The Coils of Orion (Revised, 2013)

by Richard T. Green

A substantially different ending makes this version different from the one uploaded in the spring of 2012, with many small clarifications and (hopefully) many improvements. The Enterprise finds a planet whose ravenous appetite for energy resources is destroying innocent lives, and threatens its own ruination as well.

The Coils of Orion by Richard T. Green

The Coils of Orion

(A Star Trek "TOS" Novel)

By Richard Green

A very brief note…

This is a re-written version of a Star Trek novel I uploaded to nearly eighteen months ago, set almost immediately after the last episodes of the original TV series were aired.

The end of the book is now substantially different, and there are various changes throughout.

I drew some of my information on black holes from a book by the theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind, "The Black Hole Wars," though it was not my intent to devote myself to his precise conclusions, which involved holograms existing on the event horizons, representing everything that's ever fallen in. I mean, you've got to draw the line somewhere! (Don't worry, though, it's also not one of those books where people are in constant danger of getting sucked in to black holes.)

It's really just a story of a world with a terrible addiction to energy, and how that affects them and everyone around them, eventually. Some of my favorite episodes of Star Trek's original series focused on "social commentary," and I've always been saddened that this sub-genre has fallen so completely out of favor.

But, social commentary or not, I really hope it's just a fun read.

I'd also like to apologize in advance: though I did my best, this book has not been professionally edited.

RG

Prologue

"Tell me, Mr. Spock: what does your scientific brain make of this?" It was Doctor McCoy, issuing a playful challenge, as he stepped up behind the first officer on the bridge of the USS Enterprise.

The Vulcan turned toward the ship's surgeon, who was holding an outdated medical scanner in his hand.

"It would appear to be a vintage derma-spectrographic detector, mostly likely produced in the laboratories on one of Rigel III's outer moons, Doctor. The third moon, if I'm not mistaken," he added with a dash of confidence (to indicate he was very likely not mistaken).

"Correct, Mr. Spock," McCoy said, snatching the device back near his heart, as the first officer reached for it. "But do you know what happens when you pass it over the view of that star-system over there?"

He waved his hand with a little flourish toward the main viewscreen and, particularly, toward a strange pinch of sparkling, distant galaxies off to the upper left. It was as though someone had done a reckless job sewing the fabric of space together, just there.

Captain James T. Kirk had signed the daily logs and was watching as the doctor prepared to make his (apparently) shocking revelation. But the Vulcan was ready for him.

"I believe you would find a series of energy beams, of varying color and intensity, flashing in a seemingly random pattern, between two points, roughly one-fiftieth of a light year apart from one another."

Now it was Dr. McCoy who looked shocked, but for only the briefest fraction of a second.

"All right," he grumbled at the Vulcan's eternal cleverness. "So apparently I'm not the only one on board with an old derma-scanner and a little bit of time on his hands!" He turned to the captain now, his magic trick ruined by the alien audience.

"Let's have a look, Bones," Kirk said, to heal the doctor's wounded pride.

McCoy stepped down to the middle of the bridge and slapped the scanner into Kirk's hands, then folded his arms across his chest.

Kirk opened up one little metallic arm from the tubular device, creating a ninety-degree angle, like an Oriental fan, minus the paper and the ribs. The unfolding action, in turn, activated a field of energy that glowed on both ends, so there was a sort of flickering fan, after all. And when Kirk lifted the elbow-shaped little curiosity toward the main viewscreen, he could see it too: faraway rays of energy, like colored searchlights, flaring across the darkness.

"Interesting," Kirk said, though he was barely able to raise his enthusiasm to match the description. From all appearances, those intermittent rays, around the glowing scar of distant galaxies, might be nothing more than a flurry of comet tails: dancing around a flaw in the gravitational landscape.

"Quite possibly very interesting," Spock admitted, warming to the topic at hand, and utterly oblivious to the captain's ironic tone. He stood, as if to begin a lecture, even as McCoy rolled his eyes in a display of prefabricated boredom, resting one arm against the red railing that circled the command deck. Once again, the doctor had given him too much play on the line, and the science officer was running off on some wild tangent. Or so it seemed.

Spock adjusted the science-station controls, and the view on the big screen wavered to enlarge that corner sector, filtering to emphasize those 'searchlights.' He spread his orange-tinted fingers, as if to gather up the rays into his hands, though they were still hundreds of light-years away.

"There is a theory, never proven, that advanced civilizations could use such energy 'fans' as a form of communication—while remaining inscrutable to distant onlookers. Though the visual effect is not unlike the mating display of your Earth peacock."

"Any record of a civilization out there?"

"No known civilizations in our records," the Vulcan said, with an almost self-satisfied simplicity: as if completing a wily feat of courtroom tactics. And now, the science officer adopted a look of simple waiting, for Jim Kirk was left with only one "logical" option, in their search for 'new life, and new civilizations.'

"That's beyond Orion," Kirk said, to no one in particular, but imagining that race had found little of interest there, themselves.

"Correct," Spock said. "However, there are no systems of a habitable nature beyond that line of singularities, at the galaxy's edge."

"But there is something out there now?" The captain couldn't help but be intrigued, and Spock himself was without any ready explanation. Finally, Kirk spoke again.

"Mr. Sulu, lay in a course: follow that… mating signal." He glanced at McCoy, at his right shoulder, to share a chuckle over the description. But, to Kirk's surprise, McCoy suddenly seemed very distant and uncomfortable, as if his mood had chilled in a second.

"Aye, sir, course computed. Laying it in," the helmsman added, and the big ship turned slowly and gracefully.

"Well, I can't stand around here staring out the window with the rest of you all day," the surgeon grumbled, collecting the old medical scanner from the captain, and tapping it like a tiny riding crop against his black slacks as he climbed back up to the turbolift. The red doors whipped open with the usual startling efficiency, then closed just as quickly once he'd stepped inside, and grabbed a safety-handle.

"Warp factor three, Mr. Chekov," Kirk said, forgetting all about Dr. McCoy's sudden moodiness. And a second later the thrum of the anti-matter drive boomed through the ship.

Two ship's days passed in relative quiet, as they sped toward the center of that ghostly, flickering plumage, beyond a haphazard line of collapsed stars. It was that line that created the strange "pinched" look out on the fringe of the Milky Way.

And in that time, on their way, Doctor McCoy conducted an emergency appendectomy on a young security guard; and Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott came no closer in his eternal quest to balance the warp-drive engines to absolute perfection.

But early on the morning of the day they would enter an undiscovered empire; there was a buzzing at Jim Kirk's cabin door. He threw his legs out over the edge of the bunk, and began pulling on his boots.

"Come," he said, and the cabin door snapped open, revealing Dr. McCoy: his hands now awkwardly behind his back.

"What is it, Bones?"

"Mind if I come in?" He asked, awkwardly, as if he hadn't been invited already. Out in the curving corridor, crewmembers passed by, and a spill of pink and yellow light glowed on the bulkhead behind him, to simulate the dawn of another day.

