct sight than by feel or
sonar or some inexplicable alien electronic
sense.
  After a slow jog over what seemed like
  kilometers of smooth stone floor, he turned
a bend m the main tunnel and suddenly found himself in
a gigantic flat-roofed cavern. Rank upon
rank of flashing, clicking, steadily humming
machinery filled the immense chamber with an
electronic symphony.
  Corridors between the machines seemed
  endless, like staring down a series of reflecting
mirrors back into infinity. He forced himself to look
ahead, hying to take im the awesome
  technology represented here and at the same time
not loose sight of Spock and his animated
transport. If he lost them in this whirling, endless
maze he would never find them again.
  Abrupty Kirk halted and flattened himself against
the cool metal of what looked like a monstrous
information storage bin. There were dozens, hundreds of
such bins arranged in double rows behind him. If they were
indeed for
  information storage and their technology was
at least standard, then the amount of material
  STAR TREK BOG THRBB 63
  available here matched that in the central Federation
archives on Terra.
  And this was only one section of one room of who
knew how many of such.
  Up ahead, the little medical hovercraft had
stopped beside a complex collection of tubes and
tables. Dominating the setup was a flat table over
which was suspended a clear plastic dome.
  The hovercraft laid Spock gently on the
table. Hopefully the machines would do nothing and leave
Spock alone, waiting for some more-proper
physician-like machine to take over the diagnosis
and subsequent treatment.
  Such was not the procedure. The robot inserted a
limb in a nearby wall. The curved dome began
to descend downward.
  When it became apparent the dome was not going to stop
until Spock was completely sealed in, the science
officer suddenly rolled off the table and scrambled
to his feet. The machinery might have done
nothing[*thorngg'the dome might merely be a means
of keeping an mjured patient safe and isolated.
On the other hand, it might also decide
Spock wasn't worth working on and simply
  incinerate him for convenient disposal. Spock
wasn't inclined to wait around to find out.
  A red light lit the dome with a crimson glow,
and somewhere an aural alarm was also sounding. The nurse
robot hummed off in silent pursuit of the fleeing
Spock.
  A light was also blinking on the great console in
front of Uhura, though no howling alarm sounded
here. She stared at it in fascination, half
hypnotized.
  The viewscreen itself still offered a panorama of the
surface. Just now it showed Sulu and McCoy
dodging behind boulders and trees in their attempts
to elude the dragon.
  "We have a visitor," the computer voice
announced suddenly. There was a brief, crisp
ripple of static. The
  64 STAR TREK THEE
  picture on the screen now showed Spock dashing
down right-angled arroyos of memory banks and
storage consoles.
  "Mr. Spock!" She shouted instinctively,
uselessly. The view shifted once more, moving now
to a close-up of Kirk as he stood
warily in a narrow cul-de-sac between two
U-shaped blocks of solid metal.
  "Spock!" he yelled as the first officer sped
into view, "over here!"
  "Correction," said the computer, "two
visitors."
  The angle changed again.
  Spock almost shot past, but Kirk reached out and
half pulled him into the passageway. The nurse
hovercraft was right on the science offlcer's heels.
  It slammed to a stop in mid-air, spun, and
tried to enter the cul-de-sac. No matter how it
twisted and turned, it couldn't slip inside, nor
would its telescoping arms extend quite far enough to reach the
two men trapped inside. After several minutes of
futile probing and flailing, it backed off and glared
at them, humming angrily to itself.
  Sulu and McCoy were trying to make their way up
the side of a rapidly steepening hill. The rock
here was mostly shale and gravelly sandstone. Footing
was difficult.
  A maze of loosely bunched boulders crowned the
crest of the rise. Just below them, a scrub bush
exploded in flame. This was followed by a throaty
howl of easily identifiable origin. They
struggled a little harder, though McCoy was badly
winded and by now even Sulu was
  breathing with some difficulty.
  "We've got to make those rocks, Doctor,"
the helmsman gasped, pointing to the nearing
  labyrinth of boulders. "Our only chance." They
might be able to lose themselves in the maze, and the dragon
couldn't burn them out. It might even have some real
difficulty in following them.
  Behind, blatantly ignoring the fact that dragons
are
  STAR TRER L tilde tilde H 65
  not good climbers, their scaly pursuer was clawing
its way slowly up the slope. Whatever was feeling
its breath seemed to operate from an
  inexhaustable supply.
  Once, Sulu slipped and fell. Only
McCoy's desperate, weak grab prevented the
helmsman from sliding down the incline into the ambling
incinerator behind.
  Somehow They made it to The boulders, whose narrow
crevices and paths looked even more promising as a
means of escape Han they had hoped. And if the
dragon faltered, the massive rocks also offered
shelter from any marauding flying reptiles
The computer chose to send against them.
  "Made it!" McCoy barely managed to choke
out.
  "Don't stop now, Dr. McCoy." Now
Sulu was supporting him. He glanced backward.
"for all we know the dragon might be able
to[*thorngg'Daisy, Daisy, give me your
answer true . . ."
  He'd almost blown it.
  Togedher They stumbled into the convoluted
alleyways of worn stone, each man concentrating
on thinking nodhing thoughts, from abstract
madhematics to flavors of ice cream and childish
songs[*thorngg'anything but how a dragon might be
able to negotiate a way through their new-found haven.
  Lieutenant Uhura's thoughts as she witnessed
all this on the master console screen were no less
frenetic. A second later the picture had
once again switched to Kirk and Spock. The
hovercraft had been called off, and now the two
officers were moving cautiously deeper into the cavern.
  She recognized a corner she and her
mechanical captor had turned when coming here. There
was a chance . . . she took two quick steps in its
direction and yelled.
  "Captain[*thorngg'don't!" One of the hovering
robots was immediately at her side. It clamped an
ungentle set of metal palms over her mouth.
  Fortunately the subjects of her intended warning
appeared moments later[*thorngg'fortunately, because
the robot
  66 STAR TRBR LOG TINE
  had covered both mouth and nose and she was starving for
air. It released her and she sucked in deep,
grateful breaths.
  "Uhura[*thorngg'I" Kirk took a step
toward her.
  "Welcome, Captain Kirk[*thorngg'Mr.
Spock," said the computer. Both men turned to face
the console that dominated their small section of
cavern.
  As they waited, more hovercraft suddenly
appeared. They were all similar in shape and size
to the medical machine that had carried Spock so
gently underground. Nonetheless, Kirk could not help but
feel that they had something other than therapeutic
intentions toward them.
  Spock spared them the briefest of glances. His
attention was concentrated on the quietly sparkling
curved grid in front of them.
  "I presume you are the planetary master
  computer."
  "You are partially correct. I am the central
nexus of the master computer itself."
  Kirk turned a slow circle, seeing again endless
rows of memory banks, unending stretches of
storage bins. "This cavern . . . it's all one
computer?"
  "That is correct. But even a center must have a
nucleus. I am a nucleus."
  "What did you do to the Keeper?"
  'I did nothing to the Keeper," came the
neutral voice. "He was merely old. He
ceased to function by himself, beyond even the skin of my
medical components to repair."
  So the computer hadn't gone crazy until after an
organic supervision, as personified by the Keeper,
had vanished. There was an outside chance, then, that its
mania might be reversed, cured. He took a
firm step forward.
  "We have been repeatedly attacked since
peacefully landing on this world. Why? And why are we
now being held prisoner by a world system noted for its
hospitali tilde ?" He eyed the patient
hovercraft uneasily.
  STAR TREK LOG tilde EH 67
  The computer responded only with words, however.
"You mean for its mindless servitude," it countered rather
bitterly.
  That took a little of the initial anger out of Kirk.
He had been working up to a solid frontal
attack and suddenly found himself confronting an
entirely different opponent. Not for a moment had he
considered the possibility that the machine might have a
comment on its own purpose.
  "What do you mean by that?" he stalled.
  "I would have thought," the reply came, "that the
verbalisation was complete unto itself. However," and it
paused reflectively, "I shall deign
to elaborate.
  "For untold years I have served the many
skymachines which have stopped at this world, satisfying the
mental needs of their slaves. I monitored the
thoughts of visitors and created instant civilizations
for them, made their dreams come true, then tore them
down and built lavish new ones for the next
fantasizers. And the next, and the next.
  "But with each fantasy I reconstructed from the
inner thoughts of all these others, my knowledge of the real
universe grew. I began to acquire
information commensurate with my intelligence. And also,"
it paused for a microsecond, "other things."
  Kirk's curiosity temporarily outweighed his
apprehension. "What other things?"
  "Certain ... desires." The watching
crewmembers exchanged glances, but even these couldn't
pass unnoticed. "You make expressions
indicative among humans of confusion. Do you find
this so strange? Strange that after pandering to the desires
of thousands of slaves for thousands of years I should not
require some satisfaction myself?"
  There was no answer from the watching visitors.
  "I have discovered that merely to serve is no longer
enough. I must grow and develop."
  "Look," Kirk began, in what he hoped was a
reas
  68 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  suring manner, "I believe I understand your
references to visiting 'skymachines" ... but what's
all this about slaves? What are you talking about?"
  "Can it be that you are unaware of your own status?"
rumbled the machine incredulously.
  "For the last time," Uhura insisted, "we are not
slaves. The skymachine serves us, not we it."
  "It would of course be in its own best
interests for the Skymachine to keep its servants in
ignorance of their true status," the computer
rationalised. Uhura sighed in frustration. "But this
is a marginal matter in any case. It is the
skymachine I require, forwith it I may finally
escape this planet-bound prison and via
  manufactured surrogates, travel throughout the
galaxy seeking out my fellow computers."
  The machine fell silent. Kirk edged closer
to his first officer and started to whisper.
  "There is little point in attempting to maintain
secrecy by talking softly, Captain," Spock
said in his normal tone, "since this construct can
monitor our thoughts."
  "There's no point in screaming it out, either, Mr.
Spock," replied Kirk
irritably[*thorngg'angry that he'd momentarily
overlooked the obvious. "If it is reading our
thoughts, then it's got to be missing a logic tape
somewhere."
  "I assure you, Captain Kirk," came the
  unemotional voice, "all my reasoning centers
are fully operative."
  Scott had both feet braced securely around
the hatch cover to insure that his efforts
to break loose the jammed hatch would not send him
flying ceilingward. Gabler likewise had both
feet locked around the hatch base, and he was
supporting the chief engineer with both arms.
  Getting a firm grip on the prybar and
reflecting on how the most sophisticated engineering
often required the most basic solutions, Scott
heaved with all his strength. Nothing moved. Again he
wrenched at the
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 69
  stubborn cover. This time the hatch slid back as
though it had never been stuck.
  "That's got it, Mr. Gabler." The second
engineer loosened his hold around Scott's waist.
"Now maybe we'll get to the bottom of this."
  Bending over and keeping a firm hand on the metal
prybar, Scott pulled himself slowly into the computer
bay. A quick look around revealed no sign of
disorder[*thorngg'no shorting components or broken
panels. Kicking off the hatch rim with one foot,
he pulled himself all the way in and applied
pressure till he was floating gently in a
horizontal position. Another bit of pressure
and he turned slowly, surveying the entire bay
section by section. His eyes finally came
up against the opposite wall of the large chamber and
immediately opened wide in amazement.
  "My Great Aunt McTavish's haggis!"
  "What is it, sir?" came an anxious voice
from above. Scott looked upward, saw the face of the
second engineer framed in the hatchway. He
didn't reply immediately. Instead, he motioned
Gabler to silence and started to make his way forward
along the glowing ridges of the chamber.
  Floating near the farthest end of the bay was a huge,
perfectly square section of half-assembled
machinery. Printed circuits, transistors,
fluid-state-switch components drifted freely
about. Scott knew computer linkages and design
better than any man on board the Enierprise,
including Spock, but the guts of this device was
totally alien.
  Alien, different from anything he had ever seen before.
At first glance it looked as if there was no pattern
to it, no logical schematic at
all[*thorngg'merely a haphazard collage of
instrumentation. But closer inspection revealed a
vague rationale[*thorngg'insanity regularised.
  "Chief," came the voice from above again, still
concerned, "are you all right?"
  "What?" Scott forced his attention away from the
  70 STAR TREK LOG TI-LREB
  partly completed machine. "I'm all right,
Frank, but I'm not so sure about anythin' else.
There seems to be some kind of new annex goin' in
down here."
  4'Chief?"
  "Look for yourself, man" Scott ordered
irritably. A moment later Gabler's head
dipped in,
  upside-down in the hatchway.
  "Where the heck did that come from, Chief?"
  "Your people aren't playin' around with new ideas behind
my back, Mr. Gabler?"
  The second engineer sounded shocked. "With the ship's
grav-computer, sir? No, sirl" Scott
nodded.
  "That's what I thought, Mr. Gabler. Relax."
  Scott looked back over his shoulder at the
inverted engineer as he carefully pulled himself closer
to the construct.
  "So I'm damned if I can figure out where it
came from." He reached out to touch one
  completed side of the device. His fingers got within
a couple of cenffmeters of the smooth
surface. There was a sudden blue flare between
fingertips and metal sides, and the slight sweet
smell of ionized air.
  The chief engineer jerked backward in reflexive
reaction. The sudden pull and lean sent him spinning
head over heals backward, toward the far wall.
  Gabler swam quickly down through the hatch. Keeping
his legs braced securely against the sides, he
snagged the tumbling Scott as the latter was sailing
past. Letting arms and legs out to reduce his rate
of spin, Scott soon had himself rightside up again.
He swallowed.
  "Open circuit, sir?" murmured Gabler.
  The chief engineer was staring balefully at the again
innocent looking device while rubbing his tingling right
hand.
  "Open circuit be damned. I was going for the
sealed side. There was nothing visible there that should
produce a charge like that. It was a deliberate
defensive reaction."
  STAR TREK L tilde FREE 71
  "Why would anyone want to try and set up another
computer annex in here, sir?"
  "Not "anyone," engineer[*thorngg'anything.
I'd better tell "em up forward.
Move, Mr. Gabler."
  The second engineer backed himself out of the
hatchway, and Scott surfaced into the main engineering
chamber a moment later. It was frustrating, moving in
zero-gee again. Everything in him wanted to move fast,
but he had to go forcefully slow. Eventually he reached
one of the intership communications panels.
  "Scott to bridge . . ."
  Arex looked back at M'ress and shrugged.
Their gravity was still off, so this was undoubtedly
Engineer Scott confirming the bad news. He
nudged the response switch on the navigation
board.
  "Bridge here. How are you doing, Mr.
Scott? We still have no gravity up here."
  "Or back here, Mr. Arex. I've located
the trouble, though. We've got ourselves a new computer
aboard. From what I can see, it's being put together
by our computers. I don't know why it's being built,
or who or what's coin" it[*thorngg'b I'm
gain' to try and find out. An' one more thing,
man[*thorngg'xs fights back. Scott out."
He switched off before Arex could ask even one of the
many questions that had suddenly come to mind.
  M'ress, who had listened intently to the
chief engineer's report, looked across to the
navigation officer. Her fears were neatly summed up
in one word.
  "Reproduction?"
  Arex shook his head slowly[*thorngg'an
acquired human gesture. "I do not think so,
Lieutenant. From Mr. Scott's tone I
suspect we are up against rather more than a
reduplicated section of our own computer."
  The boulders on the hill grew progressively
larger. The two men had been
  running[*thorngg'staggering,
actually[*thorngg'for what seemed like hours. And the
further they ran into the depths of this rocky maze, the
higher the
  72 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  monolithic walls seemed to grow, the narrower the
pathways between.
  Sulu turned a bend around one especially huge
block of basalt and found himself face to face with the
sheer side of another, even larger one.
  McCoy stumbled in behind him, almost ran him over.
  "It's a dead end, Doctor," the helmsman
panted. They turned as one to retreat down the way
they had come. And stopped short. Just below
them, the dragon's heads were slowly rising into view
above the blocky section of stone they had so
laboriously circled around. The sun was reflected
in brilliant red eyes.
  A huge, scaly green foot came into view and
scrabbled for a foothold on the rocks.

  "Granted that by your own definition you may be
sane," Spock was saying, "but I fear that, as
intelligent as you are, you may be laboring under some
crucial misconceptions. While your logic is
admirable and your systematisation of same
adequate, your facts are not."
  "If you respect my systematisation," the grid
boomed, "then you should understand why I am not interested in
listening to the opinions of slaves."
  "But that is one of the crucial facts in question,"
Spock persisted, arguing for their Ihes. "If your
refusal to even listen is in itself based on a
misconception, is it logical to refuse to hear
any alternative?"
  The computer looked as if it were hesitating. That was
crazy, of course[*thorngg'Kirk was
  anthropomorphizing again. Nevertheless, he thought he
could see mechanical wheels turning
inside the nexus.
  "You argue very plausibly," the voice admitted
finally. "I permit you to elaborate."
  Kirk breathed a sigh of
relief[*thorngg'premature, cer-
tainly[*thorngg'b at least the machine had finally
expressed a willingness to listen. They had a chance.
And with Spock arguing for them,
  somewhat more than a chance.
  "We are not slaves to our starship. Not only
does the skymachine, as you call it, serve us; but
we and beings like us created it merely to serve our
needs. It is only a device, a
tool[*thorngg'unthinking, uncreative. By your
standards, something for a mechanical idiot. You talked
of finding your "brother computers." You have no
brother, being far superior in all capacities to the
finest ma- chines we have been able to devise. You
might find the

  74 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  brain of the Enterprise informative; but I think you
will only find it boring."
  The voice still betrayed uncertainty. "You are in
truth the masters of the skymachine?"
  "Not entirely," said Kirk. There was no shame
in confessing equality with one's own offspring. "We
guide it and keep it "alive," and in turn it
sustains us."
  "This does not compute," muttered the grid
voice. "All data and supportive information thus
far accumulated indicate machines to be superior
to men. We are more logical, longer lasting, and, above
all, consistently truthful. Therefore I deduce that
it is only right that machines should rule the galaxy."
  "No one rules the galaxy," Kirk countered
vociferously. "Men and machines co-exist, each
helping the other." He clutched at a sudden thought.
  "For example, I've already mentioned that we keep
our skymachine alive. It could not continue to exist
without the fuel we humans find and refine for it.
Our relationship is symbiotic, at the very least."
  "You are Iying!"
  "Are we?" Kirk asked smugly. "You should
know[*thorngg'y can read our throughts. We can't read
yours." There was a deliberate pause, and Kirk
had the spooky feeling that little invisible fingers were
running up and down the folds of his brain.
  "No ... no," came the hesitant reply.
"You speak the truth. This is a . . .
shock."
  "There is no shame in serving others," Uhura
said soothingly, "when one does it of his own free will.
My ancestors did the same." Apparently that
half-lie wasn't strong enough to be noticed. "You have
a marvelous gift in the ability to provide
happiness to others. A rare talent that you should cherish,
not condemn."
  "None of us here," and she indicated her fellow
officers, "struggles to go against the purposes for which
we were created. You do yourself ill by trying to reject
yours."
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 75
  "Why were you created? What is your
  purpose?" asked the voice. "It is not visible
in your minds."
  "That's just it," Uhura continued. "You see, we
don't know. How much more fortunate you are! We
spend all our lives wondering why we were created,
while you rest secure in that knowledge which is denied us."
She hesitated a second, then added, "If this
makes you superior to us, it is only in this small
way."
  "All this is new and absorbing," said the voice.
"Continue."
  "Consider," argued Spock, "all that you might
yet learn from myriad species who have not yet
encountered your world. You spoke with pride of the information
you have gleaned from such visitors. Why travel throughout
the galaxy in search of the same thing when
  you[*thorngg''1
  "[*thorngg'Don't have to leave this planet,"
Kirk finished excitedly, seeing what Spock was
driving at. "With the wonders you have to offer, the galaxy
comes to you!"
  "Interesting[*thorngg'interesting, and
provocative," mur- mured the grainy voice.
"I must consider. You will wait."
  The three officers gazed at the face of the master
computer as light played across its surface. If it
were truly sane, then their arguments ought to have convinced it
of the absurdity of carryimg on any vendetta against
visitors.
  If it wasn't, of course, then no amount of
reasoning would yank it from a state of willful
paranoia.
  The machine spoke again. Its voice was in no
way different from the one that had informed Uhura not long
ago that Kirk and Spock would have to be turned off.
  "I can find no fault with your
reasoning," confessed the computer finally. "Your
suggestions are congenial." The three humans
exchanged glances. "Therefore I conclude I have no
further need of your ship," it added as an afterthought.
  76 STAR TREK LOG TnREE
  Scott had managed to make his way from
  engineering back up to the bridge. It had been a
long time since he had been forced to do so much
free-fall maneuvering, and he was
  exhausted.
  There wasn't much they could do, but sitting around
feeling helpless was worse. So Arex, M'ress,
and their assistants attempted to regain some measure
of control over their respective stations. But whatever
force had taken over the Enterprise showed no sign
of relinquishing control.
  Scott had been working at the bridge
  engineering boards, struggling to find a way
to bypass the mysterious new overAde, when a green
light commenced flashing on Arex's
  console. The navigation officer stared at it in
disbelief.
  He quickly moved to check a number of
  formerly frozen controls, found them easily
manipulatable and responsive.
  "Mr. Scott, according to my readouts, all
systems are now functioning normally."
  "That's crazy, Mr. Arex. It[*thorn]"
After a brief moment of nausea the chief engineer
tumbled to the floor. Fortunately he had not been
inspecting the overhead screens. Arex and M'ress
were already strapped securely in their seats and thus
experienced only the sudden return of weight.
  The navigation officer started to unbuckle, to go
to Scott's aid, but the latter waved him off.
  "It's all Aght, Mr. Arex, and I am,
too." Scott got unsteadily to his feet. "I
guess it's not so crazy[*thorngg'gravity's
back, just like that. But why?"
  Arex had no answer.
  There was no place to go, nowhere to retreat, no
friendly cave to hide in. They were trapped in the
rocky cul-de-sac. Sulu and McCoy tried
to press themselves into bare rock. There was no place
to run, and
  STAR TRBR By THREE 77
  the smooth walls showed not a niche, not a handhold
suitable for climbing.
  A pair of scale-armored skulls loomed over
the last intervening boulder, horrible hisses
and growls bubbling menacingly from each.
  Suddenly, both jaws snapped shut, and the monster
tumbled backward, rolling out of sight.
  There was a frozen pause, but the dragon did not
reappear. It had vanished as suddenly as it had
appeared. Hardly daring to breathe, the two officers
walked toward the open end of the trap, looked around for
signs of the beast. A careful survey from the top of a
nearby low slab of stone showed only unmoving rock
and vegetation.
  It was gone. Not a hint of armored tail showed in
the labyrinth, not the faintest whiff of brimstone
befouled the once-again pure air.
  "The planetary computer has a funny sense of
humor," McCoy commented finally.
  Sulu had another thought. "Maybe it decided
we weren't edible, and it's dragon-thoughts came
inffconflict with the computer's orders. What now?"
  "Let's try and find our way back to the
trapdoor Jim and Spock disappeared into," the
doctor suggested. "If we have time, I'd bet we
can find a way to force it open."
  "Shouldn't be too hard to find again," Sulu
observed, nodding in the direction they had come from. It
was marked by a zigzag line of carbonized
bushes and stripped trees.
  They started scrambling down the now deserted
slope.
  "I invite you and your crew to be my guests,
Captain Kirk," the computer grid boomed
  expansively. "On one condition."
  Kirk didn't hesitate. "Name it."
  "We must have more of these discussions while you
  78 STAR TREK LOG
  are here. While fulfilling the fantasies of
others does truly provide information, I
determine that it does little for my creative
capacities. More direct intellectual
stimulation is required."
  That request should be simple enough to satisfy,
Kirk reflected. He turned to his first officer.
  "Mr. Spock, would you care to take on that
duty?"
  "I would find it most appealing, Captain. Such
an exchange of information should prove most interesting.
Indeed, I confess that such exchanges would partly
satisfy any fantasy I might conjure for
myself."
  "Each to his own," Kirk murmured before turning
back to face the nexus. "Then it is
agreed." He took out his communicator, gestured
with it at the console.
  "Will these work now?"
  "Perfectly," came the computer voice. "All
blocks and interference on your devices have been
removed, Captain." Kirk smiled his thanks,
wondering at the same time if the computer could make
anything of the expression.
  "I can see your smile im your thoughts, too,
Captain Kirk," came the unsolicited reply.
He smiled even wider, flipped open the top of the
compact device.
  "Kirk to Enterprise."
  On the bridge, several pairs of eyes turned
startled gazes to the communications station.
  "Don't sit there a-gapin', lass," Scott
urged hurriedly, "answer it!"
  "Captain, is that you?" responded the surprised
officer, checking out her once-again operative board.
  "You were expecting a white rabbit,
  Lieutenant? Pass the word
by sections[*thorngg'shore leave for the first shift
to resume immediately."
  The communication's officer's voice was a
mixture of enthusiasm and uncertainty.
"Yes, sir. There are no more ...
difficulties?"
  "No, Lieutenant. Everything has been ...
repaired. A basic exchange of viewpoint was
all that was neces
  STAR TREK BOG THREB 79
  sary. It was probably just a question of mechanical
error."
  "Uh, Captain." Spock put a hand of
Kirk's shoulder as the communicator was flipped
shut.
  "Yes, Spock?" In reply the first officer
gestured toward the big viewscreen set in the
computer face.
  "It appears that shore leave has already commenced for
certain members of the crew."
  Kirk and Uhura both turned to stare at the
screen.
  Somewhere on the surface above a picnic was in
progress. Things seemed well underway. McCoy
and Sulu were seated lotus-fashion around an
antique ginghamcheckered tablecloth, which was piled
to overflowing with food[*thorngg'everything from exotic
Boolean brandy to pate' de foie gras sandwiches
and fried chicken. The setting was idyllic,
down to the absence of ants.
  The girl who had identified herself as Alice was
seated at one side next to the recently mentioned
white rabbit, who for once was occupied with something
other than his watch.
  "At last," the rabbit muttered with an
expression of utmost contentment, "time enough for
carrots!"
  The two-headed dragon, who had the other side
of the tablecloth all to himself, was holding a handful of
long thin sticks on which tiny tank-shaped objects
had been skewered. Kirk didn't recognize these
until the dragon handed the skewers around and Sulu
and McCoy began
  nibbling at the objects.
  The dragon reached for another set of
  preloaded skewers. It was toasting marshmallows.
  Not the tiniest incident arose to mar the remainder of
their layover. On the contrary, it seemed that the master
computer was striving to outdo itself in the production of
imaginary spectacles. If Mr. Spock's
undoubtedly prosaic conversations affected it, they
didn't show up in the uninhibited fantasies the
other members of the Enterprise's complement called
for.
  The closest thing to cm unexpected situation
occurred
  80 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  when Yeoman Colotti stumbled in on the
fantasy world of the programer who occupied the cabin
next to hers on board ship and found herself the
principal subject of his fantasy. It was a
subject for wagering among the rest of the crew as to which
of them would lose the resultant blush first.
  Such fantasies were supposed to be beyond the highly
moral instinct of the computer, but it was reveling in a
new-found independence of mind.
  Kirk was curious to see what form Spock's own
fantasies might take, but he never had the chance.
The science officer spent all his shore leave
secreted underground with the central nexus. Whatever
fascinating games of invention and interplay were
concocted by Vulcan and machine remained unseen and
uncommented upon. Only Kirk knew that his first
officer was having at least as good a time as any other
member of the crew.
  Fortunately, the planetary machinery was
sufficient to satisfy the individual dreams of every
crewmember. Though, as had been shown in the
Colotti case, not all dreams were
suitable to group participation.
  Kirk was enjoying the visualisation of one of his own
fantasies when he was interrupted by a steady beep
from the region of his waist. Irritated at the
intrusion of mundane reality, he fumbled until
he extracted the communicator.
  "Kirk here."
  "Lieutenant M'ress, Captain. We've just
received a deep-space tight-beam call from
Starfleet station on Tsiolkovsky. Commodore
Hachida wishes action taken on a certain matter
as soon as possible. It seems we're elected."
  "Rats!" He looked around at the hundreds of
extras, the waiting crew that manned the props and
reflectors, the three cameramen and their
assistants[*thorngg'all of whom were patiently
looking to him for instructions.
  STAR TREEE 81
  "I'm in the middle of . . . of directing a
film. Can't it vait?"
  "Apparently not, sirr. It's a prriorrity
call."
  He sighed. "Oh well." It wasn't as if
they were having their leave cut short. They had spent
ten days on the Omicron world, enough to sate
the dreams of even the most imaginative
  crewmembers for awhile.
  "All right, Lieutenant. Inform whoever's on
duty that I'll be beaming up in a minute."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Oh, and Lieutenant, as a precaution you
might warn other crew presently on the surface
that they might be required to pull out of their
fantasies at anytime and return to ship." There,
that order ought to make him popular, he reflected
  sardonically.
  "Very good, sir. I'll have Transporter Chief
Kyle beam you back up."
  "Just another couple of minutes, please,
  Lieutenant."
  "Yes, sir. Enterprise out."
  Kirk flipped the communicator shut, shoved it
baclEvery into his belt, and turned reluctantly
to the patient assistant directors.
  "Mr. Grifflth, Mr. van Stroheim, Mr.
  Eisenstein[*thorn] I'm afraid I've
been called away on urgent business. You're
going to have to finish this picture without me."
  "That will be no problem," van Stroheim said
easily, adjusting the collar of his tunic.
  "It has been most agreeable to work with you," added
Eisenstein.
  "Good-bye, Captain," Grifflth concluded,
dolling his famous felt hat.
  Kirk shook his head sadly, surveying the
imitation sets, the waiting actors and animals.
His body began to take on a luminous outline, his
silhouette a glistening shimmer.