Kirk was surprised by McCoy's air of formality. He gestured slightly with his head, as if to say, "get in here!"

A moment later, both men were seated on the office-side of the captain's quarters, practically knee-to-knee; and still, but still McCoy was barely able to look him in the eye. Now feeling more than slightly annoyed, Kirk leaned forward as if to grab two rectangular memory chips, which the doctor shuffled one over the other, in his hand.

"Let me explain, Jim," McCoy said, pulling the two nearly palm-sized tablets away, toward his edge of the little table.

Whatever this was about, it was already taking twice as long as it should, the captain told himself.

"I've been trying to find a good time to tell you. And, well, there is no good time," the chief medical officer sighed. The colored plaques were the size of very expensive casino chips and the doctor looked as though he were about to throw his life's savings on the table.

"Bones, just spit it out."

"Orders from Starfleet," the doctor said, mumbling again. "It seems there've been some… complaints."

"Complaints? About what?" Now Kirk was in full management mode, leaning forward, analytically.

"About you!"

"About me?" Kirk repeated, leaning back. He hadn't realized he'd been captain long enough for there to be any complaints already.

"Apparently," McCoy sighed, "there were some… wild oats sewn, in the Academy, and on your early missions."

"Wild oats? Bones, I'm a captain, not Johnny Appleseed."

"All right," McCoy said quietly, and reached across the table to put one of the data storage plaques into the port below a little screen, as the Enterprise closed the final distance beyond Orion space, toward that line of gravity wells.

The official Federation flag popped up on the little viewscreen, blue with white laurel leaves and a map of Federation space, and then was replaced by the image of an old man, staring out at them. Jim Kirk recognized the surgeon general of the fleet, but it took him a moment to dredge-up the old fellow's name.

"Confidential message from Starfleet, from Dr. Crusher to Dr. McCoy."

Dr. Maxim Crusher, Kirk finally recalled, examining the face again: the gentle eyes, but also a strange intensity.

"Your captain, James Kirk, and his personal algorithms—which, admittedly, are open to interpretation—have popped up on the Lateral, with a red flag."

McCoy tapped the base of the screen, and the image of the surgeon general froze.

"That means," McCoy sighed, 'the mathematical equations they use to analyze and even predict your character, based on your brainwaves, your past actions, your psycho-metric test results and all,' have—" and here, he interlaced the fingers of both hands, in a sort of clenching manner—"locked together, you could say, in a way that seems suspicious, somehow, to the general's office."

He tapped the screen again, and General Crusher resumed, as if he'd never been interrupted.

"We believe that, based on the captain's recent history of fraternization with new-contacts out on the edge, he could someday pose a threat to the Federation, itself. When his own glory days are behind him."

Now, McCoy didn't have to pause the screen, because Crusher himself had come to a dark, thoughtful pause. Kirk looked, stunned and quizzically, at the ship's surgeon.

"You are hereby ordered to follow a strict endocrinology protocol, as described in the attached files, to stop these threatening contacts, before they create a potential third-front on our borders."

Now, McCoy tapped the screen, and with some look of shame, withdrew the memory plaque from the screen-port.

"Third front? You mean I'm as dangerous as the Klingons or the Romulans? Or just… what's in my pants?"

"That's not funny," the doctor said, taking the plaque out of the screen-port. "Starfleet is telling me to change your hormonal profile. And, even though I've resisted till now, they're getting pretty stiff about it!"

Now it was Kirk's turn to look exasperated.

"I'm serious, Jim," the physician added. "They think that if I can't 'manage-down' your testosterone level, you just might ultimately do some damage to Federation stability."

Kirk stared at the chips in McCoy's hand, and then into the doctor's eyes, wondering if it was all just a prank. Of course, he'd had some wonderful times with some amazing women—but he could hardly imagine that any of that had led to anything serious or permanent, or…

"Complaints… of what nature?" was all he could think to say, to fill the awkward silence.

"Jim, you know what I mean. It comes down to this," McCoy said, spreading the two computer plaques apart, holding one in each hand, as if weighing two equally unpleasant alternatives: "Number one, we get you started on hormonal therapies to… well, help you become… more harmless to the native populations, from week to week, or month to month. That's what's on this other plaque, the protocol for making you a little more 'harmless' in the eyes of Starfleet."

"To avoid…" Kirk was searching for the words, "altering the… lines of succession, whenever some… ravishing young princesses wanders by?"

"Exactly," McCoy said, a little too loudly, but finally relieved. Only now did he set the computer plaques down, as if everything was finally out on the table. "Either that, or, well… you just avoid falling in love, or having any kind of romance, with every strange woman you happen to meet, who somehow finds you charming or attractive, or whatever you want to call it."

Now, neither man could think of anything to say, to break the awful silence.

"Has the whole Universe gone crazy?" Kirk said, at last.

"Jim," McCoy leaned back, with a sigh. "Have you ever seen Madame Butterfly, by Puccini?"

Now the starship captain looked at his friend as if he was stark-raving mad.

"In Madame Butterfly," the doctor explained, slowing himself down with great effort, trying to make his point as clearly as possible, without scandalizing his patient beyond all endurance, "the beautiful Asian girl has the child of a sea captain, from a faraway land. And of course, he goes off and leaves her. And she dreams of him coming back someday, but he never does. And so she kills herself!"

"Wait… Beautiful young women are… killing themselves over me?" Kirk would have never considered such a thing.

"No, of course not. But what Starfleet is saying is that what you, personally—what you- expect out of a brief encounter may be completely different from what some king's nice young daughter expects. And that's what they're scared of! That she might bring that child up specifically as your own, against the day of your return!"

"I don't know what to say."

"Jim," McCoy said, conscious that they were both fed up, as he stood to go. "They've given me two more weeks to get the situation under control." And, as if adding insult to injury, he seemed to pat his inner thigh just once, when he said "situation."

"I've never heard of such a thing," Kirk said, folding his arms again over his muscular chest.

"Well, I didn't have to tell you about it at all!" McCoy brayed. He stopped now, halfway to the door, and turned back to express his annoyance over the whole thing. "I could have just put it in with your annual shots, and you'd never even know it!" Then, his mood became more philosophical, or even sad. "But then you'd probably be weeping, and moody, and feeling helpless all the time. And who the hell wants a starship captain like that?"

With that, he marched out into the corridor and was gone, leaving Jim Kirk alone with his thoughts. It wasn't long, though, before his reverie was broken by a boatswain's whistle from the comm panel on the desk.

"Kirk here."

"Something on our scanners," came the voice of Mr. Spock. "Request you return to the command deck at once."

"On my way," the captain said, leaving his own dreams behind closed doors again. Then, as soon as Kirk was inside the lift, the red alert began. He was still gritting his teeth over the momentary sense of helplessness at being trapped the little capsule, when he emerged.