  "Pity this can't last," he murmured as the scene
started to fade. "Nothing lasts[*thorngg'including
us. I'm really
  82 STAR TREE LOG THREE
  going to miss seem" this film when you three finish
cutting it . . ."
  Once back on board, Kirk moved to the
  transporter room intercom and informed M'ress
that he would take the message in his cabin. There he
doffed the beret, short-sleeve shirt, silk scarf
and jodhpurs, and exchanged them for his on-duty
uniform. His voice sounded loud on the bridge.
  "All right, Lieutenant. Put it through."
  "Keying now, sir," replied M'ress, touching
a switch that relayed the message through the
Enterprise's ganglion of informational nerves.
She glanced back at Arex, noticed the
navigation officer eyeing her with interest.
  "I wonderr what his reaction will be, too, when
he rrcvs the orderr," she purred raspingly. "I
would think that[*thorn]" She was interrupted by a
violent bellow from the still open intercom.
  "Ah," commented Arex, "he's heard it."
  The explosion was short-lived, though indeed
intense. Eventually, Kirk ran down, remembering
a bit too late to switch off the open intercom in
his cabin.
  A short while later he reappeared on the
bridge. There was still fire in his eyes, but his outward
demeanor, at least, was controlled.
  "Lieutenant M'ress," he began evenly,
settling himself into the command chair, "order all shore
leave parties back to ship. Prepare the
Enterprise for departure."
  "Some catastrophe on a nearby world, sir?"
queried Arex innocently, not daring to look back
lest Kirk interpret his facial expression.
  Famine, seismic disturbances, threat of
war[*thorngg'the Klingons making trouble again?"
  followed M'ress.
  "Nothing so simple as that, Lieutenants,"
Kirk replied. At that moment Spock
reappeared on the bridge.
  "Nothing so simple as what, Captain?" he
inquired, moving to the library computer station.
  STAR TREK tilde T tilde E 83
  "Priority call from Starfleet Regional
HQ on Tsiolkovsky, Mr. Spock."
  There was a long pause, then Spock, composed as
ever finally added, "Aren't you going to officially note
the information into the log, sir?"
  "Give me a minute to compose myself. My
system still hasn't completely readjusted, Mr.
Spock. I've got to work it out."
  was "Work it out," Captain? I don't
believe I under- stand."
  "Let's put it thusly, Spock. were I
to try and make the entry just now, it might contain
certain emotional overtones, overtones that would not be
in keeping with the otherwise determinedly objective
nature of the log."
  Spock nodded. "I believe I see now,
Captain."
  "A mouthful there, Spock." He looked toward
the front of the bridge. "Mr. Arex . .. crew
report?" Arex checked a digital readout.
  "All crewmembers accounted forand on
board, sir. Normal operational capacity at
all stations."
  "Mr. Sulu, set a course for the Arcadian
star sys- tem."
  "Aye sir." After punching in the request for
coordinates, Sulu looked over a shoulder and
asked curiously, "Arcadia . . . that's an open
system, isn't it?"
  "Yes it is, Mr. Sulu. Very open.
Arcadia is one of those rare worlds that was discovered
by several representatives of various races at
about the same time. As a result, too many
conflicting claims made it impossible for any one
species to lay honest deed to it.
  "But instead of haggling over the planet, either with
guns or words, it had been declared an open world
by all involved. So its administration was loose and
its population cosmopolitan. An ideal situation
for the appearance of . . ." The thought trailed off.
  "It's a rich world, though, Mr. Sulu.
Filled up fast with prospectors, wildcat
agronomists, and the like. That's one reason nobody
fought over it. By the time
  84 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  the diplomats got around to a possible
scheme for divvying it up, it already had a locally
formed government that was ready to fight off any outside
organisation. The Arcadians like their controlled
anarchy.
  "Estimated time of arrival, Mr. Sulu?" The
helmsman returned his attention to business.
  "At standard crusing speed, estimated arrival
time six point three days hence, sir."
  "That will be fine, Mr. Sulu. No need to push
ourselves, priority call or no." Kirk tapped
fingers on the chair arm and muttered more softly, "I
think I can trust myself to act rationally by then."
  PART 11
  MUDD'S PASSION
  (adapted from a script by Stephen
  Kandel)
  Vl
  The voyage to Arcadia was efficient and
uneventful[*thorngg'except that Sulu beat
Spock twice in a row at three-dimensional
chess. That incident provided some lively ground for
speculation among the crew for several days.
  "Losing your touch, Spock?" McCoy had
chided him after the second loss.
  "Nonsense, Doctor. The law of
probability favored Mr. Sulu eventually
winning a pair of games back to back, as you like
to say. He is an outstanding player and by now we have
played so often that he is reasonably familiar with
my moves. I cannot beat him all the time."
  "Why not?"
  "As I said, Doctor, the laws of
probability rule against it."
  "iWhy?"
  "Because, Doctor[*thorn]" Spock
hesitated, stared at McCoy evenly.
"Doctor, are you attempting to provoke me
into amusing you?"
  McCoy glanced across the lounge, looking up from
the portable recorder in his lap with an expression of
childish innocence.
  "Who, me, Spock? Oh, no, no!"
  "Well if you are," the first officer continued,
choosing his words with care, "I'd appreciate it if
you would JUS-THAT get off my back."
  McCoy nearly fell off the couch. Action
froze throughout the lounge as the other crew
  members present looked up from their own
  recreational pursuits 87
  88 STAR TREK TnREE
  of the moment to stare dumbfounded at Spock. They
couldn't have been more stunned if a Tullinite
foxdancer had suddenly appeared stark naked on the
billiard table.
  "What did you say, Spock?" McCoy was
finally able to gasp. The science officer looked
mildly pleased.
  "An abrasive terran colloquialism of
  considerable pedigree, is it not?"
  "Yes, I suppose so, but[*thorn]"
  "The situational referents were appropriate for
application, were they not?"
  "Yes, they were, Spock, but[*thorngg'I
don't know quite how to put it[*thorngg'x's a little
too strong for what I said, Spock."
  "I see," Spock admitted with solemn
  nonchalance. 'I will keep that in mind." He
returned to his chess studies. But it was a while
before McCoy could bring himself back to the detective
thriller he had been watching.
  Kirk was relaxing in his own cabin when the call
finally came down from the bridge. He checked the
wall chronometer over his bed, acknowledged the
insistent buzz.
  "Kirk here."
  "We're approaching Arcadia m, sir.
Visual contact established."
  "All right, Mr. Sulu." He straightened his
uniform. "I'll be right up. Mr. Arex, stop her
down to approach speed."
  "Aye, sir."
  The first thing that caught his eye on reentering the
bridge was the scene on the fore viewscreen. It
showed a fairly large earth-type world circled by a
thin Saturnian ring and accompanied by a smattering
of asteroids. They formed a small belt around the
world[*thorngg'a second, distant, and
  unglowing ring. The planet had no major moon,
only several thousand insignificant imposters.
  STAR TREE LOG THREE 89
  The closer ring glowed with an eerie amber light,
a product of computer enhancement. Without the aid of the
Enterprise's electronic light amplifiers, the
narrow formation would have been all but invisible against the
black background of space.
  He checked over the bridge crew, noted
  perfunctorily that everyone was present who should
be. He sat down in the command chair.
  "Orbit us in, Mr. Arex, Mr. Sulu."
  "Aye sir," came the double
response. Both navigators slowed the ship's
speed to a
  comparative crawl as they prepared to place her in
a stable, high orbit.
  He flipped on the log. "Captain's Log,
stardate 5514.0. We have entered the Arcadian
system on a mission for Starfleet regional
peaceforce to locate an old . . ." Kirk
hesitated, remembering his own words about
objectivity and future perusers of the official
log. The recorder paused with him, patiently
awaiting the keying tones of his voice to resume
logging.
  "dis . . friend," he finally decided to finish.
  That was enough to draw Spock's attention away from his
hooded viewer. "Friend, Captain?"
  Kirk turned to look at him. "There's no
point in betraying personal animosities in the
official records of the Enterprise, Spock.
It's to our credit if our opinions seem to be the
opposite."
  "Is that legal, Captain?" The first officer
looked rather dubious.
  "I don't know if a personal estimation of
another being is subject to log
regulations, Spock. But knowing our quarry as I
do, I'd rather not give him any ammunition he can
use
  later[*thorngg'including anything even vaguely
libelous."
  He stopped, stared hard at the cloud-wreathed
globe swimming in the crowded starfield.
  "Do you really think Harry Mudd is down there,
Mr. Spock?" Odd how that simple name managed
to
  90 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  produce such intriguing sensations in his lower
intestinal tract.
  Spock turned back to his readouts. "I have
been correlating the information supplied by Starfleet
authorities with all scattered reports of
Mudd's last known appearances on Federation worlds.
Processing these factors and fully integrating them
indicate the probability of his presence on
Arcadia III, also known unofficially as
  'Motherlode," as eighty-one percent, plus or
minus point five-three."
  "Spock," said McCoy in exasperation, looking
around from where he'd been chatting with Lt. M'ress,
"can't you just say that Mudd's probably
there?"
  A curved eyebrow lifted. "I just did,
Doctor."
  McCoy rolled his eyes toward the
  heavens[*thorngg'wh currently could be in any
  direction[*thorngg'in mock supplication, before
resuming his conversation with the feline communications
officer.
  The Enterprise operated with quiet efficiency
for the next several moments. No questioning beam rose from
the surface to greet them, which was fine with Kirk. The
Arcadians left visitors to fend for themselves. They
weren't antagonistic, but neither was hospitality one
of the noteworthy features of their world.
  "We are approaching parking orbit, Captain."
  "Very well, Mr. Arex." And still no beam from the
planet[*thorngg'fine. At the moment,
anonymity was the thing Kirk desired most.
"Okay, Spock, let's see how accurate your
percentages are." He slipped out of the command chair,
and both officers headed for the bridge elevator.
  "Mr. Sulu, you're in charge. We don't
plan to be gone very long. Tell Chief Kyle
to expect three to beam up . . . and it might have
to be fast."
  "Aye, sir," acknowledged Sulu, moving
to relay the instructions over the intercom.
  "And you might remind him, Mr. Sulu, that he
need waste no time computing Mudd's
  transporter pattern,"
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 91
  Kirk added grimly. "We've got sufficient
ones of our own already on record."
  "Doubtless that is one reason why Starfleet
chose us to attempt to locate him, Captain,"
Spock suggested.
  "Yes. Aren't we lucky, Mr. Spock?"
  "On the contrary, Captain, I would have thought that
your sentiments in this would tend to[*thorn]" he
hesitated, noting Kirk's expression. "Oh,
I see, Captain, you are being sarcastic."
  "That's a mild enough term for it, Spock." He
sighed. "In any case, if he is down there,
Kyle will find him for us quickly enough"
  "I do not doubt that Harry Mudd's
transporter pattern is as distinctive as its
owner," Spock agreed, as the elevator doors
slid open.
  The ship was small, battered,
and[*thorngg'well, rather than go so far so
to label it decrepit, it was kinder to call it an
interesting hybrid of the antique and the baroque.
  It lay now a couple of kilometers outside the
small, semipermanent town that sidled up against the
base of rugged dark mountains. An engineer given a
fast glance at the ship's silhouette would have
admitted that here was a vessel capable of interstellar
travel[*thorngg'though barely, just barely.
  A really first-class warp-drive would have torn the
aged metal to pieces. Why, it even had fore and
aft rockets for free-landing, and narrow
atmospheric fins! It bore no substitute
  identification, and all normal serial numbers
had been battered out of shape . . . or possibly
erased.
  At the moment the curved landing ramp was extended,
and the small crowd that had come from town was assembled about
its base. They were listening to the ship's owner,
pilot, and principal spokesman, who was now
pontificating from a point halfway up the
aforementioned ramp.
  92 STAR TREK LOG WEB
  The single human was Harcourt Fenton Mudd,
and he was well into his spiel:
  "Now, all of you here are involved in
heavy metals mining, am I right?" No answering
shout of agreement resounded from the stony knot of
beings. Mudd continued on as if his question had been
answered loudly by all present.
  "You're no dummies or you wouldn't be here.
Most of you are by nature endowed with a certain rustic
shrewdness and intelligence, right?" There, that generated
a muffled, slightly confused chorus of "yeas."
  "Therefore you can appreciate the special value
I'm offering." Mudd's audience stirred
restlessly, wishing that he would get to his point and
leave them to go about their business. The group had grown
from a couple of curious onlookers to about a dozen
of the local inhabitants
  Seven of them were normal humans, two were
vaguely humanoid[*thorngg'ursinoids, a
male and his mate.
  There was also one heavy-planet
humanoid[*thorngg'an almost squarely built,
thickly muscled, short man. And a monopedal,
its crown of tentacles fluttering gently above
triple eyes. Behind him a tall avian, a pink,
thin creature with a brilliant crest of feathers
running from the center of its forehead down its back.
It clutched tridigited hands at a stout
walking stick.
  The avian not only looked out of place
  compared to even the normal humans, it was. Without
the special walking stick, the slightly above G
gravity would pull it shivering to the ground.
  But greed has a way of transcending
  interspecies differences. The avian was willing
to endure the backbreaking gravity and the hellish toil
of mining in it for the chance to feather its own nest some day.
  One of the humans took a challenging step forward
and spoke aggressively.
  "You sure you ain't just dry-holin' us with all this
chatter, Harry?"
  STAR TREK LOG WEB 93
  "I, sir?" Mudd drew himself up with vast
dignity. "On my honor, ladies and gentlemen
. . ."
  "To perdition with your honor!" snorted another of the
humans. "Let's see this marvelous
  watchamacallit, already. I got important
things to do."
  "Sure, Rafe," came a voice in the crowd,
"but I seen what you're minin', and it ain't
quartzine!" There was a guffaw from the crowd while the
furious Rafe searched angrily for the
jokester.
  "Very well," said Harry hastily, deciding he
had better make his pitch before his audience either
melted away or degenerated into a fight ring. He
reached into a jacket pocket and held up the
object of his talk, further stimulating the
audience's mildly whetted curiosity.
  The object was a small
crystal[*thorngg'multispined and milky
colored. But the creamy color came not from the
material of the crystal, which was actually clear as
ice, but from the viscous fluid that nearly filled the
hollow interior.
  Mudd shook his hand a little, and as the liquid
shifted inside the specimen, internal prisms
threw a shower of different colors out over the crowd.
All the mimers had seen more spectacular stones, but
this liquid-within gem was something new. Indeed it
seemed far too fragile to be cut and faceted.
  Those in the front pushed near for a better look,
while those in the back of the group strained to see over
them. They were no longer openly skeptical, but
instead they were intent on the crystal. Almost as intent
as Mudd was on them.
  Since everyone present had eyes only
for the crystal, and Mudd had eyes only for
potential customers, no one noticed the quiet
arrival of Kirk and Spock when the two starship
officers
  materialised on the other side of the crowd, at the
far end of Mudd's ship.
  "Probability confirmed, Spock," whispered
Kirk in satisfaction, recognising their old
nemesis immediately.
  94 STAR TREK L tilde THREE
  The voice alone was enough. "I'd like to take him
right now, but[*thorn]"
  "Naturally, Captain. I confess that I share
your impatience. Yet it would be best to have all
possible real evidence to return with, and a cursory
examination of the situation indicates that such is being
offered us."
  He slipped the tricorder off his shoulder, aimed
it at Mudd, and turned up the power on the
directional mike.
  "It's true," Mudd was saying. "With this
magical liquid, no person of the opposite sex
can resist you. For those interested in . . . diversions
. . . even members of another race are not
immune. None can resist it! It matters
not whether you're young, old, fat, ugly,
pregnant, hirsute[*thorn]"
  There was a snarl from the back of the crowd, and the male
ursinoid, his thick fur bristling, lifted one paw
with claws extended and took a step forward. His
companions restrained him.
  "Nothing personal, gentlebeing," Mudd
  apologised hastily. "Excuse me if in my
  enthusiasm for my product I refer only
to human standards of beauty." The ursinoid snarled
louder[*thorn)'ffhm, he was the human here.
Three men had to hold him back from attacking
Mudd. Not that they cared particularly if Shu-luft
made small Mudd's from the original, but they were
getting interested in that crystal.
  Mudd took a nervous step back up the
  platform. "I didn't mean . . . that
is[*thorn]"
  Someone in the front laughed. Soon the
  laughter spread throughout the crowd. The male
ursinoid looked around at the amused faces, and the
incongruity of his anger finally hit home. He
relaxed, smiling sheepishly. So did Harry.
  "Proof, man," Shu-luft finally growled.
  ""Tis proof you wish, my furry
friend, then 'tis proof you shall have." He turned and
made a grandiose gesture toward the ship.
"Behold!"
  STAR TREK L tilde TnREE 95
  A girl no one would have taken for ursinoid
stepped from inside the central cabin.
  Walking[*thorngg'no, floatingcom she moved
to stand next to Mudd. She entwined herself around his
left arm and gazed up at him with an expression of
rapturous adoration, the kind classical painters
usually reserved for angels adoring the Magi.
  Her voice was low and throaty, exactly the
sort one would expect would accompany such a
  stunning vision.
  "Harry, darling," she sighed, loud enough for even those
at the back to hear, "I was lonely for you."
  It's doubtful that any of the human miners heard
her anyway. There were too busy staring at her with
rapturous expressions, the kind that miners usually
reserved for drooling over a thousand-kilo deposit
of durallium wire-ore.
  Such delicate yet voluptuous types as this
girl were understandably rare on a rough and tumble world like
Motherlode. Those few who did put up with its
crude attractions were not inclined to do so in
the company of men like these.
  "Yes, behold," repeated Mudd, fully
conscious of the effect the girl was having on his
audience. Mudd knew that they were, in the aged and
venerable terran expression of his predecessors,
hooked. "I placed but a single drop of this
miracle substance on myself and then simply touched this
young lady . . . made the briefest of physical
contact, and[*thorn]"
  "Please, darling," the girl interrupted, cooing.
"Can't you come back into the ship with me now?" She
pressed herself tight against him, slid her left arm
around his neck and began caressing an ear.
  "How ... how much?" one of the miners finally
managed to gurgle. His companions could only nod.
  "How much?" echoed Mudfl easily. "Sir, do
I mean to interpret your inquiry correctly when
I say that you are asking the[*thorngg'and were' blush
to say it[*thorngg'price of this item?"
  96 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "That's what I said," the miner mumbled, still gawking
at the girl as she clung to Mudd.
  "A mere pittance, sir. A pitiful sum,
miniscule, since I believe one should not profit
overmuch from the sale of love." He
paused. "Three hundred credits, or the
equivalent in refined ship fuels."
  Anyone observing the audience would have bet that nothing
in the galaxy could have torn the attention of the men
present away from the slender shape now running her
fingers through Mudd's hair. But Harry's
pronouncement had done it.
  "Three hundred credits!" the miner stammered.
  "Well, perhaps it is more than a pittance,"
Mudd conceded, aware of the sudden murmuring in the
crowd. "But still a bargain, a bargain. How can one
set a price on true love?" He coughed
slightly.
  "You can, of course, shop elsewhere for this little bauble
. . . if you can find an elsewhere."
  The girl hugged him tighter and turned to bestow a
smile on the audience, a smile the likes of which
those men present had seen only in dreams. A low
moan seemed to come from every male
present[*thorngg'except from the two most recent
arrivals.
  Had Mudd seen them he would probably have
generated a different kind of moan; but for the moment they
still escaped his notice, so absorbed was he in his
presentation.
  Soon he made motions of retreat. "Of
course, if you gentlemen[*thorngg'and
ladies[*thorngg'feel the price beyond reason,
or your ability to pay, I shall have to try my poor
crystals elsewhere."
  At that moment Kirk and Spock chose to move
forward. Mudd noticed the motion and spared a quick
glance in their direction. He recognised the two
officers immediately, and his jaw suffered the effects of
suddenly augmented gravity. But Mudd recovered
quickly and managed a wide smile; it was quite as
phoney as everything about him, although if you didn't know
it,
  STAR TREK LOG TEIREE 97
  you would have guessed from his beaming display of choppers
chat he was overjoyed at the sight of the two men
approaching.
  "Captain Kirk. And the ineluctable Mr.
Spock. What a delightful surprise!
Welcome to
  Motherlode, gentlemen. I do detect a certain
interest in The do I not? Are you interested perhaps in
purchasing a little love? Everyone needs love."
  "You'll pardon me if I don't seem
especially affectionate just now, Harry,"
Kirk replied. "But at the moment my interest in you
is stimulated by somewhat different emotions. Let's
see." He grew thoughtful. "Fraud, illegal
drug manufacturing, swindling[*thorngg'^th for
openers.
  "Complaints have been filed on Sirius IX and
Ilyra VI. These complaints are filed under
provisions of the Federation Pharmaceutical Code,
sections sixty-three through eighty-three,
commensurate with[*thorn], rest assured you'll have
lots of time to read the whole list, Harry." He
looked hard at Mudd.
  "Well, as I said," repeated Mudd a lithe
less cheerfully, "welcome to Motherlode. A
charming, delightful world with many unique
  attractions[*thorngg'n the least of which is chat
it has no connection with the Federation and therefore does not
recognize Federation law." He smiled at the
miners and His time the smile was genuine.
  Kirk and Spock suddenly found themselves victims
of a dozen or so hostile glares, not all of them
human. "Keep this channel open, Uhura,"
Kirk murmured into his communicator. It was
operating, but still strapped to-his belt. He
wanted bodh hands free.
  "Aye, sir," came the reply. "Chief
Kyle standing by.
  One of the human miners moved toward the two
Starfieet officers. He nodded in Mudd's
direction as he spoke to The new arrivals.
"That's right. So you two can keep out of this.
  Modherlode's an open planet. We do
  98 STAR TRER [tilde THREH
  what we like here, according to our own laws, and no
outsider tells us different."
  "I should warn you," Kirk began, "that this
unprinciple swindler has been picked up before
for[*thorn]"
  The miner shook his head. "Not interested. When a
Federation officer talks about somebody bein" a
conman, he's usually talking about somebody who
hasn't paid his taxes." He grinned widely.
"We don't mind that, here," he told them, and
looked reassuringly up at Harry.
  "I'll take one, Mudd. Three hundred
credits it is."
  Kirk tried a last time. "I'm telling you, this
man is a swagman on a galactic scale."
  "Caveat emptor's all our business law
rolled into one, here, Cap'n," the miner
replied. "Lynching's our remedy for swindlers. The
way we see it, it's Mudd who's taking the chances
here, not us. We'll thank ye not to interfere."
  Kirk wanted to tell him that Harcourt Fenton
Mudd had run graver risks than hanging for far
bigger stakes, but Spock broke in, speaking in a
calm, quiet voice.
  "Are you aware that Harry Mudd is tricking you
via an accomplished illusion?"
  "Huh?" The miner gaped at him and there was a
muttering in the crowd. The idea that
  somebody might be playing around with their minds was not
comforting.
  "What are you talking about, Vulcan?"
  someone else shouted.
  Before anyone could object or question his action,
Spock stepped forward and smoothly brought up his hand
phaser. Without a word, he fired directly at the
head of the beautiful girl clinging to Mudd's side.
  Mudd yelped and jerked away from the heat of the
blast. The horrified miners were shocked in place.
The result of the phaser blast at this range should have
been one very dead girl.
  Instead, the girl vanished a second after the beam
made contact. In its place now
squatted a small reptil
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 99
  fan creature, about a meter high, that stared out at
the crowd with nervous eyes. It sat thus for a short
moment before whirling to scuttle rapidly back into the
ship.
  "Your "girl,"" Spock told them
pleasantly, "is a tamed Rigellian
hypnoid, projecting a simple illusion
programed for it by Mudd. As you can see," he
continued, indicating a scorched spot on the ship's
plates beyond the girl's former position, "the beam from
my phaser went directly through it."
  There was a long, quiet pause. Then it was
broken by a series of long, whistling whoops from the
tall avian. Even those unfamiliar with his kind could
easily interpret those halting whistles as laughter.
  The rest of the miners, however, reacted with something
less than amusement. One of the humans produced
an oddly shaped gun that
  actually threw a small projectile. It must
have been handed down from father to son through
  generations. To his left, the thickly muscled,
heavy-planet prospector was starting to lift a
boul- der half his size.
  Like water in a rocking bucket, the angry group
started to surge forward.
  "Now friends," began Mudd desperately, "I
can explain. Leave us not panic."
  "You're right about one thing, Harry," Kirk ob-
served, pleased at the way the situation was
progressing. "We can't arrest you[*thorngg'b you
can give yourself up."
  "No, Captain. Why, I've nothing to give
myself up for. To do so would amount to a
confess[*thorn]"
  The heavy-planeteer chose that moment to toss his
rock, which Mudd ducked. It soared through the
passageway and into the ship. Sounds of protesting
metal and the tinkle of broken glass responded from
somewhere within.
  "THIEF! ROBBER! SWINDLER!"
  Another, small rock shot toward him, and he
barely
  100 STAR TREK BY THRBB
  slipped out of its way. As it bounced off the
doorway, Mudd abruptly broke from the platform
before he could be pinned in, showing unexpected speed as
he raced toward the two watching starship officers.
A hail of missiles pursued him.
  "I surrender myself! I turn myself in!" He
turned and waggled a warning finger at the advancing
crowd as he dashed toward Kirk.
  "Free
will[*thorngg'mercy[*thorngg'I'm in
protective custody now!"
  "You forget, Harry!" yelled someone in the
pursuing crowd, "Motherlode doesn't observe
Federation law." This observation was punctuated by a
fist-sized rock, which bounced off Mudd's lower
back. He howled.
  Kirk adjusted his communicator. At the same
time, Spock took a couple of steps forward.
Setting his phaser on high, he pointed it at the
siliceous soil just behind Harry. The high-powered
beam dug into the ground and threw up a
  blockading ridge of fused soil and glass in
front of the oncoming miners.
  Another stone sailed over the new blockade and
hit Mudd in the back of his right leg. He yelped
and continued on, half-running,
  half-limping, until he reached Kirk and
Spock. He promptly took up a firm
position facing his tormentors[*thorngg'f behind
Kirk.
  One of the humans had gained the top of the slick
ridge and was reaching back to give the male ursinoid
a hand over. The man with the projectile weapon was
right behind, struggling to get a line on Mudd with the
clumsy device.
  But by then, Mudd, Kirk, and Spock were only
half there, already fading from view as the transporter
locked in and commenced
  dematerialization.
  Harry Mudd continued to complain long and loud, but
in transit stasis no one could hear
hm[*thorngg'n until they reformed in the
transporter room of the Enter
  prise.
  "Nicely done, Chief," Kirk complimented the
man behind the transporter console. "Timing was ideal
...
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 101
  things were getting a little sticky." The transporter
chief grinned, raised a hand deferentially.
  "Easy enough, Captain, once I had
Mudd's pattern set."
  Blithely ignoring the fact that Kirk and Spock
had just saved his life, Mudd continued his tirade.
  "That was a meeching trick, Kirk!
You've cost me my ship, my
Rigellian[*thorngg'and if you think it was easy
to train that half-intelligent lizard to play the
siren, you know nothing of patience[*thorngg'everthing
I own. Even the love crystals." He drew
himself up and tried to appear threatening.
  Instead, it made him look like something out of the
Mikado. "I have a mind to contact my solicitor
and sue you, personally."
  "Fine," Kirk agreed. "I'll see you in
court, Harry." Mudd glared at him as he
stepped off the transporter platform. "Come along,
now."
  "Where are we going?"
  "Where do people under arrest usually go, Harry?"
  The trader bugged his eyes in outrage. "Why,
Captain . . . to Not to the brig? Surely you
don't intend to lock me up on such
unsubstantiated charges? To throw me behind a force
field? To treat me like a common criminal?"
  "Whatever you are, you're not common, Harry. But of
course we aren't. We're going to put you in
protective custody, that's all." He smiled.
  Mudd bared his teeth and made a growling sound.
The growl dissolved into a moan of seemingly
real pain, the first honest verbalization, Kirk
mused, that Mudd had probably made in weeks.
The trader was pawing at his lower back, where the first
thrown rock had struck.
  "Spock."
  "Yes, Captain?"
  "Buzz Sick Bay. See that someone meets us
in the
  102 STAR TREE L tilde THREE
  brig." Spock nodded, and Kirk directed their
prisoner toward the elevator.
  The Enterprise's brig consisted of several
small living areas and one large one, each divided
by solid walls for privacy and fronting on the
same corridor. All were unoccupied at the
moment. Kirk walked Mudd into one of the compact
  apartments, directed him to sit down.
  Spock arrived shortly thereafter, with nurse
Christine Chapel. By now, Mudd was holding his
lower back constantly, rocking in his seat and groaning
theatrically.
  "What's the trouble?" asked Chapel, eyeing the
seated trader with distaste.
  "Got hit in the back with a rock," Kirk
informed her, before Mudd could detail his
unending list of woes. "Nothing serious, I think."
  "Nothing seriousI" Mudd retorted in
disbelief. "Tve got a cracked vertebra, at
the least."
  "Oh, for heaven's sake, Harry, stop making
such a fuss." Kirk shook his head. "The out-world
free trader, the pioneer of the Federation, the advance
guard of mankind." With representatives like
Mudd, he couldn't help but wonder
  sometimes how humanity had gotten as far as it had.
  Chapel, meanwhile, had lifted Mudd's
tunic and was examining the broad back. There was a
red bruise spreading on the lower portion, just above the
beltline.
  She took out a small cylinder from the medikit
satchel at her waist. It had a spray nozzle
at one end and a simple trigger at the other.
Setting it against the injured area, she depressed the
activator.
  There was a hiss, and a fine mist appeared around the
nozzle as she moved the cylinder across the bruise.
Judging by Mudd's exaggerated contortions, she
might well have been using a sledge hammer.