"What is it, Spock?" he demanded, as the Vulcan climbed out of the center-seat, and Kirk dropped in: a now-familiar exchange. A moment later, the science officer was back at his station.

"Subspace signal, heavily decayed: perhaps the trace of a mayday, coming from the region of collapsed stars."

"Hailing frequencies?" Kirk said, leaning forward in the center-seat, his elbow on his thigh.

"No response, Captain," the communications officer, Lt. Uhura, said at once. She kept her eyes on the computer readouts before her, impulsively twisting a silver comm-link into her ear, as if to boost the signal's strength.

Just ahead of the captain, on the helmsman's panel, he could see that a dozen lights on the navigator's station shifted to a uniformly menacing red glow.

"Gravity beam," Mr. Chekov warned, his voice climbing at least an octave. Sulu, to his left, hastily took the warp-drive off-line, and the engines' whine zoomed down along a scale, from tenor to bass. The shields were already up.

But, in spite of their hasty preparations, the starship was knocked off course: zinging off its path like a wood chip from a saw. The captain suddenly realized he'd been thrust to the deck, gasping for air under some immense, invisible weight.

Another moment passed, and his chest was being crushed. Pain wrenched every joint in his body against the floor around the captain's chair and his eyes felt as if they were being crushed like stewed tomatoes.

Around the bridge, the standard telltale lights flickered and died. Gradually, though, they all rebooted: first the red alert flashers fore and aft; then the computer panels, and finally the overhead lights. People were picking each other up, and finally looking out through the main viewer to see what, exactly, had happened.

"Report, Mr. Spock," Kirk said, his head aching for another ten seconds or so, as he resumed the center-seat. He turned to see that his science officer was studying the readouts with an unexpected mixture of amazement and dismay.

"The source of attack appears to be coming from the far edge of an accretion disc, beyond one of the larger, active black holes in the region."

"Target for response," Kirk said, not bothering to see if the warm trickle down his right temple was blood, or merely sweat.

"Phasers on target," Sulu said, his fingers poised on the links to below decks.

"Fire."

The rough warble of phaser fire echoed through the upper decks, and trails of brilliant blue light curved up and across a distant, blinding swirl of energy to a point somewhere beyond. A moment passed.

"Computers scoring multiple hits, Captain," Sulu said, though he could only go by the blinking lights at his fingertips.

"Damage reports," Kirk said, smoothing his tunic, and giving himself a second to breathe.

"Minor damage to port nacelle, with partial fracturing of shields four and five," Uhura recited, listening to the multiple voices coming through her board, all at once. "Otherwise, just mild injuries, sir."

"Anything on that mayday, Spock?"

"Negative. Interference is too pronounced from the collapsed star and the friction maelstrom."

"Mr. Sulu, put phasers on standby and take us in closer," the captain said, his desire to protect the ship from another strange attack rubbing against his own mounting curiosity, like a razor against a strop. The renewed wail of the highest alert siren had silenced itself, though the red lights pulsed on and off around the bridge.

After a few moments of tense silence, Lt. Uhura looked as if she'd suddenly found the signal, and threw another switch on the communications console. She turned toward the captain.

"Mayday confirmed, image on screen."

Sure enough, tossing and turning in the midst of the brilliant energy disk, a glint of metallic surface shone: its own warp engines pulsing erratically against the irresistible gravity-well at the center.

"Vessel is the Amphora, a tourist cruise-ship of Antarean registry," Spock recited, as if interpreting the computer beeps and buzzes. "Capacity of 250 civilians; crew of sixty-one,"

"They're not responding to our hail, sir," Uhura said, as to answer to Kirk's next question.

"Anything on those earlier signaling beacons?" he asked, recalling the 'peacock plumage' in the deep sky.

"Signals emanate from four positions in the region," Spock called out. "However, it appears the main source is approximately a half a light year away, bearing four-one-point-six, mark one-one-point-oh-five."

"Get us in tractor-beam range of that ship," Kirk said, even as he drew up a star-map of the broader region in his head.

"Aye, sir," Sulu said. The great pleasure cruiser in the middle of the pinwheel of light grew larger on the screen.

"Her engines are failing," Spock announced, from Kirk's right. All eyes turned to the leviathan cruise-liner, the tips of its engines flashing a long, bright pulse now.

"Tractor beams," Kirk said.

"Still out of range, sir," Chekov, the helmsman replied. They were clearly chasing the other ship at last, as it rolled along in the hot gasses and molten rock, in and out of the surface of the quasar-like disk. The Amphora was melting away as they watched, till even its trail of jagged turbulence had blurred away. Kirk waited for some trace of the cruise ship to re-emerge, just one more time.

"She's gone," Spock said. And all of that had been in vain.

"Get us clear, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, scrubbing an expression of dismay from his lips with one hand, while the other hand hung in the air in a farewell gesture, or as if the captain, by sheer force of will, might have reached out to stop what had already happened.

"Aye, sir."

The Enterprise rose up from the outermost edges of the blinding white shroud, and away to safe distance.

"Spock?"

"We were initially subjected to some sort of focused gravitational field, unknown to our science," the Vulcan began, taking his seat again. "Evidently, the Amphora was trapped on the edge of that disk, circling the collapsed star at the center."

"Scan the region for other vessels," Kirk ordered, a hard edge coming into his voice.

"There seemed to be two small tug ships in the vicinity of the cruise ship, Keptin, but I have lost the reading," Chekov said, aloud.

"Play back, just before her engines went," Kirk said quietly. He leaned back, at last, but the entire mood of the bridge had gone from one of fierce activity to funereal calm.

"On screen," Chekov replied. "Magnify to 100," he added, touching a light panel at his station.

They seemed to leap back in time now, going by the images on the screen, into the moments when the Amphora was still intact. The magnification seemed to taunt them, as if they could easily have saved her, if they'd simply tried a little harder.

Once again, they could see her. And just beyond, there were Mr. Chekov's tiny shadows: a pair of dark, alien tugboats, like arrowheads.

The Russian touched a small light panel and the image grew again.

"Take us around to the source of the attack, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, though he was still mystified on all counts.

"Aye, sir." The warp engines thrummed to life, peeling them farther away from the edge of the blinding whirlwind, and high over the tiny, strange blackness in its center: like a vast, inscrutable eye.

Chapter One

Minutes later they came upon the wreckage of a stellar outpost, blasted to chunks by the phaser banks. The Enterprise floated above in silent triumph, as the frozen slag spread farther, against the brilliant light behind them.

"What was an Antarean cruise shipdoing out this far in the first place," Kirk wondered. On the bridge, activity continued as signals went out from communications, and the helmsman scanned for signs of approaching vessels. Ensigns and yeomen generally took the long-way around, rather than interrupt the captain's fixed gaze across the bridge, at the forward screen.