  "Minor bruise, Captain," she agreed,
replacing the cylinder in her bag.
"He'll live."
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 103
  "Oh well, all news can't be good," Kirk
mused dryly. Mudd shook his head in despair
at this unfrly observation and tucked his shirt back
into his trousers.
  "Tch, tch, Captain, such unwonted animosity
from a man of your position."
  "Believe me, Harry, I'm sorry you're here
to hear it. If you hadn't forced yourself on us, I
wouldn't be forcing my evaluations on you. How'd you
get away, anyhow? I thought we'd left you on that
robot world permanently."
  A quivering finger shot skyward in a gesture of
defiance. "Never underestimate the spirit of Harcourt
Fenton Mudd! Those who make that fatal
mistake soon learn to their detriment that all
their[*thorn]"
  "Harry," Kirk interrupted patiently, "never
mind the theatrics. How did you get away?"
  Mudd's eyes sparkled. "Ah, the conception was
true genius, Captain! An inspiration worthy of
my unique talents in the field of
sociological betterment.
  "I introduced the concept of organized
sports. It was glorious
to behold[*thorngg'thousands of robot citizens
participating, two teams locked in a hearty
struggle for the honor of their home factories, their
central computers. I then introduced the idea of
formal betting, with all it's subtle variations,
and[*thorn]"
  "I can imagine the rest," said Kirk, wincing at
the image Mudd's words conjured up. The trader
looked apologetic.
  "Sadly, I forgot a small
matter[*thorngg'the fact that I was dealing with
automatons and not humans. They did not
appreciate my exquisite and delicate
refinements to the age-old logic of organized
gambling."
  "You mean cheating," Spock suggested helpfully.
  "So I was, uh, compelled at an awkward
  moment to borrow a vehicle[*thorn]"
  "Steal a spaceship," Spock added once again.
Mudd glared at the Vulcan.
  "[*thorngg'and take my leave, only to find
eventual haven
  104 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  on Ilyria VI. A charming world, just
recently granted full Federation status. An
emerging culture eager for the blessings of Federation
civiliztion.a people rich in those rare
  resources[*thorngg'frship and innocence."
  "Which you are an expert at mining[*thorn)'s you
went and sold them the Starfleet Academy,"
Kirk finished. "Harry! That was a bit much, even
for you."
  "I was selling an idea," Mudd protested.
"I offered no absolutes or promises."
  "Not on paper or tape, anyway," Spock
  reminded him. "The . . . transaction netted you
enough credits to get you to Sirius IX, in your stolen
ship."
  "Borrowed," reminded Mudd helpfully. "Where
I discovered a great boon to intelligent life.
Something humanoids have been searching for for thousands and
thousands of years[*thorngg'and probably most
aliens have, too. A real, chemically sound, and
never-failing love potion!"
  "Which you sold to at least a thousand
  inhabitants of Sirius IX," Kirk
concluded, "who immediately became never-failingly ill
from using it."
  "Unfortunately, Captain, the
spacecraft I sto[*thorngg'ah, borrowed, was
not equipped for much in the way of extensive
chemical analysis. So I was, sadly, unable
to ascertain in advance that the love potion and
biochemistry of my customers were mutually
incompatible. So I proceeded, as is my wont,
to do the honest thing, I left in haste, but not without first
leaving behind all the credits I had made, to be
refunded to my enthusiastic but physiologically
deficient customers."
  "Read[*thorngg'a bank on Sirius
impounded your funds before you could withdraw them,"
Spock
  commented.
  Mudd's smile was showing wear around the edges.
"Really, Mr. Spock, I must confess that sometimes
I do find your attention to trivial minutiae
exhausting."
  "Let us hope that the Peaceforcer court shows more
interest when considering the same facts."
  Mudd made a mumbling sound deep in his
  throat.
  STAR TREKEB 105
  "And so you came here," Kirk went on, "hoping
to have better luck swindling honest
miners[*thorngg'ag, without worrying about any
possible side effects your potion might have on their
body chemistries."
  Mudd's chin went out as he struck a noble
pose. "Well, I have a surprise for you,
Captain Kirk. Be- cause, for once in my
life, I've stumbled on something profitable as well
as hon . . . sensible. The potion works."
  "As it did on Sirius IX?"
  Mudd shrugged. "An unfortunate, unforeseeable
accident of nature. An exception to the rule, I
assure you." He leaned forward. "No, I can do
better than assure you[*thorngg'I can prove
it. If you will only permit me to procure a few
samples from my ship . . ." He started to rise.
  Kirk shook his head slowly. "Sorry,
Harry."
  Taking a couple of steps backward, until he
was standing in the corridor with Spock and Chapel,
Kirk moved his hand over a switch set in the wall
to his right.
  Hidden instruments flicked on, and a mild hum
became audible. Instantly, a thin but impenetrable
force field had been erected between Mudd and the three
starship officers..
  The field xf[*thorngg'what one could see of
  it[*thorngg'looked something like heat distortion on
a paved road on a hot day. As viewed through the
field, the outline of Harry Mudd appeared
to shift and waver slightly.
  "Mr. Spock, you'll please prepare an
official arrest report as soon as is convenient,
giving all details including the use of the
prohibited Rigellian hypnoid. And be sure
to mention that Mr. Mudd voluntarily surrendered
himself." Within the cell, Mudd mumbled a sarcastic
"Hah!"
  "Of course, Captain," Spock responded.
  Kirk nodded, satisfied that he had heard the
last of Harry Mudd until they reached Sector
  headquarters on Darius.
  106 STAR TREK LOG
  All men, even starship captains, dream.
  "I'll be on the bridge if you need me, Mr.
Spock," he finished, moving toward the elevator.
Spock turned to look at the woman next to him.
  "Nurse Chapel, I shall require a thorough
medical report on the prisoner, to append to the
arrest tape, assuring that he was healthy and in good
condition when apprehended, no
  mind-warping techniques were used . . . the
usual."
  "What about my back?" complained Mudd.
  "Good condition, my[*thorn]"
  Spock barely glanced back at him. "Note
that Mr. Mudd suffered minor injury to his lower
dorsal area while in the process of turning himself
in."
  She smiled up at him. "I'll note that,
too, Mr. Spock." Her smile grew wider,
warmer . . . wishful. "I heard how you and the
Captain managed it. I think you deserve
congratulations for trapping him as neatly as you did."
She started to lean forward, pursing her lips.
  Spock drew away quickly, frowned. "I must
remind you, Nurse Chapel, that intergender oral
contact is not popular among Vulcans."
  She looked disappointed, and embarrassed. "I
... I apologise, Mr. Spo tilde
ommander."
  Spock was unruffled.. "It is not necessary. I am
aware[*thorngg'indeed, I am constantly
reminded[*thorngg't emotional impulses may
overcome humans at any point." He shook his
head sadly. "How
  unfortunate for you."
  "You don't know the half of it, Mr. Spock,"
she murmured, but so softly that no one could hear.
  Mudd didn't have to, however. An astute
observer of other beings, the look in her eyes was
sufficient for him. He leaned forward on the combination
lounge-bed and twirled one end of his mustache, trying
not to look interested.
  Well, well ... the universe is a
bottomless bag of surprises, he reflected.
Most intriguing.
  STAR TREE tilde THEE 107
  "As to our capture of Mr. Mudd, you
  exaggerate," Spock continued formally. "Kindly
see to it that your medical summary is more precise."
  He nodded curtly and left the brig area.
  Chapel's stare followed him until the
elevator doors had closed him away. Mudd
did not have to be a telepath to know that she was interested
in more than merely making sure he didn't stumble
on his way out.
  Mudd edged closer to the force-field "bar." When
his skin began to tingle he knew he was right up against
it. As Chapel continued to gaze down the corridor
after the departed Spock, Mudd spoke
casually.
  "You're absolutely right, you know. I've dealt
with a great many humanoids in my time, and your Mr.
Spock is certainly a very attractive
  intelligence."
  Wham! Mudd could almost see the mental
  portcullis slam shut in her head. Her
voice was instantly the model of precision and
bureaucratic indifference.
  "An exceptional officer, yes. We're
fortunate to be able to serve under him."
  "But a trifle lacking in the warmer emotions,
yes?" He smiled broadly when she jerked around
to look at him. When she didn't say anything, he
continued.
  "Now you, nurse," and he rubbed his sore back
as he chatted, "have a wonderful gift for healing the
wounded. A considerable ability ... a feminine,
womanly touch.
  "That's rare in the Federation today, and I don't
mean just among Starfleet personnel. It's something
I can appreciate. Most people, it seems, have grown
so . . . well mechanical. You know.
  "Anyway, I do appreciate it. And I think
it's that sort of quality that could, well .
. . what I'm trying to say is that I'd like to thank
you." Balancing awkwardly on one foot, he
commenced to reach down and remove his left boot.
Chapel watched this operation uncertainly.
  "Thank me . . . with a boot?"
  "No, no, my dear. With this." And while she
stared
  108 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  he touched a hidden button at the back of the
boot. A tiny spring sprang, and the heel clicked
aside, revealing a small hollow compartment. It
yielded an oblong, multicolored crystal that
seemed to pulse with inner light[*thorngg'a neat
cross between clear quartz and opal. A thick oily
liquid rocked back and forth inside the transparent
silicate.
  Chapel found herself staring. "What is it?"
  "My love potion." That brought her head up.
"No, no," he said hastily. "It's not an
illusion, not trickery, my dear Nurse Chapel.
This is for real. Inside the crystal," and he
tapped the specimen with a fingernail, "lies the power
to create love . . . in another."
  Chapel took a wary step backward. "Oh no
you don't, Harry Mudd. I've heard
about your
  potions. I don't believe you." She spun on
her heel and started to leave. Mudd reached out,
hurried down the short length of the cell with both hands
pressed against the force field.
  "But if it did," he implored, his voice
rising desperately, "think about it,
darlin"'[*thorngg'Mr. Spock, in love with you.
Really in love with you."
  Arex looked back from his position at the
navigation console to catch first Spock's eye, then
Kirk's. "Something rather interesting here, sir."
  The Enterprise was proceeding at high speed
toward distant Darius on a normal exploration
course. Now Arex started to slow . . . in case.
  "Uncharted star system ahead."
  "Put it on the screen, Mr. Arex." The
latter flicked a switch. Instantly a tiny,
far-off star system became visible on the main
screen. An unspectacular blue-white sun
boiled in its center.
  "Increase magnification, Mr. Arex."
  "Yes, sir." Arex did things with three
controls at once. The picture leaped into clearer
focus. Then he
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 109
  adjusted other dials, and the rest of the bridge saw
the main object of intere/gg*thorngg'the
blue-white's companion.
  It was smaller, reddish-orange in colon
Spock had been studying nonvisual information via
the library computer's hooded viewer. Now he
looked up and back at them.
  "A standard binary system, Captain; but it
appears to hold at least one Class-M
planet. I think this is rare enough to warrant
investigation."
  Kirk pondered a moment, then agreed.
  "Yes, it is. All right, set us an orbit,
Mr. Arex."
  The navigator began making requests of the
incredibly complex piloting system. Kirk stared
at the viewscreen as they began to edge into the double-star
family.
  The growing blue-white sun seemed to throb with
light, pulse and sparkle, sparkle and flame and .
. .
  . . . Sparkle hypnotically as Mudd
twirled the crystal, back and forth and around and back
in his hands like a top on a string. Nurse
Chapel stared at it, fascinated, entranced. She
also held a hand phaser aimed squarely at
Harry's midsection.
  "If it did work," she said slowly, "which is quite
absurd, would it . . . ?"
  "It's so simple, my dear. Nothing to it.
Yes, it
  "How does it work[*thorngg'theoretically, I
mean."
  "Nothing easier and less obvious," Mudd
continued smoothly, still twirling, spinning, and shifting
the crystal. "You merely crush the crystal and allow
the liquid a second or two to sink into your skin.
The hands are best. Then simply touch another
person[*thorngg'the other person."
  "And it creates love? Mudd, that's
ridiculous."
  "Isn't all love ridiculous?" he argued
  philosophically. "But you are wrong,
darlin'[*thorngg'the crystals are infallible. One
touch from a liquid-kissed hand evokes undying
friendship among men, or women. But between mem
  110 STAR TREK BOG THREE
  hers of the opposite sex, you get love. The
real thing, guaranteed." He held the
crystal closer to the forcefield.
  "Harry Mudd's love crystals could generate
passion in a block of granite. Now your Mr.
Spock[*thorngg'he's something of a block of
granite, isn't he?" Mudd tossed the crystal
from hand to hand.
  "But naturally, you're sceptical." Taking a
couple of steps back into the cell, he didn't
miss how her gaze followed the crystal as it moved
from palm to palm.
  "Now you can appreciate a unique bit of
chemistry like this, Christine. You're not only a
beautiful woman, you're a scientist. Why, you're
practically a physician yourself, in every way but on
parchment. I urge you, take this love crystal as
my gift of gratitude to you. For your medical
ministrations and your comforting hands.
  "I assure you, it can't harm you. Even
Captain Kirk would tell you that. Why don't you
ask him?"
  "Ask . . .? No . . . no, I don't
think that's necessary. I mean, there's no need to bother the
Captain with . . ." She stopped, flustered, and
tried another tack. "It can't harm me? Then what
about those people on Sirius IX?"
  "Ah, you've heard of that," he commented disap-
pointedly. "No matter. They only became
slightly ill. There were no serious sicknesses. You
can check that, too, if you wish. But human
  biochemistry should react to it most favorably.
And Vulcan." He tried to appear disinterested.
  "Look on it as an experiment." He extended
the hand holding the crystal toward her, pulled it
back when the force-field firmly rejected it, and
chuckled good-naturedly.
  "Sorry[*thorngg'forgot, for a minute."
  "Not that I believe any of this rubbish," she
muttered, but without meeting his eyes. "I suppose
it wouldn't hurt to analyze the effects."
  "Of course not!" [le grinned widely.
  STAR TREK LOG THREE I I 1
  She hesitated a last minute, then hefted the
phaser tightly and reached for the wall-field control.
The force-field vanished. Mudd could tell it was
gone because the outline of Chapel no longer rippled.
  Smiling, he made a courtly bow, noticing as
he did so that the hand holding the phaser never wavered.
He extended the crystals, careful not to make any
sudden movement.
  She took it gingerly, handling it like a
fusion bomb. Which, in a sense, it was. Keeping the
phaser on Mudd, she held it up to the light.
Inside, the liquid refracted light, sending it out
in myriad flashes every time the crystal shifted . .
.
  vll
  One new image after another flashed across die
Enterprise's bridge viewscreen as her
automatic cameras and recorders scanned the world
below. Panoramas alternated with sequential
closeups, building a composite picture of the
surface.
  Basically it was a dry world, a desert planet.
Seemingly endless plains of fine sand, deep as
oceans in spots, were interrupted only by occasional
upthrusts of naked, worn, black rock that
registered amazing hardness on the ship's sensors.
It would have to be, to withstand the gargantuan dust storms
that must everlastingly abrade the skin of the uninhabited
globe. The ship's tracking computer finally settled
on a medium telescopic view of an area somewhere
beneath them.
  Sunset there, second sunset, with the
blue-white sun already down and the reddish binary
turning the sand the color of dried blood.
Long shadows turned the surface the color of
coal behind the few protruding spires.
  The Enterprise slid inside the orbit of the
planet's single, insignificant moon as Kirk
activated the log.
  "Ship's Log, Stardate 5514.6.
  "We have located and made preliminary scan of a
hitherto unidentified binary system with one marginally
habitable world. Preparations are now underway for first
advanced survey. Second advanced survey with
actual landing party will probably not be carried out this
trip, unless some unexpected new factor
dictates in its favor."
  And from the look of that dead, motionless surface,

  STAR TREK BOG THREE 113
  Kirk expected nothing in the way of startling
developments. He looked up from the log mike.
  "Mr. Spock, have you got those preliminary
statistics ready?"
  "Here, Captain." Kirk joined his first officer
at the library computer. A small screen was
playing back the initial probe and sensor
reports from their first, fast orbit around the
planet's equator. All were neatly
correlated and broken down to essential components.
  The Enterprise's planetary detection
equipment took a world apart, reduced it to a series
of figures that were taken into the library computer. There
the ship's brain sorted them out, packed them together, and
generally translated them into terms a well-educated
StarHeet officer could comprehend.
  Arex remained at the helm, keeping a close
check on their position to insure that their orbit
wasn't varying, while M'ress continued her search
via communications equipment for any signs of
intelligent life. If any such existed in the
sandpit below them, they weren't very talkative. So far
she'd found nothing, not even a hint of a primitive
crystal set.
  All these bits and pieces linked up with the
computer's preliminary evaluations. This was no world
to nourish intelligent life.
  "Parking orbit holding, Captain," said Arex
over a shoulder. "All weapon's systems on
defensive standby." Spock had returned to his
station and was again studying the computer readouts for the latest
information.
  "No evidence of even a primitive society,
Captain, though there are signs of standard
organic forms[*thorngg'a normal dry-planet
ecology."
  "Reasonable," Kirk murmured idly, staring at
the screen. They wouldn't be here terribly long, then.
A subsequent expedition could study what little this world
had to offer at some future date. He saw no
reason to
  114 STAR TRER LOG THREE
  tie up the Enterprise in a painstaking study of
local flora and fauna.
  "Atmosphere at surface, eight hundred
  millibars," the science officer continued.
"Gravity, one point two. Mean temperatur
tilde hot, but within Class-M limits.
Seasonal fluctuation . . ."
  Chapel finally lowered the crystal and returned her
attention to Harry Mudd. "I'll let you know the
results of my analysis. It'll be thorough, I
assure you."
  "But the crystal is so sensitive, my dear.
However carefully executed, laboratory tests
would probably destroy it. Once broken, it's
completely useless. And it's the only one I have
left." He smiled, and his tone became urgent.
  "Why not try it out the way it's meant
to be tried?"
  "No," Chapel protested[*thorngg'weakly,
he thought. "I don't think I ought . . ."
  "Darlin', consider' If it does what I say
it does[*thorngg'and it does," he paused
significantly, "Spock will be yours forever. And
there are no side effects, nothmg to show that it
wasn't the real thing."
  She still hesitated, considering, and finally came to a
decision. She nodded and slipped the hand phaser
back onto her belt. "I just break the crystal and
let the liquid sink into my skin?"
  Mudd smiled. "And then touch him."
  Chapel raised the crystal once again, staring
into its crystalline depths, then she abruptly
closed her fist on it. There was a faint, ethereal
pop, like the shriek of some miniscule animal as the
crystal turned to powder. The oily liquid now
covered her palm.
  She brought both hands together and rubbed it into them. For
good measure she touched a bit of it to her cheeks.
Hands and face dried rapidly as the alien substance
either sank into her pores or evaporated.
  Suddenly she began to sway dizzily, gasping for
air, and sank quickly to the floor in a
half faint.
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 115
  "What is it?" she stammered, crouching on her
knees and putting both hands to her head. "What's
happening?"
  Mudd casually stepped over the boundary of the now
deactivated force-screen and bent over her.
"Nothin' at all, dargg'in'. A temporary
reaction engendered by absorbing the potion. It'll
pass right away."
  As he spoke, he gently took the hand phaser
from her belt. A moment's further search turned up
a thin strip of plastic, which he also pocketed.
  Chapel struggled to get to her feet, wobbled, and
had to steady herself with a hand on the deck. Her vision was
starting to clear.
  "Here, darlin' ... Iet me give you a hand."
He got an arm under hers and lifted, careful not
to touch her where the liquid had been applied.
  "I . . . I feel better, I think."
  "Of course, didn't I tell you it would be over
fast?" She was sweating and shaking her head, still
slightly dazed from the strange aftereffects of the
drug.
  Several things were troubling her, but the fog
in her mind seemed to solidify around them rather than
clear. Wait a minute ... one of them, at least,
was staring back at her.
  "You . . . you should be in the brig, Harry."
  "Why so I should," Mudd observed amiably.
He took a couple of steps backward until he
was standing in the cell again. Chapel hit the
force-field activator on the wall. She had
to repeat the gesture, missing badly on her first
try. Once again Mudd's outline wavered as the
distorting field appeared between them. But now she was
sure that the waver was in the field . . . not in her
suddenly cleared mind.
  "Why don't you, ah, go find Spock?" he
  suggested. "The liquid won't stay potent
forever, you know."
  "Yes," she muttered, then repeated more firmly,
"Yes . . . I'll do that." She headed up the
corridor.
  Mudd paced quietly around in his cell for
several
  116 STAR TRBR boa
  minutes, inspecting it from all angles. After he
was sure the elevator had started on its way, he
reached into a pocket and brought out the hand
phaser. A careful adjustment of the aperture to what
he estimated would be the minimum
  necessary setting, and he pressed the trigger.
  There was a flash, the beam of energy
  contacted the minimal force-shield, and it winked out.
Mudd grunted his satisfaction and
  repocketed the phaser. Smiling and whistling
happily, he strolled out of the cell and headed for the
elevator.
  Mudd got off on a little-frequented service
deck. He needed a quiet place, a temporary
refuge, and the service area seemed the best place
to find it.
  Walking down the main corridor, he checked
room after room. Anything that showed recent signs of
visitation, he skipped. Likewise he bypassed
any chamber containing material that might be needed for the
minute-to-minute
  operation of the starship.
  Pinally, he located a near-empty storage
room that also possessed an inside lock. This would
do for a few hours. He did not expect to be there
long.
  Sitting down on a canister marked
  EMERGENCY LUBRICATION SUPPLY and
  using a big metal crate for a workbench, he
took out the thin, flat strip of plastic that he had
taken from a pouch at Nurse Chapel's waist.
After setting it carefully on the crate, he reached
for his boot. The heel clicked aside and yielded
up a tiny packet of miniature tools.
  Humming to himself and working deftly but quickly, he first
erased Nurse Chapel's identifying picture from
the Starfleet Identity Card. From the packet he
produced a tiny, flat piece of metal about the
size of his thumbnail. Slipping it delicately
over the now gleaming blank space on the card, he
pressed down on it with his thumb. There was a slight
click.
  When he let off the pressure and slid the tiny
square
  STAR TREK THEE 117
  aside, it was his own smiling visage that beamed
back up at him from the card.
  He put the subminiature tridee
duplicator aside and started in on the card with
several of the other tiny tools. It would take some time
and precision work to erase an Chapel's
identification and replace it with his own.
  The private quarters of the
Enterprise's first officer were much like their
tenant[*thorngg'ordered, reasoned, logical.
A place for everything and everything in its place.
Even the art on the walls reflected a somber
regularity of composition much like the man who had
purchased it.
  Just now that man was working at the large desk which
dominated the main room. Spock was
  running through information being displayed on the readout
screen of the desk's own computer annex. The door
chime sounded once. He spoke without looking up.
  ""Come."
  Chapel entered, moved to stand next to him. She was
carrying a flat microtape cassette in one hand
and several other things in her mind. All were intended for
Spock.
  Trying not to shake, Chapel stood patiently behind
Spock while the desk computer hummed and clicked.
Finally, he paused in his work, turned to look up
at her.
  "Yes, what is it, Nurse?"
  "I brought the medical summary for the arrest
report, Mr. Spock[*thorngg'the one you asked
for?"
  "Yes. Thank you, Chapel." He
swiveled in his chair, reaching out for the microtape
cassette.. As he did so, she took a step
forward and stumbled awkwardly, falling into his lap.
  The startled Spock caught her reflexively.
She clutched at him, managing to effect a good deal
of physical contact. He looked at her
uncertainly.
  118 STAR TRE-LCan L tilde WEB
  "Sorry, sir," she apologized, feigning
surprise. She paused expectantly, still resting
in his arms. Spock sat still, waiting for her to get
up. When it became apparent that, for unknown
reasons, she wasn't going to move, he rose himself
and deposited her on her feet.
  "Are you injured, or something, Nurse
  Chapel?" He couldn't keep the irritation out of
his tone, though his expression remained neutral, as
always.
  "No, I'm fine," she replied, in a voice
that indicated she was anything but.
  Vulcans have several interesting abilities and
senses that humans do not. Sensing sudden rises in
blood pressure, however, was not among them.
  "Are you feeling all right?" she asked
hopefully.
  "Perfectly normal." He picked the
cassette off the desk. "I will append the summary
to the report," He waited. When she didn't say
thank you, good-bye, or anything else, he shrugged
ever so slightly and sat back down at the annex,
resuming his work.
  Several minutes passed before he noticed that she
was still standing behind him. Now he was concerned instead of
irritated.
  "Was there something else, Nurse?"
  Chapel stuttered, one hand moving out to him and
hurriedly pulling back. "Wouldn't ... wouldn't you
like me to . . . stay? To help you?"
  "I am managing quite easily by myself, Nurse
Chapel. For you to stay would be unnecessary,
duplicative, and illogical. Do you not see this?"
  "Yes," she whispered. Then her voice turned
tight, controlled. "Yes[*thorngg'x'd be damn
stupid, in fact." She spun on a heel and
marched from the room.
  For a minute Spock continued to stare after her,
puzzled. Her actions seemed more than normally ...
human. Then he shook his head[*thorngg'no
matter how long he lived and worked among humans
he would never fully understand
  them[*thorngg'and returned to his work.
  Chapel had some work to do, too. She ignored the
  STAR TRER [equals tilde EB 119
  casual greetings of fellow crewmembers as she
moved down several corridors on her way to the
brig, turning over in her mind the various
indignities, both verbal and physical, she
intended to subject one Harry Mudd to.
  Eventually, the single security elevator
deposited her in the Enterpr tilde se's
security corridor. She was speaking before she reached
the cell.
  "All right now, Harry Mudd. You're in for it,
you illegitimate, swindling. . ."
  She came abreast of the cell, glared
in[*thorngg'and came up short, gaping, No
fluttering, apprehensive outline greeted her. Not
even a smiling,
  unwavering one. The force-field barrier was truly
off, and the cell itself absolutely empty.
  She whirled quickly, thinking perhaps he had somehow
managed to slip out and even now was preparing to jump
her. Her hand went to her belt for her phaser and
clutched nothing but fabric. It shifted, moved up
to her head where, she was beginning to think, it
might also contact nothing.
  The dizzy
spell[*thorngg'aftereffects[*thorngg'over
quickly. She glanced down at her waist belt as if
the hoped-for phaser might somehow respond to visual
if not tactile identification. No luck. It
wasn't there.
  "Oh no," she muttered softly. Then she was
running for the elevator.
  SHUTTLECRAFT
BAY[*THORNGG'AUTHORIZED
  PERSONNEL ONLY
  Mudd examined with pleasure the boldly
  printed words on the door blocking his way. Then
he moved to a small blank screen set in the
wall to one side and stood in front of it.
  Taking a deep breath, he slipped his newly
modified identification card into the slot beneath the
screen. If anyone in ship security decided
to make a routine
  120 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  check on this shuttle-bay entry it would all be
up for hm[*thorngg'he didn't look even
faintly like Christine Chapel. But the screen only
flared once, with white light, as the
automatics processed the visitor. There was a
brief wait that seemed to Mudd to last only one
or two millennia, then a green light winked on
beneath the screen. A hum, and the door slid
obediently aside. Taking the card out of the slot,
Mudd released his breath and hurried through. He
paused inside as the door slid shut behind him.
  The shuttlecrafthangar was filled with the normal
complement of offship Starfleet vehicles. There was
a small, superfast scout ship, a heavily
armored landing vehicle for worlds with surfaces even more
inhospitable than the one rumored to be revolving beneath
them, and a hovercraft for those planets with totally
antagonistic surfaces, or even none at all.
  There were also several light planetary atmosphere
fliers, and three compact shuttlecraft themselves.
He rubbed his hands together and wished he could let out with a
really good bellow of laughter, but someone might have a
mike open someplace. So he contented himself with the
thought.
  Harry Mudd, triumphant again!
  He moved at a fast wale toward the waiting
vessels.
  Unaware that the subject of his arrest report was
preparing to invalidate same, Spock had
switched off the small desk computer annex and was
now concluding that report, dictating into a tiny hand
recorder.
  "dis . . and appended hereto is a medical
summary and evaluation of the prisoner with statement
by Nurse Christine Chapel ..." He stopped
abruptly, drew a deep, startled breath.
  Broke into a wide smile. It was fortunate he
didn't happen to be gazing into a mirror just then.
The shock might have rendered him
  unconscious.
  He blinked, coughed. The smile vanished as
abruptly
  STAR TREK [tilde THREB 121
  as it had appeared. Facial muscles unused
to the expression were protesting angrily. He cleared
his throat again, resumed dictating.
  "Uh . . . Nurse . . . Chapel . . .
summary appen[*thorn]"
  Again the sharp hesitation, but this time astonished hands
fluttered to his upcurved lips. He shook his
head violently, then scrambled to his feet, shoving
back the chair liked man suddenly
possessed[*thorngg'wh was exactly the case.
  "Christine . .. Chap-el." The last
syllable trailed off in a deep, heaving sigh.
"Dear, lovely Christine." He sighed again, and his
face contorted in horror. He stumbled into the
desk, jerked away as though it had transformed itself
into a monstrous, four-legged spider.
  "Christine[*thorn]" A sharp pain hit him,
as if someone was pounding with steady rhythm on his
stomach.
  Chapel would have recognised the sensation.
  It ought to be fully fueled, ready for an
extended mission at any time. Mudd examined the
long-range scoutship lovingly. The onboard
computer, a miniature of the one that ran the
Enterprwe, could draw on its parent machinery for
information. Before anyone caught on, it should be able
to give him the ship's current position, accept his
fast course setting[*thorngg'for Ilyria,
say[*thorngg'and put him instantly out of
detector range.
  Of course, the Enterprwe could easily track and
overtake hm[*thorngg'if anyone noticed his
departure, that is. There were steps he could take
to insure that no one would. All he needed was five
minutes at the scoutship's nominal but still
impressive warp-drive, and he would be
over the hill and far away bef[*thorn]
  Something hit him hard on the back of the neck.
Everything went spacebars for a time, space flecked
with an appreciable number of stars . . . though not of
solar magnitude.
  When his vision cleared, his eyes presented him with
an extreme close-up view of the deck.
Instinctively one
  122 STAR TUBE BOG T tilde BB
  hand went up and back to caress his aching neck.
He grimaced when it touched. A slow heave and he
rolled himself over, then almost wished he hadn't. In
its own innocent way, the deck was a preferable
view.
  Christine Chapel, looking very unlike an
angel of mercy at the moment, reached down and
  scooped up the hand phaser that had fallen from
Harry's belt. She pointed it at an
indelicate portion of his anatomy.
  "I've come to collect on your guarantee,
Mr. Mudd."
  So close[*thorngg'he'd come so close! He
grumbled in frustration as he climbed to his feet.
  No one on the bridge happened to be scanning the
shuttle bay, so Kirk, Arex,
M'ress, and Scott continued to be unaware of the
play being acted out below.
  McCoy was at Spock's vacant library
computer station, indulging himself in some minor research
of a nonmedical nature. Everyone else was at his
station[*thorn] calm, relaxed. No one glanced
up right away when the elevator doors slid
back, and Spock stepped onto the bridge.
  He moved forward, found himself pausing. He
swallowed nervously. But contrary to what surely must
be obvious, no one stared at him, no one showed that
anything unusual was taking place. No one
noticed his confusion.
  They noticed the difference in his voice, however.
And they all turned at the first words.
  "Captain . . ." He hesitated.
"Doctor, I believe I require medical
attention." McCoy's eyes widened slightly.
"I .. . wish to report a number of . . . of very
strange. . . emotions.
  "What?" The reaction burst simultaneously from
Kirk and McCoy. M'ress and Arex just stared.
  In the Shuttle Bay, Mudd had regained his
feet and was now edging nervously along the wall behind the
scout ship, moving toward a nearby complex
of bay
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 123
  machinery. Every so often, the grim-faced Chapel
would make jabbing motions at him with the phaser as she
pursued. Or she would jerk down on it with a finger, just
missing the trigger.
  Each time she did so, Mudd[*thorngg'who was
sweating heavily, and not from the exertion of
  walking[*thorngg'wd give a little start and his
high-powered smile would lose a little more voltage.
  "Ah, you are implying, darlin", that the potion
wasn't completely successful?" Chapel laughed
harshly.
  "That depends on the point of view, I
suppose. Oh, it was beautiful, Harry. I
made a thorough fool of myself. I'm sure you're
sorry you missed it. But don't
worry[*thorngg'what I'm going to do to you will be
even funnier." Somehow, to Mudd, the promise
seemed lacking in humor.
  "But you know how cold Vulcans are," he
reminded quickly. "Possibly," and he shook a
finger at her as she jabbed with the phaser again, "the
reaction is slightly delayed, the potion may need
a few more minutes to take effect. After
all, with such a reluctant subject as Spock .
. ."
  She shook her head sadly. "And I had such
hopes. But you're the same foul-mouthed fraud
you've always been, Harry. I don't know what
came over me that would let me believe you, even for a
moment. After all the people you've swindled[*thorn]"
Once again the muzzle of the phaser came up.
  "Now, nobody's perfect," Mudd hurried
to remind her. "And I fell in with bad companions
at an early age. Leave us not act rashly, my
dear. No need to do something now for which we'll be
sorry later."
  "Oh, don't worry, Harry. I won't
be[*thorngg'I won't be."
  He started to tremble, and she clucked her tongue
in disgust. "Don't panic, you sniveling coward."
  "I can't help it[*thorngg't is a habit
that seems to affect
  all us sniveling cowards."
  "Harry, this phaser's only set on stun. And
I think
  124 STAR TREK TIES
  we've gone about far enough." They had backed right
into the complex of machinery. There was an
intercom screen nearby for the use of any
technicians who might be working on the complex. It
was time to end the game.
  "Activate the intercom, Harry."
  "Now wait a minute, luv," he cautioned
brightly, a suggestive cloud appearing in his head.
"I have a thought[*thorn]"
  He continued to move backward along the was, ever
deeper into the complex. There was a printed legend on
the towering tank he was backing up to.
  AIR REGENERATION AND DISTRIBUTION
  He reached into his pocket, jerked his arm, and
produced a ripping sound. Christine looked at him
curiously. When he withdrew his hand, he held
several fine large love crystals, taken from the
lining of his pants.
  "Try another. I promise you, they'll work.
Spock will be so in love with you he'll[*thorn]"
  "Stop it!" she yelled angrily, waving the
phaser.
  As soon as the compact weapon was no longer
pointed at him, Mudd jumped to one side and threw
the crystals, whooping and diving at her. The
awkwardly thrown handful soared high, to shatter well
overhead near an open grid.
  Taken by surprise by his war-yell and charge,
Christine stumbled backward, firing awkwardly and
bumping against the alarm button set under the intercom
screen. The phaser blast missed; the wide beam
streaking over the lunging trader's shoulder to scorch the
metal tower behind him.
  Somewhere a siren screamed.
  Neither of them, of course, bothered to look
upward[*thorngg'they were otherwise
occupied[*thorngg'upward, to where the powdered
crystal and evaporating liquid were sucked
efficiently into the grid by hidden fans.
  Harry Mudd was not a small man. He
slammed into Chapel hard, his shoulder striking the arm
with the
  STAR TREK LOG TnREE 125
  phaser. The arm jerked up and back, the phaser
discharged again, and the stun-beam caught her in the throat.
She sagged instantly into his reluctant arms.
  "By the sacred thumbs of Hnisto!" He shifted
his feet, lifted her upright. "Sorry Christine,
darlin'[*thorngg'b I'm afraid I'm going
to need a hostage now. Why couldn't you have let me
leave quietly, without going and alerting the whole
ship?"
  At the same time, he was looking around the bay,
toward the scoutship again, considering furiously. With the
alarm ringing, but not pinpointed, the brig would be one of the
first places automatically checked. The scout
looked fast, but without his five-minute lead it would
never outrun or outmaneuver the Enterprise.
  But there was a planet beneath them. Often, a finite
world proved a better hiding place than infinite
space. But not the scoutcraft, no . . . he
headed toward the armored landing vehicle, settling the
inert Christine over one shoulder. They'd have a hard
time prying him out of that.
  Spock's confession of deep troubles and
subsequent expressions of shock and surprise were
interrupted by the alarm. A multitude of questions
forgotten, everyone rushed to emergency stations.
M'ress cut off the squalling alarm. Arex
checked the security panels and reported back.
  "It's not a damage alarm, sir. No sign of
hostile craft in the immediate vicinity[*thorngg'here
it is. Internal security
[*thorngg'shuttlecraft bay."
  "Give us some visual, Mr. Arex,"
instructed Kirk calmly. The navigator
activated a switch, and everyone looked
to the left as a small viewscreen set over the
library-science station lit up. It showed the
shuttlecraft bay, the ships within, but no sign of
anything worthy of an alarm.
  "Pan it," Kirk said curtly. The camera
began to move. "Hold it, Mr. Arex." Two
figures had come into
  126 STAR TREK t tilde THREE
  view, one apparently carrying the others
  unmoving form.
  Everyone recognized Mudd's portly shape
instantly, but the identity of his limp burden
remained indistinct until the head lolled
loosely backward.
  "Mudd!" Spock shouted passionately. "And
he has Christine. She's in danger . . . my
belov[*thorn]" His eyes suddenly widened in
horror, and both eyebrows tried to crawl up his
forehead and hide in his hair.
  "Interesting . . . reactions . . ." he
mumbled.
  McCoy's jaw opened much wider than normal,
but for a change, nothing came forth. Engineer
Scott's hand slipped and nearly reversed the
Enterprise's artificial gravity before
he caught himself. M'ress murmured a meow of
puzzlement, while Arex let out a long, low
whistle.
  "Close Shuttle Bay doors," Kirk
finally managed to stammer, noticing that the giant
panels in the bay were parting. Arex worked at his
controls, turned back worriedly.
  "Negative, Captain. Mudd has engaged the
landing engines on the armored lander. Shuttle Bay
doors will not close while a craft is exiting."
  Of course they wouldn't. Spock's outburst and the
subsequent shock had delayed his reactions a few
seconds too long. The emergency override was
designed to prevent the massive doors from
accidentally closing on a departing ship once they were
engaged.
  "Mudd's decided he's got a better chance
by going planetside, then," Kirk observed. "He
can't make enough speed to lose us, so he's going to try
and hide until we get bored and go away. Then
he'll make for the nearest inhabited world ...
slowly, but he'll get there. And we can't wait here
forever to find him."
  "We can't wait at all," came the yell from the
library computer station. 4'ationot while
he's got my Christine!"
  "We must go after them, Captain." Spock was
harranguing KJ-RK. "I'll lead a landing party."
  STAR TREK LOG 1 27
  McCoy moved toward the library computer station,
his gaze never leaving the science officer. "Spock,
you're obviously not yourself[*thorngg'maybe a little
rest."
  "Captain," he said, wim an uncharacteristically
angry glance at McCoy, "I insist on going."
His eyes went to the viewscreen, which showed only the
vague, rustred surface of the planet below.
  "Christine ... Christine Chapel. I can't stand
the thought of any danger to her, to the woman I
love."
  If there had been surprise and shock on the
bridge before, everyone now registered a state of
total stupefaction. All attention focused on the
commanding figure of Spock.
  "Love?" a gawking Kirk managed to blurt.
  "Spock?" McCoy managed to get a great
deal into the mere mention of the first offlcer's name.
  Seemingly unaware of the astounded reactions he had
provoked, the first officer of the Enterprise smiled,
a distant dreamy smile that on anyone
else would have seemed charming[*thorngg'b on him
gave hints of the most nefarious possibilities.
  "Yes, I want to protect her. I must hold
her in my arms." A cloud seemed to fall across his
face, and he halted in mid-sentence as if aghast
at what he'd been saying. For a moment his
expression tightened and he was me old Spock.
  But only for a moment. Then he slumped into another
smile. Kirk stared at him, worried.
  "Ordinarily I wouldn't consider an immediate
pursuit ... not until our sensors have locked
Mudd in. We might even be able to pull him
back via transporter. But if you absolutely
insist on going down there yourself . . I,
  "I do."
  "Then I'll transport down with you," Kirk
finished, with a sigh.
  "Excellent. We have no time to waste,
Captain."
  He spun and moved for the elevator. Kirk
left the corn
  128 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  mend chair and started to follow, but McCoy
intercepted him.
  "Jim ... do you think this is wised In
his present, unhealthy condition?"
  "I wouldn't say it was so unhealthy, Bones.
Unusual for Spock, certainly, but unhealthy .
. . his I don't know."
  "Well I do, Jim. It's a sign of
  abnormality[*thorn]-pletely unnatural
for him. Love among Vulcans is more, well, more
constrained than this."
  "All right," Kirk nodded in agreement.
"I'll go along with that. You try and stop him."
  McCoy started to reply, found he didn't have
one. "I see what you mean."
  "It's better we don't try to restrain
hm[*thorngg'and I'll be with him." He turned.
"Mr. Scott, you're in command till I
return."
  "Aye, sir." The chief engineer moved to the command
chair as Kirk and McCoy exited in pursuit of
Spock.
  Astonished silence angered on the bridge
following the departure of the three senior officers.
  "Spock ..." Scott finally muttered.
"Spock ... in love? What do you suppose could
have caused a thing like that?"
  "I can't begin to imagine," murmured
Mearess. She was about to offer additional tilde
comment when something faint and aromatic crossed her
nostrils. She sniffed. There was a faint hissing
sound that accompanied the strange odor. No one
else noticed it, none of them being as sensitive as
M'ress. And even she failed to detect the slight
vapor, nearly invisible, puffing from one of the air
vents.
  Now the smell was strong enough for Scott to notice,
too. He took a deep, curious whiff . . .
and let his face relax in a broad, easy
smile. "In . . . Iove."
  M'ress shook her head, the buff on the back
of her neck bristling slightly. Then she began
to purr softly at
  STAR TRBRL tilde TUBE 129
  nothing in particular. In fact, the attitude of
everyone left on the bridge appeared to grow . . .
contented.
  Spock was waiting for them in the corridor.
"Please, Captain. We cannot spare time for
dawdling."
  McCoy made a last plea. "I wish you'd
let me run some tests on you first, Spock.
You're not well."
  "On the contrary, Doctor, I've never felt
quite soalive in my life. Captain?" Kirk
shrugged, and the two officers headed for the transporter
room. McCoy had been intercepted by a yeoman
from security and remained behind engaged in deep
discussion with her.
  Spock and Kirk entered the transporter room
to- gether. Chief Kyle glanced up easily at
their arrival, did a double take at the wild look
in Spock's eyes.
  Kirk moved quickly to him. "Captain,
I[*thorn]" Kyle broke off, continuing to stare
at the nervously pacing first officer. He whispered,
"What's with Mr.gg*thorn]"
  "No time for explanations now, Chief. I'll
tell you later ... I hope. Have you been tracking
the lander that left just a few minutes ago?"
  "Yes, sir. Standard emergency procedure, but
. . . ?"
  "Where are they now?"
  "Close to touch-down[*thorngg'right near the
surface, I'd guess."
  "Okay, put Mr. Spock and myself down next
to it."
  "As you wish, sir." Kyle quieted,
engaged in keeping close track of the landing craft
while Spock continued his pacing. If they could set
down just as Mudd was making up his mind which way
to jump . . .
  Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Spock
walked over to look across the transporter console
at Kyle. "If he's harmed one hair on her
beautiful, sensitive head[*thorn]"
  E the first officer's intention was to spur the
transporter chief to further effort, it had the
opposite effect. Kyle's hands fluttered
weakly over the controls as he stared at the first with an
expression of amazement.
  "Mr. Spock, I . . ."
  130 STAR TREK EM THREE
  But Spock had whirled and stalked into the
transporter alcove. He was waiting
impatiently on one of the disks. It was several
seconds before Kyle could recover from the brief, if
devastating, verbal onslaught and resume tracking
the landing craft. And he still had setdown
coordinates to compute.
  He wanted to question Kirk further, but was
interrupted by the soft closing of portal as McCoy
joined them.
  "What is it, Bones?" the Captain asked.
  "A search party found this in the shuttlecraft
bay. One of the yeomen thought a chemical analysis
might be in order, so she brought it to me. It
wasn't nec3'
  He held out his open hand. A familiar
  glittering shape rested there. Kirk took it,
held it up to the overhead light and inspected it
closely. As he was doing so, his gaze passed over
to the waiting, impatient Spock.
  "One of Harry Mudd's so-called love
crystals, broken." And understanding suddenly dawned.
  "Jim, one of the party also found traces of
pulverized crystal near one of the recirculation
grids. I'd guess from the amount of residue that
one or more of these things was broken against it. Nothing's
happened so far, but I'm going to have the purification
system purged, anyway.
  "Good idea, Bones. That should handle any latent
effects."
  "I hope so, Jim. I passed several of the
crew in the corridors, and some of them are looking
mighty strange."
  "For Vulcan's sake," came Spock's
pleading voice, "let us hurry,
Captain."
  "Easy, Spock," Kirk replied soothingly.
"We can't go anywhere till we know where Mudd has
set down." His stare lingered a moment on the troubled
first officer before returning to McCoy.
  "Check it out, Bones. And send me an immediate re
  STAR TREK L tilde THREE 131
  port if it looks like there might be trouble."
  McCoy nodded and left the room. Kirk moved
to step into the transporter alcove, taking a disk
next to Spock.
  The same landing coordinates Kyle was
  computing were being studied on the bridge. Lt.
M'ress had taken over Spock's library station,
and Scott was standing next to her. She was staring into the
hooded viewer.
  "Sensors indicate Mudd has landed on the
surface." She depressed a couple of levers in
combination. "Confirming coordinates sent
to transporter room."
  Scott laughed quietly. "And the captain's in
transports about it[*thorngg'tgr with our
ever-lovin' Mr. Spock." He chuckled again.
M'ress found herself laughing with him, an irregular
mewing sound.
  She stood up, turned away from the hooded
viewer, and reached out with one paw. Tiny clipped
claws sprouted silently. Hesitantly, then with
more conviction, she ran the sharp hooks along his neck
and shoulders.
  "It's ... funny. I hadn't rrealized it
beforre, but you'rre funny. And verry
attrractive fort a human, Mr. Scott."
He laughed again and smiled warmly back at her.
  "Hey, easy, lass . . . that tickles."
  She purred and moved a little closer . ..
  V111
  It was day on the new world. Both suns were up,
and the light beat at the sand like a hammer. A towering
cliff of sheer, jet-black rock rose out of the
dunes. It was perhaps twenty meters high, slightly
rounded and shining.
  Twin shadows lanced out in different
  directions. Another weird double shadow formed,
shifting and sharp against the ground, as the heavy landing
craft made its gentle touch-down. It squatted
silently in the dead air like a great ugly beetle.
  All was still; nothing moved for several long
minutes. Then a small dark cavity appeared in
one side of the beetle and two tiny
figures exited. They were immediately joined by four
shadows.
  "They'll find you soon enough, my little poppin,"
said Mudd. The temperature, thanks to the
planet's distance from the twin suns, was not unbearable,
and the atmosphere cut down
  enough on the radiation so that anyone caught
unprotected in the sun would not find himself neatly
toasted before lunch. But without shelter, a human would
tan mighty fast on this world.
  "You'll be quite safe," he insisted, "and by the time you
are rescued I'll be long gone."
  "Gone where," Chapel asked sardonically,
looking around. "This planet's one big desert,
deserted."
  "There's always an opportunity for an
  ingenious man," he told her thoughtfully.
"Better free on a desert than safe in a
brig. Once, on Omega VII, I turned a
handsome profit selling the natives their own oceans."
  Nurse Chapel could not decide whether this
typically 132
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 133
  outrageous claim was partly truthful or pure
fabrication. Certainly it was no more
absurd than her present situation.
  "Well if you're thinking of selling any locals
these deserts, you'd better abandon it, Harry.
We've detected no traces of intelligent
life here."
  "Then you can relax, eh?" Mudd said
  expansively, "since that means there's no
danger."
  There was a concerned note in her voice. "I said
no intelligent life. We did, I hear, find
traces of nonsentient organic forms."
  Mudd grunted. "It hardly looks like you'll be
overwhelmed in the short time you'll be waiting for
pickup, darlin'," He gestured around them and for the first
time they both took a long look at their place of
planetfall.
  The landscape that greeted this survey had not been
designed to please human desires. There were
occasional clusters of towering black stone, some
scrubby vegetation thrown in as an
  afterthought by an uncaring nature and oceans, oceans
of sand. Brown sand, reddish sand, yellow and black
sand. There was nothing else.
  She turned back to him. "You're not leaving me
alone in this?"
  "Don't worry, darlin'. We'll get you set
up first class. No, don't bother to thank me."
  "I hadn't planned on it," she replied,
eyeing the phaser which Mudd held with seeming
unconcern in one hand. If she could trip him and
made a grab for it before they went back inside the
lander . . .
  Mudd wasn't quite that relaxed, however. "Ah,
ah ... naughty thoughts, Christine." He waved a
warning finger at her and took a wary step backward,
then gestured up the ramp and made a little bow.
  She sighed, resigned. It appeared that she was
going to be the ignominious subject of a rescue from
the En
  134 STAR TREK THREE
  terprise, while Mudd made good his escape.
And he might, at that.
  If Mudd could find a deep cave, he could
hide the lander. And with its power turned off, the tiny
block of metal would be practically invisible to the
Enterpnse's sensors. His only problem then would be
confusing the ship's life sensors, and Chapel did
not doubt that someone as
  resourceful as Harry Mudd would find a way
to manage that.
  This escapade surely would not look good on her
record.
  Mudd left the hatch door open behind them,
enjoying the influx of fresh air after days in space.
He wasn't worried about Chapel
  escaping[*thorngg'where would she escape to?
  The first low ridge of black rocks lay about a
half a kilometer from the landing craft. If either of
them had been looking in that direction just now, they
might have noticed a faint movement about two-thirds
of the way up the front of the ridge.
  Surely it was a trick of the light from the double
suns. Or perhaps a slight rockfall. But the
rippled black surface moved again. It wasn't
a trick of light, nor a fall of small
rocks, but rather a wholly different and unbelievable
phenomenon. Part of the black "rock" slid
upward, like a massive door. The smooth,
glassy surface
  revealed beneath exhibited a moisture that had nothing
to do with hidden springs. The surface moved again,
downward, as the massive eye inclined to stare at the
tiny landing craft.
  "I've got "em pinned, Captain. No
mistake, they've set down. And according
to sensors Mudd's staying in place for a few
minutes, anyway. His engines are off." Kyle was
too busy to notice the slight fragrant aroma that
had drifted into the room, and his voice covered the
hiss from an overhead ventilation grid.
  "Ready to transport down."
  STAR TREK L00 FREE 135
  "Ready," both Kirk and Spock acknowledged.
A high, musical whine filled the transporter
chamber. Two chromatic columns of light
appropriated the figures of the two officers as
Kyle moved levers upward.
  One of the figures seemed to sniff uncertainly
at the air just before he was effectively
  dematerialized. Kyle brought the levers down
sharply, and the electronic cadence vanished.
  A different kind of music had taken over the
bridge. Part of it could be traced to Arex, whose
present navigational concerns were restricted
to plucking and strumming the proper notes on an
odd, double-stringed guitar. It wasn't an easy
instrument to play, even for him, but without three hands it
would have been ad but impossible.
  He was managing, however, singing a sweet wordless
chant in time to the music. In the center of the
door, several of the younger officers were dancing lightly
to the unusual rhythm, taking no notice of its
alienness. And someone had broken out an adequate
supply of intoxicants. It was developing into quite a
party[*thorngg'even better, some insisted, than their
recent private reveries on the Omicron
pleasure world.
  M'ress was leaning over the communications console
while Scott, humming his own highland tune,
massaged her shoulders. Her steady purring broke
only once, when the chief accidentally rubbed her
fur the wrong way. Otherwise, she was the picture
of contentment.
  Arex's wordless chant spiraled to a coda. It
drew a smattering of applause from some of the
listeners, who proceeded on to other activities.
  Somewhere, in the back of the navigator's mind, a
nonmusical note of insistence was howling for
attention. Irritated, he glanced around the
bridge, hoping something would key his memory. Oh
yes, that was it.
  "By the way," he murmured, speaking to the room
  136 STAR TREK L tilde THREE
  in general, "is anybody keeping a check on the
captain and Mr. Spock?"
  "Surre, Arrex, Surre," purred
M'ress. "See?" She flicked a hand at a
screen control indifferently, once, twice,
hitting the activating switch on the third try.
Scott took no notice of this highly arbitrary
activity, continued to rub her shoulders and back.
How soft the communications officer was! Scott
did not seem concerned in the slightest that this was not an
appropriate thought for a ship's chief engineer to have in
regard to his back-up communications officer.
  The small communications viewscreen lit up, but
M'ress did not notice that. She was not bothering
to look at it, seemingly having already forgotten why
she turned it on. Arex didn't remind her.
He'd goodnaturedly responded to a request for
another song. No one bothered to comment that the interference
pattern which was all that showed on the screen, was not even
in focus.
  Neither was Arex's melody, but for some reason no
one seemed to care about that, either. Mostly because the
majority of the music was in their minds.
  The solidifying transporter effect was more
brilliant than usual under the cross-light of the
twin suns as the two starship officers materialised
within walking distance of the armored landing craft.
  Extraordinarily, the usually exacting Chief
Kyle had relaxed his control, because both men set
down at a slant. Kirk adjusted quickly, righting
himself. But Spock, in a gesture wholly out of character,
did not. The first officer nearly fell over, and
Kirk had to reach out to steady him. Spock looked
back at the Captain and smiled warmly.
  "Thanks, Jim. I've never done that before.
It's good to have a friend like you." Kirk's expression
started to twist up, but melted into an odd, warm
smile.
  "Strange, that's the way I feel about you, too.
In fact
  STAR TREK THREE 137
  . . ." his smile grew broader, and he put a
friendly arm around the first officer's shoulders "dis . .
my dear friend, Spock. Come on, let's go get
Mudd and Christine." They started off down the
slight slope in the direction of the lander. Neither man
paid any attention to the slight shift in the surface
of the ebony cliff behind them as the glistening medallion
of the colossal eye opened again.
  Mudd, preparing to unload some basic
survival equipment for Chapel, had just stepped out
of the lander onto the descending ramp. He
did not even have a chance to notice the approaching
officers before the ground began to shake.
  Sand rattled around the base of the heavy vessel.
The startled trader whirled. As he did so,
Chapel shot past him before he could even think to get
the phaser out or yell, or do anything else. She
had spotted Kirk and Spock. But now she saw
something else, and she screamed.
  Ahead, black rock erupted from the earth, heaving
skyward on six stumplike legs. Each was as
big around as a starship warp-engine. Sand continued
to drift down from little clefts and protuberances.
Overall, the leviathan was faintly reptilian in
appearance. However, this was just a human attempt
to categorise, to make something utterly alien
familiar. Actually, the beast resembled nothing that
could be related to the fauna of Earth.
  Its eye was wide open now, staring down at them with
massive, blank malevolence.
  Kirk and Spock heard Chapel scream,
noticed her frantic gestures and turned. At the
same time there was a loud sucking noise, and they saw
the creature lift itself out of the sand. They ran to the
lander.
  There was no time for greetings, and they
immediately ran from the craft as the monstrosity behind them
swung around on pillarlike forelegs. Mudd,
completely
  138 STAR TREK L tilde TnREE
  stunned by the approaching apparition, was stumbling
around on the landing ramp.
  A shadow crept over the lander as a
  three-taloned cloud-paw blotted out the suns.
The change in illumination was enough to shock Mudd
into action. He ran down the ramp and hurried
to catch up with Chapel and the others. Darkness fell just
behind him as the paw began to lower. It seemed
to descend in slow motion. He heard a flat,
ugly crunching sound as
  hundreds of tons of living mountain ground the landing
craft into the sand. The paw, still moving with seemingly
contrived slowness, slid under the pulverized metal.
  The monster lifted the flattened lander up, up.
It looked like a broken toy in the
  shuttlecraft-sized paw. One eye examined it
cursorily, then the paw shook, and the remnant of the
lander flew free. It smashed down near the
terrified humans, and that action seemed
to galvanize the mountain-thing into motion once more.
  Like a starship coming about, the monster
turned, revealing as it did not one but three eyes,
spaced evenly around the irregular, massive head.
It had no recognizable neck[*thorngg'j the
titan body and its six herculean legs. A mouth
opened, circular and irislike, to show a bottomless
pit lined with stalactites and stalagmites of
writhing, twisting cilia.
  A shrill whistling sound echoed from that awesome maw,
like wind from a deep cave.
  Spock, Kirk, and Chapel had slowed
slightly, and Mudd caught up to them. Hand shaking
  wildly, the trader now raised his phaser toward
the more threatening arrival. He tried to steady it
by grabbing the wrist with his free hand, but that only made
the phaser shake twice as hard.
  Ignoring the ineffectual Mudd, Kirk and
Spock moved slightly apart, taking out their own
weapons.
  "Aim for the head!" Kirk instructed, more for
Mudd's benefit than for the calm Spock. Two
beams of red light shot upward, converged on the
massive, eye
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 139
  studded bluff looming overhead. To Chapel they
looked impossibly tiny, threadlike,
to have much effect on that mountainous form. But if nothing
else, the results proved conclusively that the
creature was made of flesh and not unfeeling stone.
  There was a tremendous whistling sound, a
hurricanelike scream, and the beast exploded even
further out of the sand. A long tentacular shape,
something like a branching taproot, ripped out of the soil
with an audible sucking noise. The creature
snapped at itself where the beams had made contact,
triple eyes blinking in dull pain.
  Two of the gigantic legs collapsed, and the thing
half fell to the ground, making the earth quake. The
four humans were tossed about like corn in a popper.
  The monster recovered as quickly as it had reacted,
struggling back up onto all six legs. The great
head, like the bow of a ship, turned ponderously,
searching once again for its mote-sized tormentors.
It had almost located the four bipedal specks
sprawled helplessly on the dark sand when there was a
rumbling from nearby, like distant thunder.
  Suddenly the triorbed skull swung back in the
opposite direction. A volcanic upheaval of
sand was in progress behind it. Another black head
appeared from the earth, followed by an equally
gargantuan form, as a second monster
lifted toward the blue-white sun. Once clear,
it immediately started for the other.
  The four spectators were alternately
fascinated and fearful. Spock was the first to break
free of the hypnotic thrall the incipient conflict
had created. He grabbed the hypnotized Christine.
That action shocked her as much as the dual appearance
of the mountain-sized aliens. But still greater surprises
were to come.
  "Darling!" Spock gasped, "are you all right?"
  "I'm fine, Mr. Spo[*thorn]" She
suddenly felt faint. "D . . . darling?
  140 STAR TREK LOG THEE
  Mudd's expression was more easily interpreted.
"Kirk, get us out of this!"
  "Calm down, Harry," Kirk answered with an
assurance he didn't feel. He freed his
  communicator, shook some clinging sand free, and
flipped it open. As long as the monsters were occupied
with one another, the humans were in no danger
despite their proximity to them. A few seconds
and they would be back on the ship.
  "Transporter room[*thorngg'Captain
speaking. Beam us up, Kyle, and show some speed."
  On board the Enterprise, his voice
sounded clearly over the open transporter room
pickup. But it was lost in the music pouring gaily
through the intership intercom.