"Go to yellow alert," he said, at last, though he half-expected some new crushing gravity field to hit, just as soon as their guard was down. When it appeared the Fates were not so easily tempted, Kirk swiveled his command chair to watch the shapely Lt. Uhura, seemingly lost in the sound of distant space-noise. Her beautiful brow was furrowed slightly but, from her expression, Kirk knew that whatever attracted the cruise ship was still in hiding.

"Amphora was listed as missing from her quadrant one solar year ago," Mr. Spock said. "Search turned up no sign of her, along her usual routes."

"And this close," Kirk said, completing the equation, "to a black hole, sucking up all transmissions, she's been completely hidden to normal scans."

"Correct."

"Analysis of… what's left of that outpost?"

Now, Spock stood again, as if called to recite in class.

"This section," he said, holding his hand out toward the largest bit of wreckage as it went tumbling across the big screen, "appears to have been some sort of cannon, or lensing device. Possibly the source of the gravity beam." Kirk ran his eyes across that dark, ridge-stepped cylinder, slowly twisting end over end, glinting in the brilliance of the energy whirlpool.

"Logically, these other pieces were most likely the control center."

Kirk crossed his boots at the ankles, then uncrossed them again, impatiently: as if he might jump up to get to the bottom of this.

"We were too far, at the time of the skirmish," Spock explained, turning back to his computer banks, "to get firm readings on the location of the outpost's creators. However, it should be possible to determine an approximate location, given what appears to be the remains of… a remarkably clear transmission trail, through the common gases." The Vulcan looked surprised, at the remains of a hot plasma trail that burned through the interstellar dust, just an hour before.

"Transferring data to helm," he said, and turned again to face the captain.

"Already traced. On screen," Chekov said, with a hint of triumph in his voice. A computer-enhanced image of a ghostly tunnel stretched away, out into empty space.

"Report on the other end of that trail," Kirk said aloud, to no one in particular.

"No sign of a solar system," Spock began, having turned back to the console, "but I am getting readings of a small, planet-like body: less than point five two three light years, heading 290.135. Readings suggest it is Class M, and may have been one of the sources of those fanned-shaped signal beams, as well."

"All right," Kirk said quietly. "Helm, lay in a course, Mr. Sulu, give us warp factor… one." Just enough time, he supposed, to get a few readings as they approached, and possibly time enough for a little briefing room action on the subject…

And, an hour later the deck six meeting began, with Engineer Scott and the bridge crew who witnessed the initial encounter, and a beautiful yeoman at the computer on the short end of the hexagonal table. A moment later came Dr. McCoy. And no one seemed to notice that his eyes, and the captains, did not precisely meet at any point in the session.

"All right," Kirk said, informally landing both palms flat against the tabletop. "What have we got?"

"The planet ahead has already sent out a squadron of drone vessels, to intercept us," Spock began, and the matching image appeared on the screens in the center of the table: almost invisible black ships, triangular, pointed at the prow. "They appear to be armed with conventional explosives, and we should encounter them within the hour."

"Any sign of light-speed capability?"

"None so far."

"We beamed aboard some of the wreckage of that gravity weapon," Scotty said, "but it'll take some work to sort it all out."

"Any evidence of a connection between it and the Amphora?"

"Only circumstantial," Spock replied.

But to Kirk's left, Mr. Sulu jerk ever so slightly, in his shoulders.

"What is it, Sulu?"

The navigator seemed strangely embarrassed, as if he already knew his argument couldn't withstand scientific rigor. He even seemed to disbelieve it, himself.

"I can't quite put it into words," Sulu said, one hand coming up involuntarily to block the inevitable barrage of questions. "But in the 19th Century on Earth, where I grew up, there was something called 'gold fever,' with thousands and thousands of people flooding in to the region from all over the world, to scour the land for what were once precious metals."

"Go on," Kirk said.

"I know this sounds… odd," he said, as the edge of his hand came down, decisively, almost like a wood-ax, "but it reminds me of one of the… almost desperate ways they used, when they would go panning for gold, in rivers and streams."

Now, a silence fell over the length of the long table, till all that was left was the steady chatter of officers' reports humming through small speaker grills, back and forth between decks.

"Explain," Kirk said quietly, assessing Sulu's awkward, searching expression. At the same time, the vast energy resources of the swirling accretion disk glowed in the back of his mind, as well, like prospector's gold.

"Well, they were called "forty-niners," because of the year of the height of gold fever. But to really go through the river beds, and the creek beds, and search through every single pebble for the slightest bit of wealth, they had to remove the nearly all the fresh water, to get in and start digging around for the nuggets."

Now, at the end of the table, Mr. Spock jerked back slightly, as well—as if he had already followed the thread of Sulu's seemingly quaint history lesson to its conclusion. But in this new case, gravity was the water, and energy the gold.

"The prospectors built temporary, artificial river paths, or 'flumes,' made out of wood, like chutes or crude channels, around their panning beds, so they could go through every pebble and stone, by hand, to extract the gold- without the constant interference of the rushing river currents."

More silence followed, and they gradually became aware of the constant thrum of the ship's mighty warp engines, much larger, but similar in design, to those of the Amphora.

"It might be," Sulu finally said, "that the Amphora was not just 'accidentally' caught on the edge of that energy whirlpool."

"Mr. Sulu," the chief engineer blurted out, "are ye sayin' that someone used her warp drive just to bend the gravity around a black hole? To siphon off the plasma energy? And when they'd burned up her engines, they just threw her away?" Scotty sputtered, outraged.

Now it was Spock's turn to speak- though he, like the others, was jarred by what Sulu seemed to be saying.

"The plasma whirlpools that surround the inner orbits of collapsed stars are among the most powerful naturally occurring sources of energy we know," the Vulcan said, without a flinch. "And, in spite of the obvious danger, even a small set of warp engines operating at one side of the disc could shift the center of gravity, even slightly, to allow a ramjet collection vessel on the other side to harvest the swirling plasma closer the inner edge of the vortex, at nearly it's highest energy potential. One need only position the warp drive ship as close as possible to the event horizon, without crossing that line, to create Cochran distortions that would reduce the pull."

"And beam the raw plasma energy away, to wherever they needed it." Kirk wiped a thin layer of perspiration from his brow.

"But wouldn't they lose a substantial amount of the energy, just shooting it back a half a light-year to their own home world?" It was Dr. McCoy, looking flummoxed.

"Not necessarily," Spock said, becoming more animated, as he contemplated the grand mechanics of the scheme. "The super-heated plasma nearest the singularity would already be in its simplest beaming state. They need only overcome the wear and tear on their machinery. And, it would seem, they have already done so."

"But if they already have a gravity beam technology to attack us, what do they need with warp drive?" Kirk asked, trying to reason from his own warrior's logic.

"Unknown," Spock replied. "It may be that the beam that hit us was highly focused, though much less powerful, and perhaps harder to sustain."

"It seemed powerful enough, the first time, Mr. Spock," Scotty said, uncomfortably.

Jim Kirk glanced around the long table, to see if anyone had anything more to offer. "Scotty, I need a report on that wreckage. It might keep us from ending up… like the Amphora."