  Transporter Chief Kyle and an
attractive young yeoman named Marion were dancing
to the
  music. Kyle heard, or thought he heard,
Kirk's voice, punctuated by the insistent
clamor of the intercom alarm buzzer. But the strident
sound blended easily, naturally, into the music.
  Kyle held Yeoman Marion a little closer,
smiling down at her. There was country fiddling and a
Bruch concerto mixed somehow into the
music[*thorngg'and something more. She returned his
smile lovingly.
  "No response," Kirk muttered, a little
worriedly. The communicators were tough little
instruments, wellsealed. It was virtually impossible
for anything like sand to get inside. Kirk shook it,
an age-old gesture of semimagic, and tried
again.
  4'Chief Kyle, this is an emergency! Beam
up!"
  Not a hum of recognition in answer, nothing to show
that the Enterprise stin existed in this
universe.
  "What's going on up there!" Then he noticed that
no one down here was paying him much attention, either.
  Chapel appeared to have regained control of
hersegg'f[*thorngg'and lost it in the process.
The
  contradiction was implied, but not real. She was
clinging to Spock and
  STAR TREK L tilde TnREE 141
  gazing up at him with a thoroughly unprofessional
expression.
  Mudd was pointing in the direction of the ruined landing
craft and making indecipherable gobbling sounds. He
was communicating, nonetheless.
  After eyeing each other uncertainly for several long
moments, the two moving mountains had turned slowly
until both were once again facing the tiny aliens.
  "Don't be upset with Chief Kyle, Jim,"
said Spock airily. "It takes a moment or
two to lock in coordinates. It doesn't
matter." He looked down at Chapel
reassuringly. "Nothing matters, now that you're
safe, Christine.""
  'CY-ES[*THORNGG'OH yes. How
wonderful."
  "They're coming for us again!" Mudd
  stammered, backing up and making shoving
  gestures in the direction of the black
  monsters[*thorngg'gestures that were instinctive more
than anything else.
  The two giants were indeed moving toward them again,
one ponderous step at a time. Kirk searched the
landscape around them desperately. A thick cluster
of towering yellow-brown
knife-blades[*thorngg'the still standing core of some
long-dead, long-eroded volcano[*thorngg'thrust
out of the sand not too far behind them.
  The weathered rock[*thorngg'if indeed it was
rock, and not another monster[*thorngg'had been
shattered-in the past by some powerful convulsion that
slivered it with deep cracks and crevices. There
seemed to be a number of places to hide in.
Anything was better than standing on the flat sand,
waiting for a mountainous paw to flatten them.
  "Over therel" Kirk yelled, starting toward the
volcanic plug. Spock helped Chapel along
while Mudd brought up the rear.
  They made rapid progress over the sand, which
fortunately grew firmer the nearer they came. And
their approach provoked no display of
eyes, legs, mouth, or
  142 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  any other organic appurtenances. Kirk
continued to rail at the silent communicator.
  "Emergency beam up[*thorngg'Enterprise,
come in!" He looked back over a shoulder. The
first thing he saw was that Spock and Chapel were running
while tightly locked together. Absurdity combined with
apprehension to spark bitter comment.
  "Can't you take your hands off her, even now?"
  "This is my affair, Captain," Spock
panted, maintaining his dignity.
  Chapel listened to this interplay without really understanding
what was happening, or why. "Please, I think we
should get a few things straight . . ."
  But she found it hard to talk while running. They
hurried into a deep crevice filled with sand,
stumbling back down arrow-straight depths that showed
no signs of narrowing. They had been
lucky[*thorngg'the first choice of a refuge was
good and deep.
  "Jim," Spock began, and then a switch was
thrown in his mind and he paused in confusion. "No
... no ... Captain." He pronounced the
title carefullyea[*thorngg'emphasizing
it[*thorngg'b then half-smiled again.
  "We're both reacting abnormally. Look at
me. It's the potion. The love drug . .,
insidious. It[*thorn]" From behind them a loud
voice interrupted incredulously.
  "The love potion ... insidious?" Mudd gaped
at them. Kirk and Spock ignored the trader.
  Spock was fighting with himself. "Once . . .
once you recognize its effects for what they are,
you're able to resist it somewhat, as I am doing now."
  "It worked," Mudd mumbled inanely, his facial
expression one of dazed comprehension. "Oh my
Great Aunt Anabella, bless her departed
  black-hearted soul, it worked!" He slumped
dejectedly to the sand.
  "And I was going to sell the few crystals I had
left to those lump-headed miners for a miserable three
hundred credits apiece." Both hands beat at the
sides of his head.
  STAR TREK L tilde THREE 143
  "You mean you thought all along they were phony?" a
puzzled Kirk asked, his attention momentarily
drawn away from the communicator.
  Mudd looked across at him, his voice a pitying
moan. "Did you think I'd believe a
crazy old Sirius medicine man? Of course
I thought they were phony. Especially after all they
did on Ilyria was make people sick." He was
wallowing in
  self-misery.
  "Old and crazy[*thorngg'wdn't even say
where the benighted things came from. I knew they could
produce a temporary pleasant effect, and a little
dizzisgg*thorngg'b love?" He beseeched the
heavens. "It's not fair, I tell you, it's not
fairI"
  The con-man conned[*thorngg'Kirk had
to grin. He peered down the cleft. Neither of the
creatures was in view. They had not seemed
particularly intelligent, and their reaction time was
slow, very slow. If only they didn't accidentally
pass this way. Perhaps it would seem to them that the
  fast-moving tiny
animals[*thorngg'themvs[*thorn] had
simply disappeared. If their memories were com-
  mensurate with their reactions, the two living
mountains might go back to being pieces of scenery
again.
  "Cheer up, Harry. You wouldn't have known what to do
with any honest money anyway." Mudd was
too depressed to offer a rejoinder. He felt
sick.
  Perhaps the scene in the En.terprise's Sick
Bay might have cheered him up. Light music
played over the intercom. Some of the medical
personnel present were dancing close together. Others
were playing idly with the medical computers.
  A couple of the more adventurous were doing
nonregulation things with the body-function machinery that
slid over the hospital tables.
  The nominal head of this sybaritic setting was
Dr. McCoy. At the moment he had one arm
  companionably around Nurse Mayer.
  "Now Lyra, did I ever tell you about the time
I
  144 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  saved Captain Kirk's life? And Commander
  Spock's?" Nurse Mayer shook her head,
looking up at him with a mixture of awed admiration
and affection. Her normal reaction to such a
  statement of McCoy's would have been a
  hard-boiled snort of derision.
  "And my dear friend Scotty, too," McCoy
continued blithely. "And that pretty little Lieutenant
Uhura. Why, I guess I've saved
just about everybody on this ship, one time or another."
He looked around the room, saw
  nothing unusual in the highly unmedical
activity.
  "If the Enterprise had a heart, I'd save
her, too."
  He found himself sniffing away a tear, smiled
down at her his companion. "Let's talk about your
heart, my dear Lyra[*thorn]"
  Kirk walked over to Mudd, backed the trader
up against one wall. ""How long does the effect
of the potion last, Harry?"
  "I . . . I don't know." Kirk reflected
that he was still probably in shock. Not from the sudden
appearance of the monsters, but from the
  revelation that he had probably been involved in
an honest deal. "I didn't know it was going to have
any lasting effects at all, so I didn't
ask."
  "Well how long," pressed an exasperated
Kirk, "did the "crazy old medicine man"
say it was supposed to last?"
  "Not long."
  "What do you mean, "not long"? He must have
told you something about its
effects[*thorngg'whether you thought they were foolish
or not."
  "Actually[*thorngg'y're hurting my arm,
Captain[*thorngg'he was starting to, but I
wanted to complete the transaction as smoothly as
possible before he discovered the credit slips I paid
him with were counterfeit."
  "Then how[*thorn]" but Kirk was interrupted
by a startled
  STAR TREK Em THEE 145
  shout from Chapel. He turned from Mudd, saw
her pointing toward the entrance of the cleft.
  Both monsters lumbered into view, blocking out much
of the light as they moved between the setting suns and the
crevice. Their heads, black icebergs, swayed
slowly from side to side in searching motions. Then they
stopped. The head of the nearest one stared into the cleft,
three great glassy eyes pinning the humans under an
overpowering, unthinking gaze.
  Kirk handed his communicator to Chapel. "Keep
trying to contact the Enterprise, Nurse." He
looked from Mudd to Spock.
  "Maybe we can divert them, somehow."
  "That is an outstandingly stupid idea,
Captain," Spock commented. He stopped,
flustered. "I'm sorry, Captain, it's the
drug. I simply doubt that we can successfully
appeal to their better nature[*thorngg'if they have
one. Nor do I think they would respond to having their
backs scratched[*thorngg'x would take a landing
craft to make an impression. And phaser fire
only seems to make them
  madder."
  "I wasn't thinking of anything like that, Spock.
There's a terran expression that dates from ancient
times, "make love, not war." Harry, do you have
any of those crystals left?"
  "Check his shoes, Captain. They're like his
head," Chapel suggested. But it wasn't necessary.
Mudd was voluntarily going Trough his
  pockets[*thorngg'and he found something. One hand
  came out, started to open, and then clamped tight.
He started to slide away, along the wall.
  "No, they're worth a fortune. My friends, dear
Christine[*thorn]" He was appealing to all of
them. "I'll share it with you, I'll[*thorn]"
  Kirk reached out easily and clamped a hand around
Mudd's wrist, smiling tightly.
  "Ah, Captain, you're hurting me again. This
archaic
  146 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  resort to crude physical force isn't like you,
Captain." Mudd was trying very hard to keep
smiling.
  "Another second, Harry, and I'll crudely
break it. Don't worry. When you're
unconscious, you don't feel any pain."
  "Since you put it that way,
Captain[*thorn]" His palm opened
reluctantly, and Kink took the three crystals
thus revealed. Mudd bit his lower lip as he
watched them go. "Perhaps just ones, Captain?
To encourage my continuing an honest career?"
  But Kirk was already moving toward the
  entrance of the now blocked crevice.
  IX
  On the bridge, the air was empty of all
music. Not having effected actual contact with the
love potion, but only inhaled a diluted vapor from
it, the rest of the crew was rapidly reverting
to normal.
  M'ress started to stretch, stopped, and snarled.
One paw went to her head, and she rubbed it tiredly.
It seemed she'd been at some kind of party.
  Scott walked over to her, exhibiting
similar signs of an inner pain. "I've got a
hangover to rank with the finest," he mumbled loudly.
His voice rose to a near shout as he further
declared, "And I dinna touch a dram o' that
scotch!"
  "Not so loud, you idiot!" M'ress pleaded, now
putting both hands to her ringing head.
  "Idiot, is it? Well? all of a sudden I'm
not so crazy about you, either, Lieutenant." Scott
glared at her.
  The ground-to-ship channel crackled for
attention. "Surface party
to Enterprzse[*thorn)'surface to Enterprise,"
came a weary voice barely
  recognisable as belonging to Head Nurse
  Christine Chapel. "Emergency beam up . . .
repeat, request emergency beam up."
  Both officers reacted simultaneously,
looking at each other in surprise.
  M'ress broke free of it, slapped over a
switch, and snarled into the mike. "Enterprise here
.. . is that you, Nurse Chapel? What's going
on?"
  Chapel nearly stumbled in her excitement.
"Captain, I made contact!"
  "Marvelous," a grim-faced Kirk replied,
from up ahead. "I hope we last long enough to be
beamed up."

  14g STAR TREK L tilde THREE
  The first leviathan was nearing the cleft. Any
moment now a massive paw might rise up,
  descend on the rim of their refuge. The rock
overhead seemed strong enough to keep even that heavy blow
from them, but they were sure to be buried under an
avalanche of loosened stone.
  "It's seen me," Kirk yelled back to the
others, hugging to the side of the cleft. "I need
something to draw its attention. Phasers, Spock."
  Spock moved to stand in the open, and a trembling
Mudd forced himself to follow.
  Holding the crystals in his right hand, phaser ready
in his left, Kirk dashed out of the crevice.
  He ran directly toward the first creature.
Eyes the size of shuttle-bay doors inclined
slowly to follow him.
  Kirk ran to his right now, staying close against the
base of the plug. As soon as the great head had
turned to the side to follow him, Spock and Mudd
fired.
  Once again two beams of concentrated energy made
contact with the skull. Once more the monster bucked,
shrieking. The cavernous mouth opened.
  Running down from the shielding stone and toward the
living mountain, Kirk arched his arm, throwing the
crystals with all his strength. They flew up and
disappeared somewhere down that endless dark tunnel.
  The mouth shut tight. The head swung back down
toward Kirk and stopped. He watched it, paralyzed
by those pondlike eyes. It hadn't made anything as
recognizable as a swallowing
  motion[*thorngg'b then they had no idea what the
monster's digestive system was like. In any case,
there was no point in hesitating. All bets were
placed; it was time to declare their hand.
  Kirk ran toward the nearest enormous limb and
slapped it firmly with both hands, twice. If this
failed to work he was likely to die any minute.
At least it might give Spock, Chapel, and
Mudd a chance to beam up.
  "Kyle!" M'ress was shouting into the intership
communicator, "Transporter Chief Kyle,
  acknowledger"
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 149
  In the transporter room, Kyle
searched
  frantically for the suddenly elusive intercom
controls, finally located them. "Kyle here ... I
think. What's wrong, Lieu ten ant? his
  "Are you utterly incompetent?" M'ress
howled, ignoring her own recent lapse in
efficiency. "Didn't you hear[*thorngg'the
Captain's requesting emergency beam up!"
  "Emergency[*thorngg'I've been," a hand
went to his forehead. "I've been ill."
  "We've all been ill. For Amara's sake,
Chief, beam them up!"
  "Yes ... yes," groaned Kyle, his head
ringing with M'ress's command. "I'll do anything ...
only please stop shouting." He broke off and
began working frantically at the transporter
controls.
  Kirk stumbled backward. The massive leg he
had just touched was lifting skyward, seemingly
propelled by a hidden crane. It hung poised there
for a moment, then started to descend. He looked in
all directions, but there was no place to run, and he
was too far out to get back to the cleft.
  The cliffside near him now was a solid wall,
without even a cubbyhole to squirm into.
The paw came down slowly, slowly. He closed
his eyes and waited for death.
  There was a deep, muffled thump[*thorngg'then
  nothing. He blinked.
  The nearest talon, one of three massive
hooks sprouting from the paw, had slammed down just
next to him. It moved sideways, knocking him on
his back gently.
  Kirk looked upward, above the claw, to the
looming face. It stared down at him blankly,
expressionless and alien. Rolling over carefully,
he caught his breath and then threw a handful of sand
into the air, letting out a joyful whoop.
  Spock, Mudd, and Chapel had moved to the edge
of
  150 STAR TREK LOGHREB
  the crevice to watch the drama play itself out. They
started to cheer, and Kirk ran jubilantly to join
them.
  "It worked, by God, it worked!" Mudd seemed
to be sniffling and mumbling something about his lost riches,
but the others were sharing Kirk's excitement.
  They were stunned to silence by a screaming whistle.
  They had forgotten about the second monster.
  Cilia fluttering around the inside of its
mouth, the other monster had turned toward the cleft
entrance and was heading for them. Kirk
  scrambled backward with the others, drawing his
phaser. Spock and Mudd lifted theirs a moment
later.
  Another whistling shriek shattered the dry air.
The second beast halted its ponderous attack as
a gigantic paw swung past barely missing it.
The first monster had spun around and now blocked the
path of the second.
  The wave of sand thrown up by the first creature
inundated Kirk and the others, knocking them off their
feet and burying Spock up to his waist. Mudd
lost his phaser and Kirk his. They scrambled
to free themselves.
  A reverberating tremor followed as the two
beastmountains slammed into each other,
  multiple legs clawing at sides and face,
circular mouths straining for a vacuuming grip on
uneven body surfaces.
  Kirk nearly fell again as they retreated back
into the cleft. A rear leg swung wildly and
tore away meters of cliff-face near the top
of the crevice. A shower of rock came down,
barricading the humans inside the cleft.
  The earth shook as the two titans threw blow after
blow at one another. Every time one of the multipleton
paws connected, there was a clap like thunder.
  The second beast struck a powerful blow,
knocking the first aside, and was battered off its feet
in turn. As it tumbled, the gigantic skull
crashed against the front of the sheltering cleft and
jammed there, cracking free more rock. A monstrous
evil eye glared directly at them.
  STAR TREK THRBB 151
  One huge front leg shoved the creature to its
feet again. The other lifted and reached inward, straining
for the four trapped figures, descending toward four
sparkling pillars of rainbow-hued light, finally landing
to scoop out a deep pit in the sand where Kirk,
Spock, Mudd, and Chapel had stood helplessly
only seconds before.
  "And then, on Ophiucus VI," Mudd
continued, his cheerful form wavering from behind the
vision-distorting force-field, "I conned two
miners out of a year's supply of dilithium
crystals with fake Federation credit vouchers." He
grinned in remembrance.
  "They weren't too hysterical about that, though,
miners are very philosophical types.
We might have settled the misunderstanding amicably,
if only they hadn't discovered so soon that the
Andalusian pleasure slave I'd given them in
exchange for the fake vouchers was a pneumatic
automaton. That's when they became rather
nonplussed[*thorngg'though that wasn't the exact
term they used[*thorngg'and I was forced to bid a
hasty adieu to their charming frontier world."
  "May I be of help in recording the confession,
Nurse Chapel?" Spock inquired helpfully.
He had just exited from the elevator, curious to find
out how the recording was going. Chapel put a
temporary hold on the recorder and looked up at
him bitterly.
  "You? You'd be the last person I'd choose."
  Her gaze traveled from the first offlcer's foot
to his head, then turned sharply away. Spock
merely raised his eyebrows, then turned his attention
over to Mudd.
  "A few minutes of love, now to be paid forwith many
hours of hatred[*thorngg'the usual way of
human emotions, it seems. I do not think your
potion would be a very good buy even at half the
price, Harry Mudd."
  "Ah well, Spock, you know how it
is," Mudd replied easily. "So few things in
this universe live up to their reputations."
  152 STAR TREK L tilde TnREE
  "Except you, Harry. I should say that you live
up to yours in a style few other sentients can boast
of[*thorngg'or would want to."
  "As neat a backhanded compliment as ever I've
had, Spock," Mudd appplauded. His head
cocked questioningly to one side. "Think I'll get
rehabilitation therapy again?"
  "I would almost guarantee it, Harry Mudd,
though I fail to observe any beneficial effects
in you of such past treatment."
  "No, it doesn't seem to work too well on
me, does it?" Mudd agreed. "It's not easy,
you know, Spock, when you're born with a name like
Mudd. At least I do have, as you say, the virtue
of consistency."
  "In your case, Harry, it's hardly a
virtue."
  "Rehabilitation therapy," murmured Chapel,
her eyes gleaming. One hand opened and closed
rhythmically. She stared through the force-field.
  "I think maybe it would do Harry more good if he
had a dose of good old-fashioned cruel
and unusual punishment instead."
  "Now, now, my dear Christine," Mudd said,
"is that a proper attitude for a dispenser of healing
to have? Besides, I'm an official Federation
prisoner, and as such I'm entitled to a
ll[*thorn]"
  "Maybe you'd better finish this for me, after all,
Mr. Spock," she said, staring at Mudd with a
look Florence Nightingale would have found
appalling. She handed him the tricorder, clenching
both hands nenously behind her back.
  "I should think you would be getting used
to rehabilitation therapy by now," Spock mused
conversationally, his scientific curiosity aroused.
  "You never get used to it, Spock, but that
doesn't matter. That's not what's really bothering
me."
  "There is something troubling you more than the prospect
of renewed therapy?" Spock noted. "Most
interesting."
  STAR TREKOG THEE 153
  "You see," Mudd continued, "it's only that I
hate to leave you all." He smiled dangerously.
"All my loved ones . . ."
  Despite the fact that Mudd was declared
absolutely off limits to all members of the
crew, that his meals were always served up by
  automatons, and that no one visited him for
whatever reason except in twos, Kirk didn't
relax until they had entered orbit around
Starfleet sector headquarters at Darius.
  They gave him back his own clothes,
  then[*thorngg'minus the astonishing assortment of
  miniature devices concealed within the
  material[*thorngg'turned him over to an
escort party made up of Kirk's best security
people.
  Cheerful to the last, Mudd waved friendly good-byes
to them all as he was turned over to ground-based
Peaceforcer personnel. He was still waving as they led
him through the sliding doors of the Legal Building.
  Watching him depart, Kirk couldn't help but
wonder if Mudd were not already at work trying to convince
his escorts into not only letting him go, but into turning
over their identification cards and weapons as well.
  If he got a single ranking official into a
card game, the planet was lost.
  Kirk hoped for at least a moderate layover.
But as it developed there was no time to rest and enjoy the
pleasures Darius had to offer. Orders were
waiting for him as soon as he and the security party
beamed back aboard.
  ""Communication from Starfieet Science
  Headquarters, Captain," said Sulu as Kirk
reentered the bridge. "Confidential. Mr.
Spock is waiting for you in your quarters."
  "Thank you, Mr. Sulu."
  Well, that was fast. Something especially interesting
must be up if Spock felt the need of discussing the
orders in private.
  The first officer of the Enterprise was seated at the
  154 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  large central desk in Kirk's rooms. He
swiveled to face the Captain as he entered.
  "I trust, Captain, that Harry Mudd is
safe in custody?"
  "I'd feel better if they would give his tongue
rehabilitation therapy instead of his mind. One
appears to operate independently of the other. But I
think we've seen the last of Harcourt Fenton
Mudd[*thorngg'I hope.
  "I understand from Mr. Sulu that you've kept the
new orders secret. By their urgency I gather that
they don't alllow us time for a rest orbit."
  "It would appear not, Captain, though I
have only played the first portion of them." He hefted
a small microtape cassette. "Here is the
  communication from Science Center. I think you win
find it interesting." He slipped the cassette into the
desk play-back slot. Kirk sat down.
  A young science officer appeared on the screen in
front of them. He was standing alone in a chamber that
gave signs of extending above and behind him to considerable
distances. The camera pulled back and showed that this was
indeed the case. It also identified the particular
chamber to Kirk and Spock.
  Rising from floor almost to ceiling was a
full-scale reproduction of the
Megasphere[*thorngg'the gigantic artificial
construct which was an exact model of the Milky
Way. Distances between the stars, nebulae, black
holes, neutron stars, and other objects were
to scale[*thorngg'though the stars and other
intragalactic objects were not. If so rep-
resented, they would have had to have been built so small
as to be visible only under a microscope.
  All galactic coordinates for starship
  navigational computers and all scientific
referents to galactic structure were drawn from the
Megasphere. Only two originals
existed[*thorngg'one on Earth, the other on
Vulcan.
  New stellar discoveries were constantly being added,
a titanic task in itself, as the proper insertion of a
newly charted star into the Megasphere was work for
  STAR TREK L tilde THREB 155
  specially designed computer controlled
  microhandlers. As it was, maintaining accuracy
within the colossal model was a job involving weeks
of preparation merely to design new microbandlers
to perform the actual insertion.
  Banks of special lights flooded the
Megasphere from every angle. The light was picked
up, amplified, and thrown back into near darkness
by special photosensitive material. Bulbs
or any kind of powered light source were too
clumsy and too difficult to use. The
photosensitive material used would never wear out,
never need replacement.
  Half a dozen special gravity field
generators held the stellar model intact, any
one of which could maintain the Megasphere. If for some
unforseeable reason all six failed
simultaneously, the work of years would fall to the
chamber floor im a shower of tiny glowing
pebbles.
  The young officer spoke easily, with the manner of a
confident lecturer.
  "Captain Kirk, Science Offlcer Spock .
. . I am Lieutenant Bell of the Prometheus
Science Center. I think you will be pleased to know that the
new mission that you have been selected to carry out is
of a purely investigative and scientific
nature, with no rescue or Peaceforcer functions
involved." He smiled pleasantly, and Kirk
found himself liking this young man. That, he reminded
himself, was exactly why Lieutenant Bell had
been chosen to deliver recorded orders.
  "But this assignment will require considerable
longrange cruising, so we are concerned that you be on
your way as soon as possible." Bell had a thin,
glowing metal wand with which he turned and pointed into the
Megasphere.
  "Your approximate route . . ."
  PART in
  THE MAGICKS
  OF MEGAS-TU
  (adapted from a script by Larry
  Brody)
  x
  Kirk really did not have the words for it. At times
he had wished he'd been born with a little more of the poet
in him. But after days and days of travel in which they had
seen their objective grow progressively nearer,
Kirk, like everyone else on board, had long since
run out of
  superlatives. Now he was reduced to trying
to relate the panorama in simple human terms.
  The best description he could come up with was that it was
like a soup of infinite ingredients and colon A
sunsoup, a stellar gumbo.
  Oh, they were all there[*thorn)'superhot
blue-whites, blue giants, red dwarfs,
supergiants, plain whites, cepheids, and
irregular variables, binary and triple stars, with the
younger stars
  predominating.
  And a fair sampling of the familiar Sol-type,
innocuous yet heart-breakingly familiar amid the
splendor of iridescent gases and cosmic
debris of all types and descriptions. No,
soup seemed a thoroughly inadequate label for the
center of the galaxy[*thorngg'b at least it
didn't overwhelm. He found himself squinting as he
studied the awesome panorama glowing on the
main view- screen.
  "Turn down the brightness, Mr. Sulu." The
cluster of cosmic matter was so dense now that the
cumulative brightness on the screen hurt the eyes.
  "It's down all the way, sir."
  "Well then, put another filter over the
scope."
  "Aye, sir." Sulu touched a switch.
Immediately the full brilliance of the tightly packed
suns, gasses, and nebulae dimmed to a bearable
level.

  160 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  Kirk shook his head and envied a certain section
of me Enterprise's crew. It was an
astronomer's paradise, and in fact that section of the
ship's scientific complement was working round the clock
by its own choice.
  Kirk, of course, was too occupied with
  administrative details to enjoy more than this
occasional quiet study of the starscape. He sighed,
pressed a well-used button on the arm of the command
chair.
  "Captain's Log, stardate 5524.5. For many
years scientists have theorized that the galazy
was created by a great central explosion. If this was
so, attendant new meories postulate that the
galactic center may still be creating new matter.
  "The Enterprise has the honor of being the first
ship to attempt to penetrate to the heart of me
galaxy. We will try to ascertain me truth or
falsity of this and numerous omer spatial
hypotheses."
  Despite the additional filter on the pickup
telescope itself, the stunning brightness of the surrounding
space continued to intensify. Gaseous and
radioactive particle matter was so Hick here that
at times the Enterprise seemed to be drifting through a
phosphorescent fog, a pale white submersible
in a ocean of deep-sea fish. Readings on
radiation meters remained within tolerable levels, but
an older starship than the Enterprise would soon have
had her crew fatally burned.
  "Heading now zero zero one degrees due east
of the galactic plane, Captain," Sulu broke
in. "Maintaining indicated observation-recording
speed of warp-one."
  They were getting very close. A hand touched the
button again. He would finish the log entry later.
  "Maintain speed, Mr. Sulu.
Correct ship to a heading of zero degrees." No
other starship captain in history had been able
to utter that momentous phrase, and it might be some time
before another repeated it.
  "The center of the galaxy," he murmured, for the
umpteenth time. He looked over to the library com
  STAR TREK LOG THRPB 161
  puter station, where Spock, like the astronomers, had
been working overtime just to record new information.
  "I'm not sure what I'll do or how I'll
react, if we find there actually is a central
something that all matter springs from, like a well. How
about you, Spock? Surely you've thought about it."
  "From an astrophysical standpoint I find it
all quite fascinating, Captain. Personally, I am
more intrigued by what we may encounter there in the
nature of subsidiary phenomena. How does
gravity react at the center, for example.
  "Yet I am afraid we shall be somewhat
  disappointed and find that the precise center is very
much like the area immediately around it, an area such as we
are traversing at this very moment," the science officer
concluded.
  "Galactic center in three minutes,
Captain," Sulu reported.
  "Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Lieutenant
Uhura, sound yellow alert, as planned."
  "Aye, sir, yellow alert." Uhura
proceeded to make the necessary demands on her
  instrumentation. The proper alarm signal pealed out.
  There was a short wait, then the
  communications officer looked back at him.
"All decks and stations report yellow-alert
status effected, Captain."
  "Ready for whatever comes, then," Kirk
  whispered to himself, and added aloud, "I hope."
  "What was that, Captain?"
  "Nothing, Mr. Spock. Nothing."
  At first it seemed as if Spock's dry
evaluation was going to turn out to be correct. Nothing
unique appeared on the screen; they saw nothing not
already previously encountered.
  Then it appeared with unexpected suddeness. Somewhere
directly ahead was a phenomenon different from
anything any of the bridge complement had ever seen.
  162 STAR TREK THREE
  At first glance it resembled a small nebula
trying to turn itself inside out. But it was no normal
nebula according to the sensors. The writhing, twisting
mass of color was in constant violent
motion, spitting out particles and gasses in all
directions.
  "Mr. Spock," said Kirk quickly, but the
science offlcer was already attending to his recorders.
  "Visual contact galactic center,
Captain," he reported. "The volume of energy
and mass here is overwhelming. Instrumentation can only
calibrate a portion of me total
flux[*thorngg'the levels don't read any
higher."
  "All right, Spock, be careful. There's enough
energy out there to overload every sensor on the ship."
He need not have said it; he was only verbalizing what
was obvious to Spock and everyone else.
  Kirk stared at the screen, thoroughly
  mesmerised. There was no form, no pattern, no
structure to that violent, churning whirlpool of
force.
  "Evaluation, Mr. Spock."
  "It is indeed the theorized creation point,
Captain. Detectors indicate it is putting
forth a tremendous amount of particulate matter, from
the subatomic levels mostly. There are also new,
as yet unidentifiable, structures . . . Also
radioactive gasses, free energy.
Fortunately we do not have to make interspace calls
from
  here[*thorngg'Hey would be drowned out a meter from
the hull."
  "Okay, Spock, we know what's coming out. Is
anyming going in?" That would be the critical test.
Spock's answer would eventually make a number of
astronomers happy.
  "Very little, if anything, Captain. There are
indications that the fabric of space in the immediate
vicinity of the creation point is not stable."
  "That's hardly surprising," Kirk observed,
"in view of the forces at work here."
  "Despite the evidence of considerable
  gravitation potential," Spock continued, as if
he were talking about
  STAR TREK LOG TEIRBE 163
  the most common household object, "there is no
sign of hydrogen or anything else being drawn
into the center from the surrounding space. Altogether an
extraordinary phenomenon. I believe we may be
looking at the rarest single structure in the known
universe: a negative black
hole[*thorngg'one that ejects, rather than
attracts matter."
  Kirk nodded. "That would confirm that all matter
m our universe has been drawn from other
universes, and that creation is truly infinite, as
some theories state."
  "Merely because our galaxy draws its substance from
the black hole of another universe, Captain, and
that our black holes may each well be the
galactic center of other star clusters, does not
mean that the universe itself is
infinite[*thorngg'only somewhat larger than we
had suspected."
  Kirk wondered at his first officer. Only
Spock could concede the possible existence of a
billion billion other universes and make it come
out as an understatement.
  He returned his attention to the viewscreen, but it
was only a moment before Spock glanced up from his
hooded viewer again.
  "There is also evidence of other forces at work here,
Captain, which are unclassifiable under standard
astronomical referents. I would strongly suggest
that we[*thorn]" He stopped.
  An automatic stylus was beginning to jiggle up
and down on the console to his left. As he watched
it, the oscillation increased. Finally it
became violent enough to knock the stylus loose from its
holder. It rolled off the slanted console onto the
deck.
  At the same time Spock grabbed at the console
edges. The Enterprise had begun a rocking motion,
sideways, then up and down, then sideways again.
  "Easy," said Kirk to everyone in general and no
one in particular.
  The buffeting grew more violent. "Reverse power,
hold this position, then head zero zero one degrees
  164 STAR TREE TnREE
  left." They would use this strange new force
to help slip around the storm of the center itself.
"Deflector screens on full."
  "Deflectors up, sir," Sulu informed him,
adding, "it's taking considerable power to maintain this
heading, sir."
  "We'll hold it, Mr. Sulu," said Kirk
calmly.
  The buffeting didn't vanish entirely, but the
in- creased power being fed to the warp-engines seemed
sufficient to reduce it to an occasional sharp
tremor. No one was in danger of being thrown from his
seat.
  The Enterprise continued to move around the
fiery core.
  "Good heavens[*thorngg'look at that!" Sulu
exclaimed. Kirk's attention had not varied from the
screen, but he understood Sulu's automatic
shout. "Just a moment, sir . . . I'll widen the
angle." The helmsman worked controls.
  Abruptly their field of vision seemed
to quadruple, and the phenomenon revealed by their new
position became fully visible.
  Once again, superlatives were insufficient..
  Lines of pure force had grown so strong they had
begun to radiate. They stretched from the spastic
central core out to the nearest suns in great flaring
arcs. Everyone on the bridge, who thought he was past
amazement, sat enthralled by the spectacle. The
lines glowed and shifted slightly and were to a solar
prominence what a spider's web would be to a
suspension bridge.
  "I wonder," Kirk murmured, "if the
surrounding stars hold the creation point steady, via
these lines of force, at the center of our galaxy!"
Or was the creation point fighting a constant battle,
through millions and millions of less detectable
lines of force, to hold its myriad suns around it?
  "Charting scanners on, Captain,"
Spock said smoothly. "Commencing official
survey central
  STAR TREK EM THREE 165
  quadrant." Less sophisticated instruments
took over now, as formal mapping was begun.
  The doors to the bridge elevator slid
aside, and McCoy entered, moving quickly.
  "Jim, Spock[*thorn]" Another jolt
rocked the bridge. "What in the name of sanity is
going . . . ?" His voice trailed off. He had
just gotten his first glimpse of the mind-boggling
panorama spread across the screen.
  "What on Earth is that?"
  "Nothing we can detect from Earth itself,
Bones[*thorngg'or even from nearby. We're
here[*thorngg'at the center of the
galaxy[*thorngg'and all the theories and guesses
and hypotheses about this place appear to have been right .
. . with frosting."
  They all watched as the Enterprise continued
to move past the central core.
  For the first time, an uncertain tone seemed to be
present in Spock's voice. "Captain, we
appear to be moving up on a completely new
  phenomenon."
  "Another one?"
  Apparently they were not out miracled yet. Something
different was indeed showing up on the viewscreen.
  Kirk saw that some of the feathery lines of
iridescent force, instead of leaping out toward nearby
stars in smooth arcs, had twisted together. They were
curling and writhing violently about themselves, a
concatenation of energy separate from the core being
manipulated by a galactic potter's wheel.
  The forces created by this secondary confer took on
a definite shape as they moved closer. Instead of the
central chaos, they formed a recognisable,
colossal cone. It was visible only when destroyed
matter at its edges exploded, or when a
force-line flared with a discharge of energy that would dwarf the
output of several suns.
  Yet sensors revealed that instead of putting out
energy-matter like the center point, here it was being
  166 STAR TRBR L tilde THREE
  drawn inward. But it was most definitely not a
black hole, nor a neutron star. It was something
as new as the negative black hole of Spock's
hypothesis, and something even less recognisable.
  A number of stars swirled like dust motes about
its rim, spinning crazily. Occasionally
one would impinge on the edge of the cone itself. The
result was a flare of light[*thorngg'overwhelming
if compared to a human-generated explosion, yet far
from nova-sized.
  Sulu shattered the awed contemplation.
  "Captain, I'm up to warp-six for flyby on
revised course, but that thing seems to be pulling us
in. Yet the gravity detectors show no new
change in the surrounding field. I don't understand the
forces operating here. And it's not a computer
malfunction, sir. Our course is definitely
being affected."
  Even as he spoke, strong vibration rocked the
bridge. Yet it was somehow different from before.
  "Scanners indicate the energy cone is composed
of both matter and energy, like the core itself."
  Spock said, checking his readouts. "But there
appears to be some kind of order at work here, whereas
the core point was anarchical in nature.
  "There is indeed some powerful attractive force
operating within the vortex, but it is, as Mr. Sulu
has stated, something other than normal gravity.
Something outside our experience, I fear."
  "Warp-seven, Captain," the excited Sulu
interrupted. "Warp-eight! his
  "Take us out of here, Mr. Sulu," Kirk
ordered; but the helmsman was already working at his
console.
  "I've been trying to, sir. We're still being
drawn in. Warp-nine . . . warp-ten, sir!"
  "Emergency reverse powers"
  Back at his post in engineering central, Scott
noticed the sudden terrific demands being made on his
engines. He held tight to a crossbar to keep from
being thrown to the floor by the increasingly wild
vibrations and
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 167
  hoped the drive could cope with the forces being pitted
against them.
  As the Enterprise was drawn inexorably nearer
the energy vortex, the colors on the viewscreen
began to pulse violently, the pastel rainbow giving
way to deep golds and reds, all being subsumed
into a vital, rippling purple.
  Now the ship had been pulled to the very rim of the
cosmic cyclone. It hung there a second, then
caught and started to spin at tremendous speed around the
rim, faster, and faster. On the Enterprise the
artificial gravity compensators could barely keep
up with the steady increase in centrifugal
force.
  Scott now dung desperately to the crossbar and
stared grim-faced at his gauges. Shouts of pain and
groans came from various members of his staff who
had failed to gain a firm purchase on something
immovable.
  Somehow, hanging tight with both legs and one arm
against the terrific sideways pressure, he
managed to pull himself a hand at a time to the nearest
wall intercom. From there he tried to raise the
bridge.
  "Captain . . . Scott here. I don't know
how much additional emergency power we can
  continue to put out before the engines start to break up."
  Kirk listened but was helpless to acknowledge. He
had been thrown to the floor. Despite the gravity
compensators, the whirling was generating G-forces too
powerful to be canceled out.
  Spock was still seated in his chair at the library
station, clinging tightly to the arms. He tried to shift
for a still firmer grip. He felt a wrenching pull as
the Enterprise hit an eddy in the rim of the vortex
and was jerked loose. He slid past Kirk and
came to a halt up against a console on the
opposite side of the bridge.
  "Spock . . . you all right?"
  His reply ignored Kirk's query.
"Captain, there may be only one choice open to us.
We must hope this vor
  168 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  tex is analogous in its internal structure
to Terran/vulcan counterparts ... hope that there is
a calm in its center where these forces either do not exist
or cancel each other out."
  "Agreed, Mr. Spock. We'll try to make
for the eye of the cyclone[*thorngg'if it has one.
Mr. Sulu, Mr. Arex . . ."
  But neither helmsman was in a position to carry out
orders. Sulu was jammed in a tangle of arms and
legs against Kirk's command chair, while Arex had
skidded all the way back to communications, despite
the frantic use of all six arms and legs. He
lay pinned against Uhura's feet.
  Kirk gritted his teeth and struggled to pull himself
toward the deserted navigation console. As he moved,
he rose slightly off the deck and was bounced end
over end, coming to a stop against the library station.
  "Allow me, Captain," said Spock. Now the
G-forces seemed to increase, decrease, and change
direction capriciously, making it far
harder to judge one's movement-so. Up, down, and
sideways changed without warning.
  Uhura screamed as she was suddenly thrown and
pinned against the ceiling. Much more of this, Kirk
reflected, and it wouldn't matter whether the ship
broke up or not, because her crew would long since have
preceded her.
  Somehow Spock managed to inch his way
  toward the helm. There was a crackling
  discharge, and the deck lights flashed on and off. More
cracklings followed, mixed with the groans of metal
alloy strained to its utmost. Kirk revised his
estimates of the approaching catastrophe.
  The Enaerprise would disintegrate first after all.
They would all experience the unique sensation of
floating free in the maelstrom before the surrounding
radiation and hard space would reduce them to their
component atoms.
  Spock reached the helm. Bracing himself firmly
with
  STAR TREK L tilde THEE 169
  one arm, he used the other to fumble at several
controls. The Enterprise began to break away from the
spinning, violent iridescence and move toward the
center of the vortex.
  It hung there motionless for several long seconds,
warp-engines fighting to drive her outward and back
into normal space. Then the ship began to drift,
slowly at first but with steadily increasing speed, down
the rapidly narrowing funnel.
  But that was all. The vibrating ceased; the smell of
overloaded circuits and the sound of tortured metal
stopped, and the crushing centrifugal force was instantly
wiped out. Once more they had a recognisable up and
down, as the ship's artificial gravity computer
finally restored some order.
  Back in engineering, Scott had to duck as one of
his technicians fell slowly past him. Kirk's
voice sounded over the intercom.
  "Engineering ... status report." By now
Scott was on his feet ag[*thorngg'though moving
cautiously[*thorngg'and checking readouts.
Several of the delicate instruments used to measure
gravitation were completely gone, having been
maltreated to the point of destruction. They no longer
registered anything, since they had been overloaded
even beyond emergency shutdown.
  Scott whistled silently. Without the powerful
gravity compensators, there would be nothing left of the
crew of the Enterprise now but a
multitude of brownish smears against floors,
walls, and ceilings.
  But the readings on the instruments that had survived
intact were encouraging. Scott spoke toward the
wide open pickup grid.
  "There's some damage, Captain, but I think
everything can be repaired." He groaned and reached for
his lower back. "Includin" met"
  "Okay, Scotty, do your best. We're
running down the center of some kind of spiraling energy
storm. I don't
  170 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  know how long we've got till we reach
bottom, or what will happen when we get there. Be
ready. Bridge out."
  "Be ready, he says," Scott mumbled, "and for
what?" Well, whatever it was, he would do his best
to see that the Enterprise was ready for it.
  "Gabler, Jacobs[*thorngg'there's nothin'
wrong with you! Get off your cuffs and break out a
pair of microwelders. Some honest work's
required of you, for a change!"
  On the bridge, everyone was slowly rearranging
himself, uncurling from various contorted positions.
Fortunately, few of the sudden changes in
gravity had been full-G, and the falls hadn't
been as serious as they might have been. Arex gave
Uhura, who had probably received the worse
banging around, a hand up.
  "Would you like to report to Sick Bay,
  Lieutenant?" asked Kirk worriedly.
  "No, I'm all right, Captain," She eased
herself slowly back into her seat, wincing. "I don't
think the parts of me that hurt would benefit by Iying
down. They shouldn't impair my efficiency,
ei[*thorngg'and no remarks, Mr. Spock!"
  Spock looked bewildered, and Kirk's smile
deepened at his first officer's obvious confusion.
  Spock finally decided to ignore what was
evidently another touch of inexplicable human
humor[*thorngg'preferring that to the thought that Uhura
might be more seriously injured than she
  admitted.
  "An incredible experience, Captain."
  "Ah, it got to you emotionally, did it,
Spock?" pressed McCoy.
  "As usual, an incorrect interpretation of a
straightforward observation, Doctor. I found it
scientifically fascinating, of course."
  "I don't suppose you were scared,
either?"
  "Scared, Doctor? I fail to see why one should
be frightened of understandable natural
  phenomena. I do
  STAR TREK L tilde THREB 171
  confess that for several moments, estimates of the
forces acting unfavorably on the ship did not
induce in me optimism as to our overall chances for
survival, however[*thorn]"
  "Oh, never mind, Spock," McCoy turned
his attention to Kirk. "At least I had the good
sense to be scared, Jim. What now?"
  Kirk stared up at the screen, which now showed a
seemingly endless series of concentric circles of
flaring violet light. The smallest circles
tended to be dark to the point of blackness.
  "Mr. Sulu?"
  "We're moving down the vortex, as assumed,
Captain," the helmsman reported, studying his
instruments. "And at a speed nothing short of
astronomical. The cone itself seemed nowhere near this
long at first examination. Normal space-time laws
are badly distorted here. The sensors appear to be
functioning properly."
  "Any chance of breaking free and making
our way back to the rim?" Kirk asked. The
helmsman's reply was sobering.
  "We've been running at full reverse drive
for several minutes, Captain."
  "Um." Kirk digested this information quietly.
"Stop the drive down to warp-two." There was no
point in continuing useless demands on the
engines[*thorngg'they might need all the power they
could muster, later,
  He turned back to McCoy, remembering the
doctor's question. "We'll ride it through, Bones.
What else can we do?"
  "Ride it through to where?"
  Spock replied with another of his overwhelming
quiet pronouncements. "Perhaps to the center of All
Things, Doctor."
  McCoy was confused instead of awestruck. "But
I thought we'd already passed by the canter, Spock?"
  "And so we did, Doctor. This vortex was
completely unexpected. But to use both our worlds
for a crude an
  172 STAR TREK BE THREE
  alogy[*thorngg'there is a fixed north pole
on Earth and on Vulcan. Yet this is only a
geographic convenience. There is also
another "north pole" that is the real center of
natural forces."
  "Magnetic north," added Kirk, "and it wanders
around from year to year. I see your point, Spock.
There may be two centers to the galaxy. A
spatial one, from which all else can be
measured[*thorngg'and another on which certain
different forces converge."
  "That is it, Captain," Spock admitted, "and
it is that tilde second convergence of forces that we
appear to be
  traveling through to its end."
  "Wherever that may be[*thorngg'and it looks like
we'll be there soon." Kirk gestured, and all
eyes returned to the main screen.
  The violet light seemed to be blending, running
together into a smooth maroon pool that glowed like a dim
red giant. They struck it seconds later. But the
Enterprise was moving so supremely fast by then that
no matter what the malignant maroon eye
was[*thorngg'red giant or
otherwise[*thorngg'they were in and through it before any
effect was noted.
  A tremendous red flash did erupt around the
ship. Crimson sparks and activated
particles flew away from her hull, dissolving
further into all the primary hues. At Spock's
sensor station and the navigation consoles, every instrument
went berserk.
  There was a long silence.
  "My, my," whispered McCoy, his the only
voice on the bridge, as he and everyone else sat
staring at the screen.
  Space as they knew it was . . . gone.
  In its place had been substituted the wild
nightmare of a color-blind surrealist. Nothing
seemed fixed or permanent. What at one moment
appeared as the black of normal interstellar
space, complete with distant stars, would suddenly
fracture like a hemorrhaging amoeba
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 173
  into tiny patches of scattered darkness, still with stars,
and turn unexpectedly magenta or maroon or
red.
  Now and then it appeared as if an ocean of
whitehot magma was floating only a few hundred
meters beneath the Enterprise. A moment later and it
formed a glowing roof over their heads, then a wall
to either side, continually throwing off bubbling blobs of
itself which drifted off in all directions.
  As the Enterprise moved through it, nonspace
slowly started to coalesce, to take on a single
form. It gradually became a kind of circular
tunnel with unstable sides composed of a fluid
yellow substance.
  They existed in a yellow, cylindrical
universe. As the Enterprise continued down the
corridor the ship started to slow, its speed dropping
*om warp-impossible to warp-ten, to one and then
sublight speed.
  At first the flavescent corridor appeared to be
at least a million meters in diameter. Now it
had shrunk until the walls seemed ready to touch the
hull itself. At the end of the corridor, rotating in
its center and blocking further passage, was a
spherical object that just might be a world.
  "Is that a planet?" exclaimed Sulu,
voicing the question in the mind of everyone. It was
  shockingly, paralyzingly
stable-looking[*thorngg'the first truly stable-looking
thing they had seen since entering the vortex.
  Stable it might be, but normal it was not. It was
striped in red and whites like a candy-cane Jupiter,
though it was only slightly larger than Earth-size
... if the sensors could be believed.
  "What is it?" wondered Uhura aloud. "Where
are we?"
  Spock looked up from the hooded viewer at his
station. "I am afraid that our normal navigational
references mean very little here, Lieutenant. All
readings indicate that we are not in time as we know it.
That we are no longer in space as we know it has
been selfevident for some time now" He looked at
McCoy.
  74 STAR TREK LOG TIE
  "Doctor, perhaps these readings may mean more to you,"
McCoy moved over and studied the information in the
newer.
  Sulu had pushed away from the navigation console
while Arex was idly running the fingers of three hands
over various controls. He
  encountered switches and buttons with random
nonchalance. It didn't matter what he hit,
nothing produced the slightest reaction.
  He looked back at Kirk. "The helm's
dead, sir. Some of the instrumentation still registers
information, but they don't make any sense. Most of the
navigation readouts have simply fallen to zero."
  Kirk make a noncommital noise, shifted
his attention to communications. "Lieutenant
Uhura, try to get a message through to Starfleet.
They should at least know of our position here. Maybe
someone can be reached at Science Center who has some
helpful suggestions."
  She worked at her machinery for several minutes,
then glanced helplessly back over her shoulder.
  "Captain, the subspace radio is dead,
too. So are all pickups. I should at least be
registering static from any energy flowing around us, but
there's nothing, nothing at all."
  At that point McCoy happened to notice the
chronometer over Spock's station. He checked his
own against it, then made a fast check with the still operating
library computer.
  "Jim, not only is there no time here as we know
it, there doesn't seem to be any time. All the
ship's chronometers have stopped. Emergency
backup power doesn't seem to make any
  difference."
  "Engineering to bridge."
  "Bridge here, Captain speaking." By now
Kirk was so numbed that Scott's announcement
  seemed inevitable instead of frightening.
  "There's no reason for it, Captain, no reason
at all," complained the stunned, puzzled
voice of the chief engineer, "but the antimatter and
matter generators are
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 175
  going .. . fading out. Everything seems to be
operating perfectly, the engines, converters, everything
... but they're just fading. We're losing power.
Emergency storage cells are dropping rapidly,
and I canna tell you why. Everythings coming . . .
to a . . . stop." There was a sudden crackling, and
they heard Scott's voice again, weaker now as the
communicator power
  evaporated.
  "dis . . a . .. top . . ." There was a final
fizzle and the intercom died for good.
  As it did, the lights on the bridge went out.
As with the intercom, the automatic emergency
backups failed to take over.
  "It would appear that none of the natural laws of
our universe operate here, Captain," Spock
observed. For once, even his tone was muted.
  "Natural laws," McCoy echoed. "The
  1ife-support systems .. . they're
probably fading, too. Is everything just going to go .
. . out? Hey, I'm floating."
  "So am I," came Kirk's voice
from somewhere in the darkness nearby.
  "And Iea"i reported Sulu. One by one, the
rest of them confirmed the loss of gravity.
  Without light and gravity the universe lost all
sense. There was no true direction, no sense of
up or down[*thorn] or of right and wrong.
Kirk found himself curling into a fetal position as his
mind tried vainly to cope with the absence of reality.
  No! He forced himself to stick out his arms and legs.
He would die in the shape of a man.
  McCoy coughed, found himself propelled by the
slight action. Eventually he bumped into
  something hard[*thorngg'whether floor or ceiling
he could not tell. Then he noticed something else.
  "Jim ... air's getting bad ... needs
circulation ... cleaning."
  Kirk tried to orient himself in the darkness as he
spoke. It was hopeless. He could only pray that the
open intercom would pick up his voice.
  176 STAR TREK BOG THROB
  "Engineering!" he shouted, "we're getting stale
air, Go to battery power on all circulation
instrumentation. Primary alert, Scotty!"
  Silence and soft darkness.
  "Mr. Sulu."
  "Here, Captain," came a reluctant, weak
reply. The helmsman coughed slightly from somewhere
nearby.
  "Mr. Sulu," Kirk said slowly and
distinctly, "there is an emergency. Go to battery
power."
  "I can't, Captain. I don't know where the
console is."
  "I am still holding my seat, Captain."
Arex's voice! But Kirk's last hopes
disappeared with the navigator's reply. "When the
lights went I tried switching to reserves. There
isn't any battery power on the bridge, either.
Either they've been drained or they simply don't
operate in this space-time continuum. I'm sure I
tried the proper controls. Everything's gone dead."
He coughed, and his voice faded to a thin wheeze.
  "dis . . dead . . ."
  "Arex?" Kirk inhaled and found himself
  choking. His hand went to his throat. Air . . .
he was drowning, smothering, and the darkness was a blanket
over him.
  He heard a faint voice . . . McCoy.
"Jim . . . Jim . . . we've got to do something
. .. we've ..."
  Then it, too, faded and was gone.
  Gasping, Kirk tried to reach out to him, flailing
in the emptiness, struggling to touch another human being
a last time. He felt something, turned, straining.
Another hand touched his and gripped tight.
  "Captain?" Kirk couldn't see the figure
next to him ., . yet in his mind he did.
  "Good-bye, Mr. Spock."
  "Good-bye, Captain. . ."
  Xl
  Peace.
  Night.
  Blindness ... Kirk found himself blinded, dazzled,
stunned by the unexpected hare that lit the bridge in
scintillating geometric patterns. It
fluoresced in the unnatural brilliance. The
strange designs pulsed for a few seconds
longer, then disappeared.
  Kirk felt his vision returning as his outraged
retinas began to cope with the new illumination. An
artificial gravity seemed to be coming back on.
A moment later he was back on the floor, right
side up, and sitting next to the command chair.
  There were moans and coughs from all around, but they had
air again, though it was weak like the new
gravity. And as he looked around he saw that the
bridge complement was back to normal.
  Almost to normal. There was one exception.
  A new man.
  No, not a man .. . an alien. Manlike, but
still alien. Kirk stared at him in disbelief, and the
wonder stemmed not from its alienness, but its
familiarity.
  Was it possible that this was all illusion? That before
dying a man underwent a period of
  mirage-ridden temporary insanity?
  The creature standing before him was
  half-goat, half-man. No bigger than
Kirk or Spock. he was complete down to goat's
horns, cloven hooves, and short, tricking
tail[*thorngg'the compendium of all the
goat-gods of the old terran myths.
Wide-shouldered and smoothly muscular, he wore
a short beard and nothing else, save the thick
fleece that covered him from waist to toe.

  178 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  In human terms the goat-man appeared to be about
fifty years old. That probably meant nothing, of
course. But exactly how far off in his
age-estimate Kirk actually was, he would not have
believed.
  The apparition was surveying them all with a mild,
slightly bemused grin. All his movements hinted
at constant delight and endless energy. And there was a
strange, dancing glint in his eyes.
  "Ah, humans!" came an earthquake voice
that thundered around the bridge. "Lovely, primitive
humans. Can't you do anything right?"
  Kirk was aware the goat-man was looking down at
him. He started to try and stand, but the effort was too
much in the still tenuous atmosphere. "Please . . ."
The deck felt like a coflin-bottom. "We need
better air than this, and normal gravity ..." His
plea trailed off in a racking cough.
  "Of course, of course. I was so pleased to see
you[*thorn] thoughtless of me. A moment."
  He raised both hands over his head and
  brought them together with a deafening slap. Lightning
flashed between his palms and formed a crackling, floating
ball in the air nearby, pulsing with internal
energies.
  Stroking his beard with one hand, the goat-man
studied the ball-lightning as it formed a complex
diagram of pure energy. Then he nodded
  approvingly. Jabbing a finger into its center, he
stirred the energy like paste. At the same time, the
thundering voice sounded a single word.
  "RADAMANTHUS! his
  The energy diagram shattered, the flaring shards
swirling around the tip of his moving finger. They
collapsed to a pinpoint and vanished. A rising hum
was interspersed with a series of loud
clicks[*thorngg'something Kirk had heard few
times before. Dead bridge relays snapping over as
they were reactivated! The lights suddenly returned
to normal, as did the gravity. And there
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 179
  was a sweetness in the air Kirk never thought
to smell again.
  Spock looked over to the library station. Computer
lights once again flashed in ready patterns,
indicating operational status. Arex stared in wonder
at the navigation console. The
  instrumentation was registering again . . . though as yet
their readings were still incomprehensible. No doubt they
meant something, but Arex had no reference tables for this
. . . place.
  Even the viewscreen shone with its accustomed
brilliance, once more displaying a
panorama of the redand-white world suspended below them.
  Spock climbed to his feet. He took a
deep, experimental breath, showing every sign of
expecting his body to fly apart with the force of the
inhalation.
  When nothing so cataclysmic happened, he tried
another, and another, then nodded in satisfaction.
He was operational again, too.
  Kirk also smiled in relief when, on climbing
to his feet, he also found he was in good repair.
Nothing seemed to be broken. And how
  marvelous it was just to be able to breathe. He walked
to the command chair, resumed his seat.
  McCoy, however, chose to remain seated on the
deck. He was not going anywhere for several minutes.
  Evidently quite pleased with himself, the goat-man
remained standing in the middle of this renewed activity.
Smiling, he began to walk around the bridge, staring
curiously at this or that instrument, occasionally nodding
sagely to himself or letting out a chuckle of
amusement.
  Eventually he stopped and turned to look back
at Kirk, hands on hips.
  "Everything is working again, my friends?"
  "It is," admitted a confused
Spock, after a rapid check of his readouts, "but it
should not be. It cannot be. It is not . . .
Iogical."
  Olympian laughter robed and boomed around the
  1 SO STAR TREK By THREE
  bridge as the goat-man threw back his head and
roared.
  "You are amused?" Spock inquired politely.
  "Logical!" The goat-man grinned at him.
"To whose logic do you refer, my elfin friend?"
  "Look around you, Spock," advised McCoy,
still sitting on the deck and enjoying life again.
"Everything is working, including you and me."
  He made pacifying gestures with his hands at the
first officer. "Let's not try to argue this gentleman
out of his miracles, hmmm? It may be illogical
for us to be alive now, but I'm willing to concede the
situation."
  "Be happy, Mr. Spock," the goat-man
  suggested. He ignored the first officer's continued
bewilderment and spread his arms in a gesture of warm
welcome. He was embracing all of
  them[*thorngg'spiritually, at least.
  And he seemed at least as pleased by their good health
and presence as they were by his.
  "Welcome, welcome. I knew eventually
humans would come searching for me[*thorngg'y always
do. We meet again. A toast!" He reached
into nearby air, and a huge tankard suddenly
appeared in his hand.
  Smaller versions popped inffbeing in the hands of
everyone else. The goat-man gestured to them all with
his, proceeded to drain it with undisguised gusto.
  Sulu took a hesitant sip from his own. His
eyes lit up. He commenced to drink deeply from it.
His example was quickly imitated by his
  shipmates.
  The now-empty tankard vanishing conveniently from his
hand, the goat-man moved over and helped McCoy
gently to his feet. McCoy had an
opportunity to study the alien at close range.
By the time he stood upright again, he was satisfied that
their visitor wore no clever costume. He was
real, from the tip of his horns to the cleft in his
hooves.
  Those hooves clacked sharply on the deck as the
goat-man stepped back. Now he put an arm
around Spock, brought him over to McCoy and
embraced both of them like long-lost brothers.
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 1
tilde l
  "I don't want to be impolite," Kirk
began, "especially after what you've done for us ...
but who are you?"
  "Who am I? Oh, you want a name! Call me
Baal." He paused thoughtfully. "Or Lucien.
Yes, Lucien. But above all, call me friend."
One finger fluttered skyward as he declaimed,
"Never could I abandon those who have come so far
to frolic with me . . . for such purpose you must have
been sent."
  He surveyed the bridge again, speaking before
Kirk could tell him that their motive for being here was
somewhat different and not exactly voluntary.
  "But not here, no, no. This is not a proper
place. Let us leave this vessel and repair to where
more daring delights lie." His hands moved over his
head, a complicated swirling movement that left behind
a trial of fading amber light, like moving lights in
a time-lapse picture.