"Aye, Captain," the engineer nodded, in grim agreement.

Later that shift, Kirk was back in the command chair as they approached the lonely planet ahead, and were met by the squadron of alien attack vessels.

He tried to think like one of the long-term planners back at Starfleet, or some committee called together to debate his own personality flaws, out on the stellar frontier.

They must have added up every romantic encounter he'd had over the last three or four years, and come up with something quite unexpected: that in twenty years or so, a whole group of new rulers might have been raised up from childhood, who might have known him as their father.

And that meant, in terms of strategy, Jim Kirk might have become a sort of "Johnny Appleseed" after all—creating a dynasty of his own, a lineage of leaders at the farthest edge of Federation space… But in twenty years, anything could happen, and all sorts of other influences could have driven each of these young Kirks, the women as well as the men, in every conceivable direction.

It was ridiculous, on the face of it, unless he considered his own skill as a salesman on behalf of cosmic unity and interstellar cooperation in the bargain. Suddenly he imagined that secretive Starfleet committee on his own personal conquests connecting all of the dots, and factoring in his own diplomatic skills, to build an empire of his own, from the simplest series of sexual encounters… to truly become a Caesar of the stars—if, of course, something about Starfleet had soured within him, if he survived his first five-year mission as the captain of a starship... He never really planned that far ahead, but now he wished he had.

And gradually, another vision began to haunt him, of his own self, but different: looking strangely weak, yet with something lurking, deep behind his own hazel eyes: like a trapped animal, hiding in the shadows. And it was a certain wildness behind a fearful mask that made it clear: this is how one looks under chemical castration.

For him, it seemed worse than any insane-asylum, worse than the stocks in a public square. Maybe he wouldn't feel that way in twenty years but, that love of life, of adventure, of women, of romance: it was all part of what made him the youngest Starship captain in the fleet in the first place. What would be left if they started tinkering with his own personal chemistry? How much of him would just fade away, before its time?

"Captain," came a sultry feminine voice, over his right shoulder. It was the doe-eyed Uhura.

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

"We're being scanned by the planet ahead," she said.

"No hail, yet," Kirk said.

Besides, how much more incredible could the next young alien woman possibly be? Hadn't he tasted the lips of the most beautiful women in the galaxy already? Hadn't he learned to find any other impossible joys, beyond the embrace of an exciting woman? He uncrossed his legs, and tried to think of something else.

"Receiving a hail now, Captain," Uhura said, without surprise, her elegant dark fingers poised on glowing buttons on the console.

"On screen," Kirk said, sitting up straight.

And there, emerging from a ripple of the glittering starscape, appeared a lovely but vaguely perplexed face on the main viewscreen. Her skin was green, like an Orion's, though she was light years from that conniving constellation.

"This is Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise," he said at last. We are investigating the… loss… of the Federation passenger vessel Amphora. Requesting clearance for orbit."

After a brief moment, the beautiful young woman glanced down, and then calmly, directly, forward—as if seeing into the bridge of the Enterprise. Her eyes were large and dark, above an almost child-like nose and chin, the color of sunlit moss. An elaborate, dark braided hairdo rose high above her forehead, making her face seem even smaller, though her eyes were the most striking things of all: like midnight spheres, surrounded by swirling white. With her green skin and dark hair, he couldn't help thinking of Orion slave girls, though their own manes were always tangled and flowing.

When she finally spoke, her voice was husky, warm and gracious, in a tentative way.

"This is Allena, first daughter of the most honored King Jonoff. We are pleased to welcome your vessel, Captain James T. Kirk. However," she said, pausing as if quietly interrupted by some unseen advisor, "due to the… present distress of our people… we may be forced to limit, somewhat, your privileges as a visiting dignitary."

"Understood," Kirk said, though of course he didn't really understand at all. "We… look forward… to meeting with you in person." After a moment, her image disappeared from the screen, replaced by those dark arrow-tip vessels in space.

"Spock," he said, wondering at the similarity between this young woman and the Orions.

"Interesting," the Vulcan nodded. "The visible likeness to the people of Orion is obvious, though I am at a loss to explain the connection. My initial calculations indicate this planet has come here from an entirely different part of the galaxy."

Kirk nodded, trying to separate the image of cool elegance in the king's daughter, from what he already knew of the piratical Orions, and their take-no-prisoners attitude, in love and war

A few hours later, the Enterprise crossed the last distance, slowing to sub-light speed, and then alien escort ships took up positions ahead of her, bringing a trophy back to their world.

Gradually, they could see they were approaching a strangely symmetrical planet, where forests and patchwork crops were interrupted at regular intervals by great hexagonal oceans, creating the impression of a planet-sized soccer ball, casually dusted with white and swirling clouds. A large moon seemed to glow like an artificial star, very close to their world—as if they'd never had a Copernicus to tell them the truth about the proper order of planets, going around their suns.

On closer inspection, Jim Kirk began to see a vast, natural desert in the south, and that some of the oceans on the "night-side" of the planet seemed to be dry: white hexagonal deserts themselves, tinged with something like green algae, and a few of the others had a soft rusty appearance, as if they'd been dead for many years. But each one was identical in size to all of the others, along with the glittering blue hexagonal oceans, beneath that glowing moon.

Mr. Spock broke the silence, to Kirk's right, with a tone of mild surprise in his voice.

"Our sensors indicate this is a rogue planet, Captain. Or, a hyper-velocity runaway."

"Explain."

The Vulcan drew a deep breath, as if the matter would require more than a little consideration. "Based on their speed, nearly eighteen million miles per hour, and the obviously contrived nature of their waterways and oceans, it would appear that they have purposely broken free of their original sun, and crossed into open space from one of the neighboring systems."

Kirk glanced back at Spock, and then at the viewscreen once again, as if for corroboration.

"Essential maneuverability seems to come from the calculated act of juggling water between oceans."

"Just from the weight of the water?"

"It has long been known," the Vulcan shrugged, "that even a small, man-made dam can subtly change the orbit of an entire world. Such dams were proposed as one means of easing your Earth's global warming problems, in the twenty-first century. I would suggest, in advance of further study, that this new world has devised a means of escaping their original solar neighborhood, at least partially through forced changes in mass and dynamics, as a means of transport."

"But without a sun of their own, to take with them?"

"Sensors indicate the moon-like object in orbit is radiating sufficient energy to maintain life down on the planet," Spock answered without hesitation.

"And those artificial oceans," Kirk said, trying to count their numbers on the sphere ahead, "are each thousands of times larger than a standard hydroelectric dam."

"Indeed. Each one is nearly three point seven one nine two eight thousand times the size a normal hydroelectric facility, required to power a standard-sized city and its surrounding region. And it appears there are twenty-two of them, in all. By filling or draining them in various calculated combinations," Spock nodded, "they could gradually alter their path through space. Assuming they can also manipulate the orbit of their moon, with the aid of their gravity beams, and perhaps other means we have not yet detected."