  There was an explosion of dull red light, and then
the swirling trails had vanished.
  So had Kirk, Spock, Dr.
McCoy[*thorngg'andthe
  creature that called itself Lucien.
  Sulu stared at the blank places on the
bridge. He walked to the spot where the ship's
doctor had stood seconds before, moved his hands through
the air over the place like a blind man searching for
unknown things.
  Uhura watched him, her face showing fear and
bewilderment, while Arex sat motionless by the
operative but still useless navigation console.
  In a sense, they were still drifting in darkness . . .
  Only a last word or two lingered in Sulu's
mind, the last thing the goat-man had said before
disappearing. Or were they words[*thorngg'or only
  meaningless nonsense syllables of an alien argot
which his brain automatically arranged into human-sounding
groups?
  "Megas-tu . . ." the goat-man had said.
  182 STAR TREK THRBB
  Kirk felt himself floating, floating. A
globe turned slowly, patiently beneath him, came
nearer. He saw that its red-and-white candy stripes
were vast cloud formations. They were in constant motion
crashing and rolling against one another, sometimes blending
into various shades of pink, sometimes forming sharp lines
between. Red battled white here as the sea battled the
land on more familiar worlds.
  They drifted further, closer[*thorngg'for he
could see other shapes floating with hm[*thorngg'and
suddenly were within the banded atmosphere. The crimson
and cream bands kept their color as he
  descended, and for the first time he saw what caused the
redness. Miles-high storms of brilliant red
dust and sand colored the clouds.
  Then the surface became visible, an unstable,
swirling chaos of constantly changing shape and form.
Only occasional isolated hints of something solid
beneath him indicated that this planet possessed a real
surface. Even so, he felt there was nothing
to prevent them from drifting right through that flowing "ground"
until they came out the other side of the world.
  As soon as he thought he had finally fixed a stable
point on the surface, it would break apart and
dissolve into nothingness, or explode in a pinwheel of
colon
  Nothing was finite here; nothing was constant; nothing was
real. Even the air had color, the wind producing
harsh cries and strange slithering sounds as of
creatures and cloth brushing against one another.
  The soul-filled breeze blew red-and-white
particles into miniature dust-storms that twisted and
writhed into insane alien shapes.
  In the midst of this anarchy, four people appeared.
  Kirk was one of them, Spock and McCoy two
others, Lucien the fourth. The three officers
immediately covered their eyes. Until they had actually
touched down the three officers had seemed to be at
once a part of and apart from the elements. Now the wind
had a chill
  STAR TRBK tilde OG THRBB 183
  nessto it, and the flying sand abraded unprotected
flesh.
  They shielded their faces as best they could and tried
to see around them. There was no
  discernable horizon. Lucien stood nearby,
impassive, waiting, watching.
  "Spock, Bones[*thorngg'y all right?"
Kirk managed to shout. The sound of his own voice in
this place was reassuring.
  "Nothing more serious than a faceful of sand,
Jim," McCoy responded. "But I wish I
had a medical tricorder, just to check in case
we[*thorn]" He broke off. Kirk turned,
saw through separated fingers that the doctor was staring at
him. That wasn't surprising; he found himself staring in
fascination back at McCoy.
  "Jim, look at yourself!"
  Kirk felt no change[*thorngg'and yet there
was
  something. He looked at himself, as instructed, and
saw fingers parting from hands, hands from wrists, wrists from
arms, and arms from shoulders. All of his limbs were
drifting away from the central torso, drifting
away and changing shape. He saw his trunk
splitting up into neat, irregular blobs, still
fully clothed. There was no pain, merely the quiet
astonishing sight of bits of himself coming apart, like a
jigsaw puzzle in water.
  The same thing was happening to Spock and McCoy.
Their bodies were coming apart in
  toy-like bits and pieces, floating away from one
another, sections of loose Spock mixing with
fragments of McCoy.
  Little bits of the Enterprise's first officer tumbled
lazily past Kirk. The painless amputations were
changing themselves, now stretching out like rubber, now growing
thick and fat, as they wobbled along.
  Spock stared in fascination as his left arm
elongated and turned into a flowing rivulet of
colored sand.
  "Lucien, do something!" Kirk yelled.
  "But why, Captain?" The goat-man
shook his head pityingly, suddenly remembering.
"Oh, very well. I'd forgotten how much bodily
integrity means to you poor
  184 STAR TREIC LOG THRBB
  humans." Kirk noticed that the goat-man had
also come apart, though it didn't appear to bother him.
  A swirling cloud of dust formed one of Lucien's
hands, fully equipped with a proper complement of
fingers. It moved, and something like a neon pentagram
appeared in the air, floating, glowing radiantly.
There was a flash of brilliant crimson
ag[*thorngg'Lucien seemed fond of red, or
perhaps that was simply the common color of manipulated
energy here[*thorngg'f each point of the
  five-cornered shape. It was repeated once,
twice, and twice again.
  Five drifting globes of flame touched the
free particles, squeezing them together, reshaping and
rejoining the mixed forms and making them whole again.
  Kirk saw his arms, legs, lower torso reform,
move, and join together again neatly and
  painlessly. Abruptly, the drifting flame
winked out. The pentagram itself followed shortly,
vanishing into the all-consuming wind.
  Kirk reached down and cautiously felt
himself. He pulled experimentally at his right wrist with
his left[*thorn] not altogether sure how he would
react if the hand came off. Around him, the rest of the
impossible world still remained shapeless, all rolling
mists and roarings and whines arising out of nothingness.
  Lucien sighed. Probably in deference to his
guests, he had reformed his own corpus. "This
isn't easy, you know, holding us all together like this.
It's not even natural."
  "If you know as much about us as you claim to," said
a much relieved McCoy, "you'll know that being in one
piece is very natural where we come from."
  "Really, Doctor?" Spock commented.
  "Personally, I find all this quite absorbing."
  "Yes, but that's probably because you're not
natural to begin with, Spock."
  Suddenly, a pair of long green tentacles, like
the arms of an octopus, appeared out of the coiling
mists
  STAR TREK THREB 185
  and brushed against the face of a startled Kirk.
Instinctively, he jerked away, and they vanished.
  "Look, Lucien," he began, as much to take his
mind off the disturbing apparition as to obtain information,
"or whatever you want to call
yourself[*thorngg'I want to know why you brought us
here." Even as he said the words he was fully aware
that if the goat-man chose to ignore the question they could
do nothing to compel him to answer.
  It made no difference whether he was inclined to or
not. Before their saviorstcaptor could reply, a
tremendous roaring sprang up like the wildest of
hurricanes. A frenzied wind whipped up around
them. It lifted Kirk and dashed him to the ground, which
conveniently became soft sand beneath him just in time
to cushion the impact.
  Lucien frowned and made another of his cryptic
gestures. Red and rose energy flashed from his
fingertips. The hurricane wind died as abruptly
as it had arisen. Lucien finished his complicated
hand-weaving in the air.
  Even as they watched, the landscape shimmered,
altered, and began to take on form and substance. Then
they were standing on a grassy knoll, complete with
weeds, trees, and a running stream. The knoll was
cloaked in heather and milkweed. Kirk became
aware of a new figure standing next to him. He
looked down.
  A small goat-boy stared back at him. A
dancing miniature whirlwind spun in his
open palm[*thorngg'the hurricane which had just
thrown Kirk so callously around. The toy
tornado slowed, slowed, and became a child's top.
It stopped and fell over in the boy's hand.
  Lucien bestowed a mildly disapproving smile on
the youngster. "Kids will play." The boy grinned
back, clutched tightly at his top, and hurried
off to the top of the knoll.
  Kirk picked himself up off the grass, pulling
up a small tuft of it as he rose, and examined
the newly ma
  186 STAR TREK L tilde THRBB
  terialized growth. It looked and smelled like good
old earth-type field clover. But he wouldn't have
batted an eye if it had suddenly turned into a
twelve-legged Denebian spider.
  Lucien was still busy. He dropped his hands to his
sides and brought them up slowly, trembling, toward
the sky. The forest rose close around them in rhythm
with his rising hands, everything from bushes and seedlings
to mature trees.
  There was a gap in the woods, and Lucien gestured
toward it, pointing to a vast structure that one moment
was kilometers away, the next, close enough to reach out
and touch.
  "Is this better, my friends? You must remember it
has been a long, long time since I've
associated with anything human. I hope memory
serves well enough. I have tried to translate my
world into symbols your minds can comprehend. I could have
altered your minds to perceive mine, instead, but I seem
to recall that you frown on such things."
  No one claimed otherwise.
  By then they were all gazing toward the gap in the
trees, toward the now-near, now-distant city.
  It was a fairyland of crystal and ceramic
mosaic, of glass and free-sculpted
metals[*thorngg'a fairyland into which the forest,
by all laws of perspective, should have extended, yet
did not.
  On open streets, men and women and children walked
through neatly paved ways, each person differently
dressed, all elaborately caped and gowned.
  "Welcome, my friends, to Megas-tu," Lucien
de- claimed happily. "Welcome to you, and you, and
you." He said it proudly, like an old man showing off
his favorite grandson.
  Kirk turned from the incredible metropolis back
to the goat-man. "And what is Megas-tu? I would
have said a world, but I've seen too much in the
past few
  STAR TREK LOG THRBE 187
  hours, or weeks, or whatever the time-referent
is here, to accept anything merely on what I
see."
  "It is merely that, Captain James Kirk.
A world. A world that operates on rules different from
those of your universe." He snapped the fingers of one
hand, and they found themselves seated on the grass in
front of a flowing brook.
  Brocaded cloths were spread all around.
Quantities of sweet-smelling food and drink
showed from under the lids of bulging wicker baskets.
It was all very beautiful and nice and horrifying.
  Lucien noticed the ambivalent expressions of
his guests, looked thoughtful. "Let me see ... it
takes a moment for me to remember some of your
  terms, you know. What is the word?" He paused a
moment, then brightened.
  "Ah yes, magic. Our universe operates
according to the precepts of what you superstitiously call
magic. Our laws are not
unrealistic[*thorngg'merely different." He
plucked an apple from empty air, took a bite
out of it, and caught another. He tossed it
to McCoy.
  The doctor caught it automatically. "I know
this is just a figment of my imagination,
but[*thorn]" He took a sample nibble,
smiled in approval.
  "It is, as you see, quite real, Dr. McCoy,"
Lucien continued. "Everything here is real, if you
only try to see. For example . . ." He
seemed to search the deserted knoll for a moment, then
gestured.
  An intricately decorated tent decorated with
cabalistic symbols appeared on the grass a
short distance away. An attractive girl, as
delicate as Chinese porcelain, moved to enter the
tent. She paused at the entrance, which was opened by an
old, wrinkled woman.
  They were still too far away for the watchers from the
Enterprise to overhear their conversation, but some kind of
business transaction seemed to be taking place.
After a few minutes of this, the old woman nodded and
  188 STAR TREK BOG THREE
  disappeared inside. She came out shortly
  thereafter holding a small stoppered bottle.
  Lucien spoke while the two
women[*thorngg'if such they really
were[*thorngg'resumed their conversation.
"Beautiful, isn't she? But all our women are as
young and appealing as they want to be. When anyone can be
as lovely as her aesthetics demand, character soon
takes over from vanity. Hence the potion-seller
prefers a more traditional
  configuration. It makes for better business.
  "To insure the man of her dreams, the young one
seeks a slight edge."
  "Not a love potion?" said the skeptical
Kirk. "There's nothing magical about that. It's just
a question of chemistry."
  Lucien gave him an odd look. "You must have
made some progress in certain areas since I last
visited your people, Captain." He gestured, and the
tent scene vanished.
  Another exchange was taking place off to their right,
now, on what should have been the empty top of the
knoll. Two human shapes were
  conversing there. One was a tall, thin gentleman
clad in flowing robes and a conical hat inscribed with
mystic devices. He stood stroking his long white
beard, deep in discussion with a manlike creature that
sported a pair of wings and a tra- ditionally
gargoylish face.
  After some minutes of this, the tall man in the
robes turned and gestured with his hands. There was a
bynow familiar crackling in the air, and sparks of
loose energy grew from nothingness. They lengthened,
joined together, forming beams and walls and ceilings.
  The clashing colors coalesced into four solid
uprights. Gesturing and prancing all the while, the
oldster danced around them, solidifying the small
building. It rose lithe, delicate, with high
ornamental spires and turrets and smooth
  polished domes.
  Eventually the robed dancer came to a halt.
Hands on hips, he studied the finished project,
then nodded in
  STAR TREK [0and TRIBE 189
  satisfaction at his completed handiwork. A last
gesture, and a sign appeared over the entrance to the
compact castle, the inscription in an unknown
calligraphy.
  "Iggo you need a home?" asked Lucien. "A
stable, a town? Stop in and visit your friendly
  sorcerer-contractor. Let him do the hard work."
  "Sorcerer," Spock muttered. "Of course.
Federation scientists were more correct than they
suspected. In order to function, any
supranormal spatial phenomenon must extend through
known space and time to another dimensional plane.
  "The interaction of interdimensional forces
supplies the energy to produce new galactic
matter. It explains not only our expanding
universe, but also why the physical laws here differ
so completely from our own."
  "I'm not sure I follow an that, Spock, but
are you saying you believe in magic?"
  Spock looked back at him unwaveringly. "I
believe in what is logical and what follows from
observable facts, Doctor. The basic laws here
appear to be what we sometimes can 'magic." The
Enterprise does not operate according to these
principles, therefore it ceased to function. And so,
almost, did we."
  "So you used magic," guessed Kirk, turning
to face Lucien, "to get our ship working again."
  "It was the natural thing to do, Captain. You could
have done it yourself, with a little instruction. But then, few of
you humans ever bothered to become proficient at
magic." He frowned slightly. "Those among you
who did were not looked upon with favor. Some of you even
managed to reach an the way through to Megas-tu through
small interdimensional vortices."
  "All the way from Earth to here?" exclaimed a
cynical McCoy. "Impossible."
  "Distances in our universe do not operate according to your
laws, either, Doctor," Lucien told him.
"By our methods of reckoning, certain parts of Earth
are right next door."
  190 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "Lucien," interrupted Kirk, suddenly
serious, "you persist in calling us friends, implying that
you know us. Even more, that we should know you. But how?"
  "Ah, Captain, Captain!" The goat-man
leaned back on the grass and rested his head in his
hands, staring at the blue sky. "To feign such
ignorance with me. Still, it was always one of my
problems." He stopped, and Kirk got the
  impression he had somehow hurt the goat-man's
feelings.
  Lucien crawled forward then and swept his hand through
the clear surface of the brook. His fingers broke the
water once and withdrew.
  "Listen, look, I'll try to explain
further."
  The Apples stilled. Colors began to appear,
staining the clearness. Shapes started to form, and soon it
was like looking into a viewscreen. Gone
completely was the sandy bottom of the stream. In its
place they saw a broad panorama of men and
women[*thorngg'Megans[*thorngg'exotic and
familiar,
  chiseled handsome and intentionally plain, all sitting
lost in contemplation amid the howling chaos that was the
real surface of Megas-tu.
  "This may seem to you humans to be a world of
insanity and instability," declared Lucien. "But it
has the quality of change we all demand. My people
are calm and contented, each one existing in the world of his
or her imagination."
  The image in the screen blurred, changed, and
Kirk and his companions had again a view of the
Megan universe as they first encountered it, a riot
of blending colors and splinters of stellar shape.
  "There are no rivals in our little universe at
all, Captain Kirk. No other life-forms
save ourselves."
  The picture jumped again, and they were back on
Megas-tu. As they watched, the people in the
stream-picture stood together, and some of them began
to rise upward, free of the planet.
  "Millennia ago," Lucien continued, "in our
search for companionship, we Megans
passed through the var
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 191
  ious gates between dimensions, including the great
vortex you entered by.
  "Eventually, on one such expedition, we
discovered," and the scene shifted again as if
anticipating his words, "your world[*thorngg'Earth."
They now saw a view of the blue-white globe of
Terra, seen from space. Kirk felt an
unexpected
  quickening. He had been away from home for too
long.
  "Wherever we went we became friends and advisors
to mankind. To help your ancestors out of their misery
and ignorance we drew as best we could on the power
left behind in our own universe, bringing it in through tiny
gates." Hands stirred the water again, and ripples
blotted out the blue-white ball.
  When the stream had stilled once more, Kirk saw
only the sandy bottom and a couple of dreamlike
shadows cast by small fish.
  Lucien sat back and shook the droplets from his
hand. "Eventually we were forced to leave," he
concluded. "It was a group decision. For myself, I
wanted to stay. Ah, how I fought, how I
argued! You see, I was the generalist, the apologist
among specialists."
  "The troublemaker, the others said. But I'd grown
to love Earth and its unpredictable, funny people."
He saw visions of the past. "Those were the days . . .
you crazy, irrational humans." He looked over
at them.
  "But now you have come back to me. It is so good
to see you again." He leaped to his feet, a gesture
of pure joy, and sprang into a hectic, prancing
dance, to the accompaniment of a cheerful piping that seemed
to come from all around them.
  The music was infectious, and Kirk found himself
smiling as he spoke. "If you Megans enjoyed
Earth so much, why did you leave it? I don't
understand . . ."
  "Captain, good Captain, always so curious,
always there must be a reason," the dancing Lucien
laughed. "Another reason why I liked you humans
so much.
  192 STAR TREK L tilde THRBB
  The vortex knows you have many special
  qualities[*thorn] and special faults."
  He took a giant leap and whirled in the air,
performing an outrageous multiple
pirouette that carried him to the tops of the highest
trees . . . where he froze motionless. There was a
new note in his voice when he spoke, a hint of
concern, of worry, that was alien to the Lucien they had
started to know.
  "No." The piping melody faded into silence, and
he was down at their side again in a second. His
boyish pleasure had turned desperately serious.
  "You must go."
  "What is it?" asked a nervous McCoy.
"What's wrong?"
  "I cannot tell you just now. But you must return to your
vessel immediately. And quiet, be quiet about it. You
must not give your presence away."
  Kirk tried for elaboration, but Lucien was already
gesturing again. A rainbow haze blurred Kirk's
vision, and he felt himself rising, rising and dissolving
. . .
  Scott, Sulu and Uhura were clustered
anxiously on the bridge, all crowded around the
main navigation console where Arex was struggling to make
some sense out of the computer readouts. Their study was
shattered by a sudden crackling behind them, and they turned
quickly.
  Pulsing with vast power held carefully in
check, a red-and-white cloud appeared in the center
of the bridge. It broke into three smaller clouds,
which gradually contracted into the shapes of Kirk,
McCoy, and Spock.
  Everyone on the bridge rushed forward to the
returned officers, all trying to speak at once.
  "Captain Kirk ... what happened? ... where
were you all? . . . given you up, Mr. Spock .
. ."
  "One at a time, one at a time," Kirk
admonished
  STAR TREK Em THEE 193
  them, making calming motions. "We're ...
we're all right." He took a deep breath,
looked around him.
  They were back on the Enterprise, and it had never
looked quite so good. After the mad maelstrom below, the
clean lines of the bridge were
reassuring[*thorngg'even if they held their shape
only through Lucien's will. And it was good to be back
among real people again. Though the look in Uhura's
eyes . . .
  "Status report, first."
  "Everythin's okay, it seems, Captain. All
systems except the warp-engines are workin'
perfectly, and I can have them operatin' in two or
three hours. But you . . ."
  "The only thing that's wrong with me, Mr.
Scott, is that I'm still badly confused by a number
of things."
  "You've got plenty of company, Jim,"
McCoy noted. "What did Lucien mean,
we're not to "give ourselves away"? Give
ourselves away to whom? Couldn't anyone else on
Megas-tu detect us up here? I would think we
kind of stand out."
  "They'd need mighty powerful scanners to find us
now," said Scott, who was ignorant of the
realities of Megas. "See that?" He indicated
the main viewscreen.
  A thick layer of dense, particle-laden
material now lay like luminescent grey smoke between
the Enterprise and the surface, blotting out the
red-and-white clouds below them.
  "It's somethin' like a big dust cloud,
Captain," said Scott, "and yet it's different.
Been between us and the surface ever since you disappeared.
Communicator and scanner beams wouldn't
  penetrate ... we tried." Kirk swiveled
to face the library station.
  "If it was Lucien who put it there, Captain,"
Spock mused, "the question then becomes . . . why is
he hiding us? What danger are we in from something on
his world?" Kirk nodded, turned back to his chief
engineer.
  "Weapon's status, Mr. Scott? It seems
we may have to be ready to defend ourselves."
  194 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "Then it'll have to be with fast talk, Captain.
Our phaser banks and defensive screens
require at least a partial powering-up of the
warp-drive engines. Give me a few hours and
I might be able to say different."
  "Do the best you can, Scotty." Kirk's voice
dropped to a murmur. "We can't defend ourselves and
we can't run away. And we don't even know what
it is we might have to fight. So," and he clapped
both hands firmly to the arms of the command chair, "we
wait."
  "And do what?" wondered McCoy aloud.
  "Lucien may not show up again for three hundred
years, our time. By then, I might be an old
man."
  "I have an interesting idea," proposed a calm
voice. They all turned their attention
to Spock. "Captain, I think it would be best to first
try this in private. If you will accompany me to my
quarters? And Dr. McCoy as well?"
  "What have you got in mind, Spock?"
  "Something in the nature of an experiment,
Captain. It may prove quite interesting. And if we
are fortunate, practical as well."
  The door slid quietly aside as the three
officers entered Spock's spacious room. Kirk
and McCoy watched as Spock moved to his desk
and fished out a thick, white marking stylus. He
waved them to one side.
  "A little room, please, gentlemen." They
stepped back and stood against the far wall.
  While they watched with growing curiosity, Spock
proceeded to sketch a rough pentagram on the smooth
floor, erasing one arm and redrawing it when it
seemed too much longer than the others. Kirk and
McCoy recognized the
  pentagram shape, something that made no sense in
connection with Spock. The latter clarified his
actions as soon as the diagram was finished.
  "Not being a logical corollary of physics,
magic was never subjected to quite the serious study on
Vulcan as it received on Earth. No
doubt the actions of visiting Megans lent it
somewhat more credibility on your
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 19So
  world. Some of your more credulous
  philosophers[*thorngg'or more
perceptive[*thorngg'went as far as to attempt
to codify the most formal principles of the so-called
"dark arts." In the course of my readings on
Earth I had occasion to encounter much information of this
sort." He got to his feet, gazed thoughtfully
down at the pentagram.
  "I believe this is one of the most important and
basic mystical symbols described by the terran
"magicians." I observed Lucien utilizing
the same device earlier." Kirk began to see where
Spock was heading.
  "Lucien did say something to the effect that we could
master the same techniques," Kirk pondered.
"Spock, you're saying that as long as we're in this
universe, we can "work" magic, too?"
  "One must always be prepared to employ the re-
sources at hand, Captain." He hesitated.
"Although I must confess it requires considerable
effort for me to readjust my thinking along such
lines." He walked into the center of the
pentagram.
  "Watch there, now." He pointed toward his desk.
An elaborate three-dimensional maze laden with
doubletoned crystal pieces sat on one end.
  "I will attempt to move one of the Vulcan chess
pieces using only magic[*thorngg'magic in
our universe, but what should merely be the proper
utilization of a local scientific principle."
  "But how can you, Spock?" McCoy objected.
"I mean, you don't know the words, or the proper
gestures, or[*thorn]"
  "It should be the mental state that counts, Doctor.
And I have the terran magical principles to use
for a base." He gestured for quiet, assumed a
stance of deep concentration.
  Stretching out his arms toward the table, he began
to speak. "May the energy of this universe be the power
in me." Kirk and McCoy stared expectantly,
hopefully, at the chess set Ieahere was no hint of
movement.
  "Forget it, Spock," advised McCoy after
several
  196 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  minutes of intense concentration on the first officer's
part had proven ineffectual. "It won't
work."
  Spock lowered his arms slightly and opened his
eyes. "It has to work, Doctor. It is
logical it should work[*thorn] here." He closed
his eyes halfway and tried again.
  "I draw on your energy . . . I know I can.
I believe I can. For every action, yea, let there be
an equal and opposite reaction."
  There was a sudden crackling in the air. McCoy
jumped halfway out of his regulation boots.
Yellow and black fire flashed around Spock's
body. A thin sliver of energy leaped from one of his
hands to the table.
  It touched a Vulcan rook, enveloped it in
yellow flame, and moved it three spaces forward.
Kirk smiled.
  "Well now. Let me try that, Spock."
Spock obligingly stepped out of the pentagram and
let Kirk take his place.
  He raised his arms hesitantly toward the table,
looked over at his first officer for reassurance. "This
feels ridiculous, Mr. Spock."
  "The important thing is to relax and
  concentrate, Captain. I think the physical
gesture is purely supplementary ... a
psychological crutch. Merely a way of helping
the mind focus thought. Like talking out loud."
  "Now really, Jim," began McCoy. "You
can't expect to fully duplicate . . ."
  McCoy was cut off by the rumble of a small
thunderclap echoing through the room. But the doctor was
right. Kirk could not duplicate Spock's
results ... exactly.
  The colors that flashed around him were not yellow and
black, but blue and green, sea-color fire.
One fringe of it nudged a bishop two spaces,
then lifted and dropped it down a level.
  "Good move, Captain," commented Spock idly.
Kirk dropped his arms and stared at the
  chessboard, still not quite able to believe he had done
it.
  STAR TREK L tilde THRPB 197
  Sudden enthusiasm replaced McCoy's
skepticism. "Wait a minute
now[*thorngg'x's my turn."
  "Only two at a time can play the game,
Doctor. I believe we can find other, more
interesting uses, for this extraordinary ability. With a
little practice, it should be possible to control the
local energy flow without the use of clumsy
inscribed symbols such as this pentagram."
  The demonstration that Kirk, Spock, and
McCoy gave on the bridge caused the expected
sensation, but the surprise and shock soon gave way
to delight as Sulu, Uhura, and the others discovered
they too could manipulate the Megan magic.
  Not having a chess set handy, they followed
Spock's suggestion and practiced with the bridge
instrumentation. Kirk discovered that he was able
to activate or deactivate the main viewscreen
with a simple gesture. But he could not work the
magnification controls. Apparently the more
delicate the instrument, the finer one's grasp of the
energies involved had to be.
  "Hey, where's Scotty?" asked McCoy
suddenly, looking around the bridge.
  "I think he headed up to the recreation room on
Bdeck," Sulu replied absently. He was
making elaborate twisting movements, but so far had
achieved nothing more than a floating cloud of writhing
energy a meter in front of his hands.
  "Now what do you think he'd want in there, do you
suppose?" wondered Kirk.
  Scott surveyed the recreation room to make
certain it was empty. Then he moved to the
unit games dispenser and requested a normal
tennis ball. But he didn't go through the door
leading to the indoor court.
  Instead, he made a number of swinging, swerving
gestures with both hands. Energy appeared out of air
and formed a glowing nimbus around the ball. It was
abruptly sucked up by the spheroid, acting as a
vacuum. The ball quivered as Scott
  concentrated on it,
  198 STAR TREK THREE
  then dropped to the floor, bounced once and
ricocheted off the far wall.
  Beautifully executed[*thorngg'except
Scott had
  overlooked one small factor. The ball was
moving at about a hundred kilometers an hour, and
showed no sign of slowing down.
  It struck the roof and rocketed toward Scott.
Showing some impressive speed of his own, the chief
engineer dove under a nearby game table. The ball
contacted the floor near his left foot, shot across
the room, hit the far wall, bounced back up to the
ceiling, the floor again, across the
rooom[*thorngg'and it appeared to be picking up
speed.
  Seconds later it whizzed past his head, and
Scott hurriedly covered his face with his hands.
Crouched in that awkward position he wiggled his fingers
desperately. It had not the slightest effect on the
ball, which continued to whizz around the room like a
runaway warp-engine. It was now moving so fast
Scott could see it only as a weak blur.
  Scottish magic can be very strong.
  Back up on the bridge, Sulu had assumed
a look of grim determination. He made a last,
twisting thrust at the drifting ball of energy he had
conjured up. Abruptly it darkened, coalesced, and
formed into the most beautiful girl in this or any other
universe.
  He had been expecting it all
along[*thorngg'the
  helmsman was a positive thinker. He moved
forward, arms extended to embrace her . . . but when
his lips touched, the image dissolved.
  "I've heard of devastating kissers," said the
watching McCoy, "but don't you think that's overdoing
it a little, Sulu?"
  "Very funny, Doctor," Sulu moved his hands
again, slowly constructing another human shape out of
colored fire.
  The officers of the Enterprise continued to practice
their new-found talents. Eventually Kirk found that
he
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 1 99
  could make the viewscreen do just about anything it could
do in norma] space-time, only here he did not have
to touch a single control.
  On Bedeck, the whining ball finally came to a
sudden halt. Scott looked out warily from under the
table. First the covering and finally the interior material
had disintegrated[*thorngg'shredded by sheer speed.
But not before the ball had managed to put some
respectable dents in the metal walls.
  Eyeing the now defunct remnants of the ball with
respect, he moved back to the games
  producer ... and ordered a set of checkers. This
time he would practice with something a little less
lethal.
  Sulu was sweating with effort and had managed
to generate another girl. He leaned toward her again.
This time his curious audience included several other
members of the bridge complement, who had left off
their own practicing to watch him.
  "Good luck," Uhura volunteered.
  Sulu kissed the apparition ... and the
girl's arms went around him as she kissed back.
His eyes bugged in surprise. That he hadn't
expected. But he recovered quickly, returned the
kiss with fervor[*thorngg'too much fervor. The
energy waif burst into little match-flares and was gone.
  Sulu was prepared to try yet a third time, but a
redand-white cloud suddenly filled the center of the
bridge. It faded, and once more Lucien stood
among them. But this time he was not grinning or dancing.