"But why?" Kirk asked.

"A cursory examination of the star they seem to have fled suggests it has now reached the end of its productive cycle. And, as we have seen, there are at least seven major black holes in the region, which may have given them pause, as well, in terms of future stability."

"An entire civilization, re-directing itself through the dark—and the cold," Kirk wondered.

"However," Spock interrupted, "if Mr. Sulu is correct in his theory of a 'gravity flume,' they may be able to transit independently for some considerable amount of time, perhaps even centuries, using the plasma energy from around the most active singularities, nearby. In effect, it could be their entire source of external energies. Depending on the height of their technologies."

"As long as they… also have a warp drive ship, to steal… or capture… to shift the gravity around the hole," Kirk nodded, even as something dark shifted in his own soul, at the greedy sacrifice of the Amphora. "Mr. Spock, get me a landing party in the transporter room."

"Yes sir," the Vulcan said, reaching down to the armrest on the captain's chair, as Kirk's athletic form disappeared in the turbolift. As the first officer recited the names of various officers to make planet-fall, his gaze swept forward again, to the strange rogue planet, with those mathematically perfect oceans.

Chapter Two

"The present distress."

The young woman's words echoed in his mind as Kirk and the others assembled on the transporter pads, including the two security men, Lieutenants Michaels and Johansen: Johansen, with tousled blond-hair and almost impossibly broad shoulders, and Mr. Michaels, curly-haired, brooding and wiry

Also settling themselves on the pads, flanking the captain, were Mr. Spock, Lt. Riley and Yeoman Tamura. As a technician across the room worked the controls, the six dissolved into gold and star-like orbs, which then seemed to evaporate in mid-air.

For the landing party, only a moment passed before they rematerialized on a modern city street. But as they turned "outwards" from formation, they saw ruins on all sides. Great buildings lay in heaps, like crazy mountains or landfills run-riot, though many other towers still hovered far above in the sky.

The crewmen's tricorders began warbling in the desolate air, the noise echoing faintly off the smashed remains of steel and glass. Smoke and steam poured out of broken windows here and there, lending a battlefield mood to the surroundings.

Kirk looked up at the floating skyscrapers far above, some shaped like old-fashioned hypodermic needles; while others were flat and segmented, like metallic, glinting clouds, and everything in-between. A few tiny flying cars drifted around as well, under a soft pink sky.

Just then, they heard the familiar humming buzz of the transporter beams again. And then, untold numbers of golden lights assembled themselves into the familiar shape of Dr. McCoy: already smiling, almost apologetically.

"Well, don't look so surprised, Captain," the chief medical officer said, spreading his arms in an amiable shrug. "You know how much I love to have my very existence scrambled into high-energy signals, and shot through space, hundreds of miles away. Makes me feel glad to be alive," he said, clasping his hands together in a counterfeit show of exuberance.

Kirk nodded, smiling in spite of himself. For it suddenly seemed his old friend had decided to 'chaperone' him on this mission, invited or not. He wondered if the good doctor also happened to see the same dewy-eyed young princess on one of the view-screens on board the Enterprise. And if McCoy's own mind had been racing to the same, inevitable conclusion. But the doctor merely surveyed the towering buildings, floating high above them, as if the captain's future were the farthest thing from his mind.

"They built their castles in the air," McCoy quoted, still jovially, staring upward. But even his good nature evaporated when they heard a muffled, booming crash some blocks away. Instantly the group turned, as one, to follow the thunderous sound. Their quick walk became a run, as they heard the loud creaking and groaning of metals and once-weightless engineering grinding and sighing into another chaotic mountain in the distance: a great tower, reduced to wreckage in a minute's time.

The seven hurried, but their path became jagged around the ruins of other buildings that lay in cold silent heaps; and a few were still in flames, with smoke crackling through the shadows deep inside. Mountain after mountain of collapse spread to the horizon, where aspiration turned to ash. Still, hundreds of these buildings still hovered up there, sleek and defiant, but seeming like condemned royalty on their own invisible gallows, each putting forth a brave face against some new revolution.

Finally they came upon the latest wreckage in the streets and parks. The scene was almost like a construction site, with cranes and searchlights already piercing the ruins inside, and men in protective gear shouting to one another, as they clambered into the heap of pillars and rubble. In a moment, Kirk became aware of another hovering craft nearby, a floating platform with a small group of government types looking down in silence.

"Stand back from the wreckage," a voice boomed, as the landing party approached, their tricorders held out to scan for survivors.

"We've come to help," Kirk shouted back, in the glare of a spotlight. The natives on the ground seemed to ignore him, as their own engineering crews climbed across the girders and glass.

Now a force field of some kind began pushing them back, a sort of cowcatcher of light, another fan of wavering beams of green and yellow and blue, shoving them invisibly across the square, away from the nearest devastation. Kirk attempted to put his hand through the lights now and then, to test the field's strength.

"Don't do that," McCoy complained, watching as Kirk blew on his hands, which were suddenly bright pink. The doctor rummaged around in his kit, and found a little burnished steel canister to spray a fine mist over the injured skin.

But Kirk became impatient again, shouting his title and his name, and invoking the authority of the Federation and the proud name of the Enterprise itself. But it didn't seem to stop anyone, even when he repeated his offer of help. At long last, another one of the searchlights was turned away from the collapsed building, and toward the landing party.

He repeated his identification again, "I'm Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, of the United Federation of Planets," holding out his sunburnt hands for emphasis, as a show of harmlessness.

At last, a smaller hovercraft settled down in a nearby square, away from the force field. And when the flickering bars of light had waned, the landing party finally approached. A hatch popped open with a hiss and, like some kind of combat troopers, two cameramen charged out, one pointing an insect-like visual recording device at the Enterprise crewmen, and the second stopping half-way between, facing back toward the hovercraft. Kirk supposed they might be weapons, but from the weird intensity of their owners, like fierce artisans, he guessed something else must be at work.

After a minute, an imposing older man emerged from the hatch, grim and self-important, in a dashing gray tunic, which was stiff enough to nearly conceal a round belly. He swung his arms almost casually, though his face had a sense of duty to it, softened by weight and age.

"What do you want with us?" the older, official-looking man inquired, with a mixture of innocence and sternness that seemed strangely familiar.

"We've only just arrived, sir," the young starship captain shrugged, looking equally authoritative and concerned, but ducking his head respectfully.

"My name is Exmoor," the older man said, as both cameramen hovered around the group now, to get the best angles on what might be construed as a confrontation, though Mr. Exmoor was suddenly lost deep in reflection, gazing across the square at the latest fallen building, wincing at the clang of heavy crowbars against structural metal, as rescuers made their way deep inside. One of the cameramen dutifully turned his recorder to follow Exmoor's gaze.

"What's going on here," Jim Kirk wondered, also captivated by the terrible grandeur of so many heaps of towers all around, in all directions.