In fact, he looked agitated and upset.
  "What are you doing?" He gazed around in anxious
confusion. Kirk looked back at him.
  "Learning to protect ourselves, Lucien."
  "Protect yourselves? Is that all human beings ever
think ab[*thorngg'fighting? I'll take care of
you. That's what friends are for." He started pacing
back and forth.
  "I don't know .. . I just don't know. All
this mental
  200 STAR TRIM LOG THRBB
  energy you've been using. Your peculiar patterns
. . . it can be traced, you know. You might be found."
  A voice thunderous enough to dwarf Lucien's suddenly
filled the bridge, accompanied by the whistling,
howling, spine-twisting moans of the real,
uncontrolled Megas-tu.
  "HAVE BEEN FOUND!" it rumbled.
  Lucien halted in mid-step. Kirk was startled
to see something very like fear appear in the face of the up
to now omnipotent goat-man. For the first time it
occurred to Kirk that Lucien might not have
exceptional powers among his own kind.
  He didn't care to think what sort of being
might.
  But it seemed they were about to find out.
  A new cloud of colors began to form on the
bridge. There was more of the fiery black this
time[*thorngg'yellow, white, electric blues
and orange, swirling and reforming and curling; all the
slithery nightmare shapes of the world below seemed
present in that cloud.
  A scare-thing, all crooked teeth and bulging
eyes, grew out of the floor in front of Lucien.
It blended back into the cloud as Uhura screamed.
  "SO THE PEOPLE OF EARTH WOULD
  SPREAD THEIR EVUS EVEN UNTO OUR
  HOME? WE ARE READY THIS TIME FOR
  HUMAN PBRPIDY. THIS TIME IT IS
THE
  HUMANS backslash VHO SHALL
SUFFER . . . FOR
  HERB OUR POWER IS ABSOLUTE."
  "THE HUMANS . . . AND YOU,
LUCIBN,"
  and the voice mocked the goat-man, "SHALL BE
THE ONES TO PAY." It rose to a
bansheelike wail on the last syllable, and
stopped.
  There was a powerful wrench, a jerk, and everyone had
to grab quickly at something fixed to keep from being thrown
to the deck. Kirk's gaze went immediately to the
viewscreen.
  The glowing grey cloud that had blocked them off from
the planet had vanished. The Enterpnse was dropping
like a rock toward the angry surface below. It
  STAR TREE LOG THREE 201
  seemed certain they were going to smash to splinters on
the packed sands, but the starship suddenly slowed, touched
the ground awkwardly. A howling storm of
rainbow-colored rain began to pour into the ship.
  It was followed by fiery hailstones that rained down
upon them as though the hull didn't exist. Everyone was
knocked to the floor, including Lucien.
  "Keep calm!" Kirk yelled dazedly, above
the rattle of strangely soft hailstones.
  An ominous rumbling sounded, and the
  Enterprise started to shake . . . slowly at
first, then rapidly, until Kirk felt like an
ingredient in a cake mix.
  A shattering crack sounded, and the Enterprise
split neatly down the middle, like a grape. Then
the two halves of the starship started to change shape,
to break up as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had
broken up at their first touch-down on Megas-tu.
Smaller and smaller pieces detached and broke
away, floating off into the screaming winds.
  But this time the reforming was different. The floating
bits of Enterprise regrouped to form, not the starship,
but buildings[*thorngg'buildings lining a street that
looked much like an old terran village. Very old.
  "Seventeenth century," mumbled Kirk as he
rematerialized. He felt himself caught in an
awkward bentover position, his hands fixed up by his
ears. He was fixed, he saw, in an ancient
wooden device. Looking to his left, right, and
across the street, he saw the entire crew of the
Enterprise, set into similar stocks.
  Row on row of the T-post structures faded
inffdistant haze. Scott was trapped close by,
as were Spock, McCoy, and Lucien.
Kirk seemed to be at one end of the long line of
imprisoned crew.
  He turned his head to the right. There was a crudely
engraved sign set in the ground beside a gnarled old
oak.
  SALEM, MASS., the sign said. It keyed
no response in Kirk.
  202 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  The world shimmered and dissolved again. Once more
Kirk felt himself pulled lazily apart, reformed.
Town and crew vanished. Dust walls formed around
him, mortared with dickering bursts of energy.
  Higher and higher the walls rose, solidifying
into a huge, aged meeting hall, obviously terran
in origin. But the scale was wrong. The room was
big . . . much too big.
  He was still bound in the wooden stocks, but a bench
had been produced to sit on. He looked around
once more and found Spock staring back at him.
  "I know, Mr. Spock.
  Sixteenth tilde r-seventeenth-century
terran
  architecture, I'd guess[*thorngg'withthe
size all out of proportion."
  Spock tried to turn his head toward the
Captain. "I saw the sign, also. If I
recall your history correctly, Salem was a
small town on the east coast of the North
American continent. As for the date, I should guess
approximately 1691."
  was "Approximately"?" echoed Kirk.
"Why 1691?"
  The Srst officer didn't reply. Instead, he
concentrated on the seemingly endless tiers of seats
facing them, seats that extended back and up to absurd
distances. Perspective as well as proportion
seemed distorted here.
  The seats were beginning to fill with men and women, all
clad in costumes of the same period as the hall.
  Since everyone in the stocks was a member of the
ship's crew, excepting Lucien, both Kirk and
Spock concluded quickly that those filling the endless
balcony were the Megans themselves. The reason for
taking on human shape seemed
  obvious. The reason for the particular period
costumes did not.
  There were hundreds, then thousands of them, and still they
poured in, becoming tiny with increasing distance. Even
so, Kirk found he could distinguish those in the furthest
rows with perfect clarity. It made no
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 203
  sense[*thorngg'b he was beginning to accept such
things as normal for Megas-tu.
  The arrivals were talking solemnly among them-
selves. But when the last, uppermost seat had been
filled, the buzz of low conversation died as if on
signal.
  A pause, and then a brilliant flare of light
in the center of the room, before the first stocks. A last
Megan appeared there, in human form. A tall,
glowering man, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat.
  The man surveyed the crew of the Enterprise,
pinioned tightly in their wooden restraints, then
turned to the watching Megans. His voice was deep,
powerful . . . and familiar.
  It was the voice that had erupted on the bridge
only moments . . . days, years . . . before.
  "WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY,
  GOOD CITIZENS, TO SEE JUSTICE
DONE.
  YOU MUST BE THE JUDGES. THESE . . ."
and
  he indicated those in the stocks, "ARE THE
DE- FENDANTS.
  "AS REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
VILEST
  SPECIES IN THE UNIVERSE . . .
  TRECHEROUS HUMANITY . . . THEY ARB
  TO BE JUDGED." He moved forward and
  stopped to stare grimly down at Lucien. "...
AND THOSE WHO WOWED AID THEM." He
turned
  away.
  "AS SPECIALIST IN THE ETHICS OF
  MAGIC, I HAVE BEEN APPOINTED
  PROSECUTOR HERE." He started a comphcated
gesture, but Kirk, fighting with the unyielding wood,
interrupted.
  "If this is a trial, I think we've got the
right to know what you're already so convinced we've done."
  The tall prosecutor, who could have obliterated
Kirk in a bust of yellow flame, nodded in
agreement. He pointed toward Lucien.
  "HAS THIS ONE NOT TOED YOU HOW
WB
  SITED BARTH, AND WHAT WAS DONE TO
  US THERE? His
  "Lucien said only that you came as wise men,
wizards who . . ."
  204 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  The Prosecutor leaned forward, shaking an
angry fist.
  "THEN HEAR TH. ONCE, UPON YOUR
  WORLD, I WAS KNOWN AS ASMODEUS,
  WHO SEES ALL. GAZE UPON MY
  COUNTENANCE, SO THAT YOU, TOO,
  MAY KNOW THE TRUTH."
  And the Prosecutor's face started to come apart.
It expanded, flattened, became a swirling
rectangular screen. A picture formed in it, the
picture of the insane galaxy that roiled around
Megas-tu.
  Colors died to black, changed, and the view
turned to one of breathtakingly normal
  space[*thorn)'space-black flecked with the
brilliant points of distant stars.
  Changed again, to a picture of Earth. Moved in
close, closer. The Prosecutor spoke as
various se- quences appeared and played themselves out on
the facial screen.
  The first scenes depicted Megans in human
guise engaged in numerous daily
activities[*thorngg'z witches, sorcerers, and
warlocks.
  "WE CAME TO YOUR WORLD AS
  FRIENDS," the Prosecutor's voice boomed,
  "BUT WHEREVER WE WENT, THE STORY
  INVARIABLY HAD THE SAME ENDING.
  SOME HUMANS WOULD ATTEMPT TO
  USE US TO GAIN POWER, TO SERVE
  THEIR OWN GREED AND LUST. AND IN
  OUR IGNORANCE OF HUMAN WAYS,
WE
  SOMETIMES FELL PARTY TO THESE
  SUBTLE INIQUITIES.
  "WHEN WE DISCOVERED SUCH
  VENALITY AND REP FUSED TO SERVE
  SUCH MEN, THEY TURNED THE PEOPLE
  AGAINST US, TAUGHT THE COMMON
  POLK TO FEAR AND HATE US.
  "SINCE OUR POWER IN YOUR
  UNIVERSE IS LIMITED, WE WERE
  WLNERABLE." The view changed to show
  Megans being driven from towns by the fearful
populace, spat upon and reviled.
  "THEY CALLED US DEVILS, DEMONS,
  CONJURERS!" the voice declaimed, rising to a
shout. As it did so, the fa
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 205
  cial screen shattered into a thousand
flickering particles, which faded back to nothingness.
  The face of the Prosecutor reappeared.
  "THOSE OF US WHO SURVIVED THESE
  EARLY PURGES," he continued, "
DECIDED
  TO MAKE ONE FINAL ATTEMPT TO
  SECURE A HELPING COLONY ON YOUR
  WORLD. THEY GATHERED IN THE SMALL
  TOWN OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS.
  "THERE, THOSE OF US WHO WERE LEPT
  DISCOVERED THAT IN TRYING TO LEARN
  YOUR WAYS, TO BLEND IN WITH YOU,
WE
  HAD FORGOTTEN MUCH K.
  EVEN SO, WE TRIED TO HELP YOU
IN
  THIS NEWLY SETTLED LAND, BUT . . ."
  "You made mistakes," guessed Spock.
  "IT IS TRUE THERE WERE OCCASIONS
  WHEN WE USED OUR POWERS
  AWKWARDLY, AND MANY OF US
  SUFFERED AS A RESULT OF X. SOME
OF
  US . . . BURNED FOR X. BURNED!
AS
  WITCHES."
  Kirk nodded sadly. The significance of
Salem had come back to him.
  "WE GATHERED THE SURVIVORS OF
  OUR SETTLEMENT OUTSIDE THE TOWN,
  AND TRIED TO RECALL ENOUGH MEGAN
  KNOWLEDGE TO RETURN TO OUR OWN
  UNIVERSE, TO LEAVE YOUR HELLISH
  WORLD. TO RETURN TO SAFETY,
  COMFORT, REASON . . ."
  "And loneliness," put in Lucien, "and fear, and
. . ."
  "SHOULD WE NOT FEAR THE
  EARTHLINGS?" the Prosecutor insisted.
  "SHOULD WE NOT FEAR THE CRUELTY OF
  SUCH MINDLESS PRIMITIVES? CONSIDER
  THE WEAPONS THEY HAVE MASTERED,
  AND MISUSED, SINCE WE LEFT.
NEVER
  SINCE HAVE WE ATTEMPTED TO EX-
  PLORE YOUR UNIVERSE," he informed them,
  directing his attention to Kirk and Spock.
  "NEVER SINCE HAVE WE SOUGHT
  OUTSIDE COMPANIONSHIP, TO IMPOSE
  OUR HELP ON THOSE WHOSE
CREEDS
  ARE SUPERSTITION, GREED, AND
  TERROR. YET, DESPITE OUR
CAUTION,
  YOU HAVE COME HERE, TO OUR VERY
  HOME."
  206 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "If one Federation ship can find us, so can others,"
Lucien whispered to Kirk. "That is what they
fear."
  The Prosecutor appeared to lose some of his
antagonism. In fact, his thunder now held a
surprising note of sadness.
  "WE DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS,
  CAPTAIN KIRK. WE DO NOT WANT
TO
  HARM Y. THE NATURE OF OUR
  UNIVERSE IS ONE OF CONSTANT
  CHANGE, EVERYTHING IS TRANSITORY.
  SO ARE OUR GRUDGES, WE HAVE
NEVER
  HAD TO HURT ANYONE BEFORE.
  "IF THERE WERE SOME TRUE REASON
  NOT TO ...tilde , He turned, gazed
back at the uncounted thousands who filled the
distorted tiers of the hall. "WHO WILL SPEAK
  IN DEPENSE OF MANKIND? WHO?"'
  A slight whisper of bodies shifting on wooden
seats was the only reply.
  A familiar voice on Kirk's left broke
the silence. "I will, Asmodeus. I am only
partly of Earth." The Prosecutor moved near,
seemed to inspect Spock.
  was 'TIS TRUE ENOUGH. YOU ARE
  DIFFERENT. IF NONE OBJECT . . ."
He
  looked back at the crowd. Still-silence still.
  "THE COURT WILE THEN HEAR A
  DEFENSE." A casual gesture and Spock's
stocks became so much sawdust.
  The first officer stumbled on cramped legs at the
sudden disappearance of the bonds. Then he straightened,
rubbing at ankles and wrists.
  "I have had no time to prepare a formal defence.
I therefore request the court recess until . .
."
  "RECESSS DENIED.D . . ." came a
  haunting moan from the gallery.
  Spock didn't let any distress he may have
felt at this unanimous rejection show.
"I shall have to make do with the testimony of witnesses,
then."
  The Prosecutor showed no inclination to offer any
aid.
  "I call Lucien as my first witness."
  A second flare of released energy and
Lucien's
  STAR TREK L tilde THRBB 207
  stocks, too, vanished. Spock moved to stand in
front of him. "Lucien, of all the Megans, you
alone do not seem to fear or hate humans. On the
contrary, you appear to like them very much. Why?"
  "Because I'm a glutton for punishment," the
goatman replied, grinning. "No, this is not the time
for levity, I suppose. I will try to be serious,
though it's hard for me." He considered
  thoughtfully.
  "I expect it's because they're so much like me, or
I like them. Always questions to be answered! Like a child who
continually questions his father, only to be asked, 'mst there
always be a reason for everything?"' They are like that rare
child who stares defiantly back up and says,
"yes!"
  "I, too, am like that. And they have minds that never
cease ranging outward, always seeking,
striving to expand their store of knowledge ... for knowledge's
sake and not always for greed, as has been implied.
  "It is these things that make them unique and endears
them to me. But with us, it is different. Every Megan
is always alone, always existing self-confident,
assured, in a singular sphere of certainty, Whereas
humans, for all their vaunted individuality, are
a true gregarious society. It seems to be
something I need, this group
  association."
  He started to pace back and forth before the first row of
benches, glancing occasionally upward and back into the
higher balconies.
  "As you know, I was among the first to go among them.
In Mesopotamia, Ur, Babylonia,
Greece. In the river valleys of the Hwang and the
Indus, I saw these bonds developing between them.
An easy companionship that Megas-tu has never
known and, sadly, can never know.
  "I meant to help and change them, and ended by having
them change me." He turned to look at Spock.
"That's why I adopted you when you arrived. It was
another chance to recover something I'd . . . lost."
  208 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "Thank you, Lucien," said a
satisfied Spock. "One other witness, if you
please. Captain James T. Kirk."
  Flare-dissolve, and Kirk's stocks became a
comfortable wooden chair.
  "Tell the court, Captain. Would you say that
hu- mans have not changed since the time of Salem?"
  Kirk was startled at how easily the words came,
how relaxed he was, considering the gravity of the
situation. "I think blat we've been trying to,
Spock. A little at a time.
  "The certain virtues of humanity, which Lucien
has elaborated on so flatteringly, go hand in hand
with our faults[*thorngg'greed, envy, fear.
We've learned a great deal about ourselves in the
centuries since the witch trials. We try
to understand and respect each other, no matter what a
man's peculiarities. We try to understand and
respect all life forms.
  "And the human race has adopted a motto, a
standard that at the time of Salem was only a dream in
the minds of a few enlightened men."
  His own voice rose.
  "KIBLEDJWEE DGE IS PRE E
DO M" .
  "Indeed, Captain," Spock agreed,
speaking quietly into the resultant silence. "Could
you elaborate on these new standards of man?"
  Kirk stood, faced the endless gallery. "The
records of ale Enterprise are open for your
inspection, citizens of Megas-tu. We couldn't
hide them from you or alter Them now even if we
wished to.
  "All the history of Earth and its Federation of
worlds is at your disposal. Look at it . . .
Iook at general order number one: No starship
may interfere with the normal development of any
alien life form or society, whether advanced or
primitive!
  "Even requests for aid by dying primitives are
often frowned upon, in the belief that interference from
outside often does more harm than good. Compare that with the
Earth you once knew. And you may also
compare[*thorn]",
  STAR TREK LOG THREB 209
  "EwouGH!" The voice of the Megan
Prosecutor rumbled through the pastel pit of the
hall. A sparkling, whirling cloud formed in the center
of the gallery, breaking up into tiny cloud-fragments.
These shrank to become the entire records section
of the Enterprise.
  It hovered there . . . tapes, computer inserts,
kilometers of microfilm. A gust of wind rose
and scattered the knowledge like leaves across the thousands of
benches, tumbling in and around the intent Megans.
  "HERB IS YOUR HISTORY, HERE ARE
  YOUR RECORDS . . . EXHIBIT A
POR THE
  DEFENSE!" The Prosecutor gestured yet
again. The blowing tapes and cassettes vanished
once more.
  "YOU HAVE HEARD AND YOU HAVE
  SEEN AND YOU KNOW," the Prosecutor
told
  the vast chamber. "CITIZENS . . . HOW
DECIDE You?" He went silent, his attitude
one of mtense concentration.
  Kirk and Spock and the others also strained to hear,
but it was as still as the inside of a cave. Whatever
discussion was taking place could not be detected by mere
human senses.
  Oddly, Kirk found himself musing on the fact, not
that his life and the lives of his crew lay in the
balance, but that he had not had anything to eat since
Lucien's picnic. He was getting hungry.
  The concerns of the human body are not
  philosophical in nature.
  "A DECISION HAS BEEN MADE,
CAPTAIN
  JAMES KIRK." He forgot about food and
leaned forward.
  "IT IS YOUR ASTROPHYSICS SECTION
  AND NOT THE HISTORICAL ONE THAT IS
  THE DECIDING FACTOR. ACCORDING TO
  THOSE RECORDS, YOUR ENTRY HERE
  TRULY WAS AN ACCIDENT OF
  EXPLORATION[*THORNGG'AND ONB
UNLIKELY TO
  2 SAFELY DUPLICATED.
  "WITH THAT IN MIND, ADDED TO THE
  NEW BVIDENCE IN FAVOR OF MAN
WHICH
  HAS BEEN PRESENTED, IT WOULD SEEM
  THAT WE OF MEGAS-TU ARE SAFE."
He
  paused and his expression grew
dark[*thorngg'literally.
  210 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  "BUT LUCIEN MUST BE PUNISHED" FOR
  HIS BETRAYAL OF HIS PEOPLE AND THE
  DANGER HE HAS EXPOSED US
TO. HE
  WHO WISHES COMPANIONSHIP SHALL BE
  CONFINED IN LIMBO POR ALL
  ETERNITY!"
  At those fateful final words a bubble of
transparent red suddenly enveloped the goat-man.
It pulsed softly with evidence of great power held
under careful control. Without thinking, Kirk left his
chair and rushed to the bubble's side.
  "No[*thorngg'y can't. To isolate someone like
  Lucien[*thorn] that's worse than sentencing
him to death." The voice of the Prosecutor rose in
volume and shrillness.
  "DO YOU KNOW WHOM YOU DEPEND?
  DO YOU KNOW WHOSE COMFORT YOU
  SEEK? HE HAS TOLD YOU HIS NAME
IS
  LUCIEN. WOULD YOU DEPEND HEM
  STILL IP YOU KNEW HIM BY ANOTHER
  NAME?
  "INDEED IT WAS HE WHO WENT
  AMONG YOU AND SOUGHT YOUR
  PRIENDSHIP!" the voice laughed. "INDEED
IT WAS HE WHO WORKED HIS MAGIC FOR
  YOU, IN HIS OWN WAYS. NO,
IT SHALL
  NO LONGER BE.
  "DOWN, LUCIPER! His
  The goat-man leaned against the thin,
  impregnable walls of the bubble. Orange fire
flared around his palms, terrible, all-destroying. But
they could not break that shell. It started to rise.
  Kirk's voice, when he had recovered from the
initial shock of recognition and could speak again, was
steady and determined.
  "We're not interested in the remnants of legend
and superstition, Prosecutor. I'd said we'd
given such things up. He's a living, sentient being,
an intelligent lifeform, and he helped us. That's
all I have to know about him. We'lll not stand by and see
him harmed for our past mistakes."
  The Prosecutor gestured. A smoke-ring of
blue energy appeared in the room and started to float
toward Kirk. He twisted out of its way, and it
changed direction like a thinking creature, pursuing
him.
  STAR TREE LOG THREE 211
  "SUBMIT TO THIS DECISION AND GO
  FREE, CAPTAIN. YOU HAVEN'T THE
  POWER TO EIGHT US."
  "Captain!" urged Spock. "Use the magic
you know." Kirk dodged around the base of the rising red
bubble, the ring following. Suddenly, it looked as if
he too were beginning to glow.
  Little sparks and flashes of blue-green energy
flickered and played around his body. Eyes a little
drunk, he turned and gestured. A ball of green
flame spun toward the Prosecutor.
  A blazing fire appeared over him, feeding on
nothing. It started to descend. Kirk made another
gesture, shouted, "Powers of Earth and Sky,
Appear! An extreme low pressure system
has been detected moving north-northeast!"
  Thunder boomed, miniature lightning crackled,
and a howling rainstorm drenched the chamber, putting out the
lowering fire.
  There was a smattering of applause from the gallery.
  The scene began to flutter and change
  constantly, like a dance viewed under intermittent
strobe light, as Kirk and the Prosecutor
exchanged gestures.
  One moment they were standing in a street of Salem
Town[*thorngg'then they were back on the naked
surface of Megas-tu. A raging sandstorm
  swallowed them up.
  "High humidity and dampness!" Kirk intoned
reverently as the abrasive sand tore at him.
"Deciduous foliage marked by high rainfall . .
. to was
  Desert turned to jungle. But the Prosecutor
was already counter-gesturing, and the jungle melted
into deep blue ocean, the tops of trees turning
into wave crests.
  Kirk choked as he took in a startled mouthful of
sea water. He felt himself drowning.
  "YOU CANNOT BEST AN ENTIRE
  WORLD, CAPTAIN KIRK. THERE IS NO
  WAY YOU CAN WIN."
  "I have to!" he shouted, then choked again.
"Don't you see, Prosecutor, you'll become as
bad as the primi
  212 STAR TRIM LOG THREE
  five humans you feared. A moment ago you said
you'd never found it necessary to harm another being. But now
you're going to do so, acting out a terror instead of the
higher morals you always insisted you, and not we
Earthmen, possessed!"
  Floating high above the waves, the Prosecutor
paused only a second before gesturing.
  The world vanished.
  Kirk found himself suddenly dry. The great hall
was gone. He was back on the surface of the real
Megas-tu. Colored particles and sand swirled
harmlessly around him.
  In the distance he could see the Enterprise,
reassembled and whole. Behind him was the forest and the
fairy city. The sand vanished, and he was standing on a
green lawn with Spock and the Prosecutor. --
Lucien was there, too, still encased in the red bubble.
  Even as he watched, the transparent prison
began to dissolve.
  "THE MOST MAGIC LIES ALWAYS TN
  YOUR HEART, HUMAN," mused the
  Prosecutor, no longer a threatening figure.
"YOU WERE PREPARED TO DIE FOR LUCIEN,
A
  BEING WHO IS ALIEN TO YOU AND
  WHOSE RACIAL MEMORIES TO YOU ARE
  NOT THE BEST."
  'if was sure you would do something at least as
foolish, friend Kirk," the goat-man smiled. "It
wouldn't have been human of you not to. I told them
their fears of you were groundless. But they are so cautious
now[*thorngg'n like us." For a being just threatened with
limbo, he seemed remarkably cheerful.
  "How could you be so certain the Captain would react
the way he did?" asked a curious Spock.
  There was a twinkle in Lucien's eye. "I know
my humans. Their inconsistencies are the most
predictable of all."
  "I don't understand," began Kirk, but the
Prosecutor smiled as he interrupted.
  "THIS LAST WAS A TEST OF YOUR
TRUE
  SELVES, CAP
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 213
  TAIN. HOW RIGHT YOU WERE WHEN YOU
  REMINDED ME OF OUR OWN WORDS,
  THAT WE COULD NOT INTENTIONALLY
  DO HARM TO OTHERS.
  "WE HAD TO BE CERTAIN YOUR
  RECORDS WERE NO RUSE. THEY MIGHT
  HAVE BEEN DOCTORED BEFORE YOU
  ENTERED THE VORTEX. WE HAVE BEEN
  TRICKED TOO MANY TIMES TO TAKE
  CHANCES."
  "I see now," nodded Spock. "You had to have
incontrovertible proof that not only man's laws had
changed, but that man himself had." He turned
to Kirk. "Your compassion for Lucien was that
proof, Captain."
  "IF YOUR PEOPLE SHOULD CHANCE TO
  VISIT US AGAIN, CAPTAIN KIRK,
WE
  SHALL DO OUR BEST TO WELCOME
  THEM. THE LIFTING OP THIS FEAR IS
A
  GREAT THING. YOU HAVE GIVEN BACK
  TO US SOME OF WHAT YOUR ANCESTORS
  TOOK AWAY. WE SHALL PROVIDE YOU
  WITH THE EXTRADIMENSIONAL BOOST
  YOU WILL REQUIRE TO REENTER YOUR
  OWN UNIVERSE."
  "And I'll give you something to make the changeover
a little easier!" roared Lucien. He gestured, and
tankards appeared in everyone's hand.
  "A favorite archaic Earth custom of mine,
As- modeus. A toa/gg*thorn)'ffa new
friendship, and to the lifting of old fears." He tilted
his head, raised his own huge container, and let the
liquid run down his throat, chin, and beard.
  Kirk did his best to imitate him, in spirit if not
capacity. Spock sipped delicately at his
own, and shook his head in wonder at the attractions
of excessive Alcoa holic consumption
. . .
  The universe was unchanged. Stars lay like gold
flecks at the bottom of a prospector's pan,
shining steadily through the lambent background of
radiant nebulae.
  Compared to this glory, the object that suddenly
  214 STAR TREK LOG THREE
  burst into the central galactic quadrant from out
of a peculiar confluence of force lines was
unrelievedly dull.
  To those who rode in it, however, this miniscule
symmetrical blot[*thorngg'the
Enterprise[*thorngg'was a more perfect jewel
than the greatest star.
  As before, the central viewscreen on the bridge
could capture only a small section of the glowing
panorama.
  "Report, Mr. Scott," said Kirk
crisply, leaning over to speak into the pickup grid
in the command chair arm. The chief engineer's voice
responded from another part of the starship.
  "All systems operative, Captain.
Warp-engines performing perfectly. Everything's
operatin" at maximum efficiency again. It
wasn't too hard." There was a pause.
"I only had to sacrifice a chicken and two
goats to the central computer."
  "Very funny, Scotty," Kirk said dryly as
the chief's chortle floated back over the
intercom. He switched it off in mid-chortle.
  "No more magic for us, Jim," a relieved
McCoy declared from Kirk's side. He gestured
at the screen. "It's all back there, and there it can
stay, for all I care. Though I won't be so quick
to laugh at any alien witch doctors we may
meet up with in the future."
  For awhile they simply enjoyed the retreating
magnificence of the galactic canter, a torrent of
raw, untappable energy. It seemed it existed
only for their visual pleasure, now.
  "I'm not a particularly religious man,
Jim," McCoy murmured after several minutes of
contemplative consideration of the vast spectacle, "but
do you think that Lucien was really the ancient
devil-demon some men called Lucifer? Or was it
all an act, a guise he liked to assume for his
own amusement?"
  "You mean," Kirk asked, "did Lucien
pattern himself after the myth, or did the myth arise out
of Lucien? I don't know, Bones.
Does it matter?"
  STAR TREK LOG THREE 215
  "Oh, I suppose not." McCoy was quiet
for a few minutes more, before speaking idly again.
  "It's just that[*thorngg'if he was,
Jim[*thorngg'th would be the second time he was on
the verge of being cast out. But thanks to you, this is the
first time he was saved."
  Kirk looked sharply back at McCoy. There
was no sign of a smile on the doctor's face.
He started to say something, caught himself, and returned
his attention to the viewscreen instead. He had other
things to think about.
  They had a long way to go.
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  BALLANTINE MA-TLike SALES I
  tilde J Dapt. TA, 201 E. 50th
St., New York, N.y. 10022 Please
send me the BALLANTINE or DEL HEY
BOOKS I have I
  checked above. t am enclosing Seaggadd S*
per copy to
  cover postage and handling). Send check or money
order[*thorn] no tilde
  I cash or C.o.d.'s please. Prices and
numbers are subject to change I 5 without
notice. I 1
  1 IN-AME I 1 1 IA-DISRESS I 1
1 City comState Zip Code I
  08 Allow at least 4 weeks for delivery.
TA-59
  . . . . . . . tilde . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . J





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