"Controlled… demolition," Exmoor sighed, though even those two technical-sounding words seemed fraught with bitterness and irony, as the other cameraman huddled in closer, focusing on the two men together. "We've lost most of our main source of energy, and some of the older buildings are being brought down now, one by one, to conserve power... to save the newer, more important ones."

"Of course," Kirk nodded, though he was relieved to see that Exmoor hadn't yet made the connection between the Enterprise and the plasma-collecting ramjet it had destroyed earlier in the day.

"Captain," Lt. Riley spoke up, offering his tricorder, showing the small screen on it. "These buildings have very little internal support—it's all held up inside by the same energy beams that keep them afloat."

"And that's why," McCoy said quietly, "they collapse like circus tents, once those internal beams are cut off. The whole thing just goes 'flooey.'"

"You come from far away," Exmoor said, snapping out of his dramatic reverie, and turning back to the Earthmen at last.

"Yes sir, we do. Are you with the government here, in this… time of distress?" Kirk renewed his respectful attitude again—for reasons he couldn't quite place.

"No, no," Exmoor said, seeming preoccupied. "I have a feelie on the strand, about disasters and emergencies, and we're shooting here for our next installment."

"I see," Kirk said, imagining some sort of documentary or historical recording for entertainment purposes. "I suppose I need to talk with the young lady, the ruler, Allena."

At the mention of her name, Exmoor seemed vaguely struck, and the cameramen came in closer. "Do you know Princess Allena?"

Kirk had to shrug and laugh, almost embarrassed, as if he'd unknowingly been conferred a great honor to make other men jealous. "Well, we've spoken," he allowed.

"An… exceptional young woman," Exmoor said, suddenly stopping himself (it seemed) from saying much more.

Another hovercraft, larger with bold black stripes around the sides, roared down and landed with a complex series of whines and growls. One of Exmoor's cameramen backed away to get a wider shot.

And at this point, a group of six uniformed officers bounded out of the black-striped craft, and took up positions around the Enterprise crewmen. But only Michaels and Johansen noticed Kirk's very small hand gesture, telling them to remain passive. They were quickly herded into the government vehicle, leaving Exmoor alone in the darkening square as the large craft rose into the air, while his two cameramen wandered this way and that.

Ten minutes later the landing party was deposited in an utterly plain, locked holding room, with two bolted-down metallic benches and some overly bright white lights hanging from the ceiling. As usual, they had been stripped of their phasers and communicators.

But not long after, a single, unarmed guard swung the heavy door open and they were marched out to a balcony where another hovercraft was idling just off the edge of the exposed deck, on one of the few buildings that seemed suited to the ground—squat and domed with a flickering force-field, that their new craft slipped through without incident, once they had boarded.

As they gained altitude, they watched the pink sky turn mauve and then slowly purple, through the windows all around. Michaels and Johansen had seated themselves just behind Kirk, as if they were part of some great, muscle-bound throne that followed him wherever he went; while the others maneuvered their seats into a nearly circular configuration, like cats, to look over one another's shoulders for any would-be attacker. Then their big chairs locked down with a muffled, magnetic thunk as the craft moved away from the police balcony.

"All that's missing is the steward," McCoy said, to no one in particular, settling into a plush cushioned chair in the passenger compartment.

After a minute or so, the tailored forests had disappeared below them into a more-or-less uniform green haze, along with all the odd piles of ruined skyscrapers; and the blue hexagonal oceans on each horizon were revealed in their precise geometry, bathed in the last rays of the moon, like great opalescent gems. Finally, their vessel slowed and bumped gently against one of the great structures.

"And it's all about to come crashing down," Riley muttered, though Kirk gently admonished the young lieutenant with a glance. The sealed hatch popped open near the pilot's cabin, and they were beckoned forward by another guard in black, with fearsome bandoliers across his chest, like a big red "X."

They walked down an elegant corridor with plush white carpet and soft brown walls, punctuated by glossy white door panels and framed portraits, and 3-D screens on the walls. Those showed what appeared to be exhibits from museums: sculptures, paintings, extravagant jewels, and all the riches of a great civilization. They were ushered in to a long meeting room, with a reflective stone table that would run nearly half the length of the Enterprise' shuttle deck, and weigh a solid five tons. Elderly men sat in high-backed chairs along the entire length of the cool stone surface, though only a few glanced at the Starfleet officers once they'd assembled near the table's end.

"You are Captain Kirk?" a thin, elderly voice said quietly, from the far end, barely visible in the sunset beyond the windows.

"Yes sir."

"And," another voice, less thin, less distant, prodded: "your ship destroyed our energy station at Proxima V?"

Kirk nearly shrugged, and tried not to smile. "I'm afraid so, sir. Yes. We were attacked by a gravity beam."

There was an ominous creaking of boardroom chairs now, or perhaps brittle bones, as more and more of the painfully silent old men turned to regard him. He became aware of a pendulum-style clock halfway-down the length of the enormous meeting room, tick-tick-ticking very slowly, with such great deliberation that the next second always seemed just slightly in doubt.

"Perhaps, Mr. Kirk," a more robust, growling gentleman began, backing his chair up from the table, clear down at the other end of the long, long room, "you are not entirely aware of the workings of our own empire." And, as he paused to begin some sort of bemused, dumbed-down little speech, he stood and walked toward the captain.

"My name is Brazeltine," the younger-older man said, neatly rounding the length of the table on the blue carpeting. He had a wide, meaty face, the color of boiled vegetables, and slicked-down black hair, with a cool smile that seemed to slice open his mouth like a sharp blade to reveal his humanoid white teeth.

"You see, Captain," he said, glancing down amiably, "your ship steers from bright star to bright star, navigating its portion of the galaxy, from point to point. While we, as a… whole planet, do much the same thing: but steering from dark star to dark star, as we go."

"I understand that, sir," Kirk said, aware that his science officer had shifted uneasily, to his right.

"And now, of course," Brazeltine resumed, "you've put us in a very serious position, with the loss of our ramjet."

"May I enquire," Kirk said, striving to maintain the polite mood, "as to the fate of the passengers and crew of the cruise ship Amphora?"

"They're all safe, perfectly safe, I assure you, Captain," Brazeltine smiled, with just a trace of impatience. "But as you've undoubtedly seen, we're now having to demolish dozens of our own floating structures, merely to conserve energy. It's quite a terrible and loathsome thing to us, I can assure you."

"And as to the fate of the Amphora," Kirk repeated, finding it harder and harder to keep this just a conversation, and not a shouting match, "I would like to secure her immediate passage back to Antares for her full compliment of crew and passengers."

"One thing at a time, captain," Brazeltine replied, his voice growing very quiet now. "We have suffered the loss of a staggering number of properties—"

"I beg your pardon, sir," Spock interrupted, now, "but we were informed these were older structures that were largely unused at the present time."

Brazeltine gave an odd little jump, as if he'd suffered a minor electrical shock, or equally small outrage, but adopted a conciliatory attitude in his response, nevertheless. "That's as may be, Mister…"

There was the usual awkward pause as the least human-looking man in the room drew the mild reproof of the rulers of this strange new world.

"Spock."

"Mr. Spock. Yes. But the fact remains that our planet is following an independent path, which forces us to rely on a particular kind of energy, as we make our way across the galaxy."

"But you can't just steal an interstellar cruise ship," McCoy interrupted, "because you prefer a ridiculously pretentious economy!" The surgeon stepped up along side the captain now, worn out by the prevarication of these gravity barons. "You've gone and made yourselves into refugees. You can't expect to carry your whole world and every floating palace on your backs—or on the backs of the Amphora and her passengers."

Kirk didn't bother to rebuke his chief medical officer.

As with many a conversation between an older man and a younger one, this gave Brazeltine a chance to smile with false deference, to acknowledge the earthmen's lack of patience or intelligence. "Our former sun, Captain, was dying. We've made extensive plans to relocate our beloved world to one of several nearby systems, but until we can find one with the most agreeable stars in our path, well, we simply must make accommodations. 'The needs of the many,' as we say here on Chilion."

"Sir, if I may," Spock tried again, "it appears from our sensor readings that your planet has been itinerating through the local systems for at least thirty standard years. How much longer do you anticipate your journey will take?"

"Well," Brazeltine said, his hands coming up in a mild gesture of consternation, "that all depends on the circumstances, of course. It may be quite some time."

"Quite some time, indeed," another voice said, from down the length of the room. It was another thin and reedy older voice, and not to be contradicted. In the purple rays of the setting moon, however, the landing party could not see who was speaking.

"Yes, and what concern is it of yours," another silver-haired gentleman called out, from even farther down the long polished oval. The faces of several of them had grown nearly brown in the sunset, but their gnarled old hands skittered against the table, like autumn leaves.

"Gentleman," Kirk said, as the natives became more and more restless, and their chatter and shouts of protest grew louder, "we are going to conduct an investigation of every ship that's disappeared near this stellar region in the last three star-decades. And I will expect an accounting, from you, for each and every last one of them. Good evening, now."

At this, Kirk turned to go (not knowing precisely where he'd go, or how he'd get there without his communicator) just as he heard a sudden humming like an angry hive of bees, accompanying the angry voices behind him… and then a strange clattering of hollow metal against the floor.

He turned to see the strangest sight, as a whole mob of elegantly clothed old men was slowly tumbling toward him in a state of rage. A few of the frail, little men were in beautiful, matching wheelchairs, though most of the others hobbled unsteadily on clattering braces and crutches, revealing one or both legs had perhaps been lost in battle, with their suit-pants hemmed beautifully to length. Others waved their canes to spur the creeping mob forward. Initially, Kirk felt a rush of humility, to think of so many brave old men set against him, canes waving in the air like sabers.

Down came the quaking little horde, as they hobbled forward to attack—old men stumbling on, or being run down by, their comrades in motorized wheelchairs, in a terrible slow-motion collapse. Spotted green fists and shining walking sticks waggled mercilessly from the heap, even as young secretaries and footmen rushed forward to untangle the leaders of this world from their helpless outrage.

Riley and Tamura were both giggling unforgivably at the sight, but Kirk could not restrain his wrath at the Chilions' intransigence, as he led the crewmen out through the glossy white doors. They marched into the artificial light of the sable-colored colonnade, with a long line of white pillars and windows revealing the glittering city at dusk.

"Rig a signal from your tricorders," he ordered, without any allowance for the difficulty of the matter. "Get a signal to the ship. We're not staying," he snarled, his own blood pounding in his temples.

But then, several meters ahead, he caught sight of the beautiful Allena, walking slowly between blocks of dim light, from the arched windows along one side of the hallway.

She had a comical, slightly frightened look on her face as she stopped twenty meters away. She must have seen the landing party storm out of the boardroom, and now they descended upon her. But, after the emotional explosion behind them, she seemed strangely serene in her pale blue suit-dress, almost huddled against the deep brown walls. She wore a funny, matching, bulbous blue hat that covered what Kirk imagined was that elaborate hairstyle.

"Perhaps you should come inside," she said, with a trace of pity and urgency, as if the landing party were a group of helpless orphans caught out in the rain. After the smallest fraction of a second, they filed through her doorway.

She held a long, slender finger to her glossy peach-colored lips and she the door shut behind them. Waving her long, graceful arm, she swept the Enterprise crewmen into an adjoining room as an urgent rapping came against the hallway door. She closed them inside a palatial sitting room, and the landing party, left to itself for the time being, looked around in mystification.

There was a muffled, brief conversation in outside in the front room, and Kirk read Spock's lips as the Vulcan listened against the closed door. "I'll handle this, if you please," the Vulcan repeated, soundlessly, quoting the first daughter of the "most honored King Jonoff."

Chapter Three

Captain's Log, Stardate 2970.23. Engineer Scott in temporary command. Captain Kirk has not answered our signal in over four hours. But, from life-form readings, it appears the landing party is in satisfactory condition at present. I remain convinced the planet below presents a threat to shipping lanes, until it can be stopped from destroying ships for their warp drives…

"Negative on all scans, Mr. Scott," Lt. Sulu announced, from the ship's helm.

"Keep looking, Mr. Sulu, they're out there, somewhere," Scotty grumbled, leaning to one side in the captain's chair as a yeoman handed him a repair update from their initial run-in with that gravity beam.

On the viewscreen, the rogue planet revolved majestically, out in the middle of nowhere. Each moment revealed another, great hexagonal ocean, coming into view beneath the glowing moon. And somewhere, Scotty surmised, this culture was building another ramjet, to replace the one the Enterprise had just destroyed, and whose remains sat below in the hanger deck.

They won't be without their main power source for long, he told himself. It would probably be foolish not to have another ramjet already sitting in storage somewhere, just in case—the price for going without it could be too great, bringing an entire world to a cold, dead standstill in a great big hurry.

"Mr. Chekov," the chief engineer said now, taken by a small inspiration. "Show me the path their planet's taken, and plot it back to their home-system, if ye can."

"On screen," the helmsman said, without delay.

A long, swirling, occasionally retrograde line scrawled across the viewscreen: tracing where the rogue and its moon had been in months and years and decades past. It was a course from system to system, with the occasional swirl around some passing star, for a sling-shot to greater speed. By now, those stars and planets had, themselves, moved on in their own predestined manner, after a brief dance with this passing stranger.

He supposed the dry-dock, or space station, could be anywhere along that route, or adjacent to any other black holes between the starting point and here.

"Show black holes," Scotty said, with the usual burred accent.

Chekov tapped a few lighted rectangular panels on his console, and a sprinkling of red dots appeared on the map.

"Mr. Sulu," Scotty began, sitting himself more upright now, "if you wanted to hide a heavy machine works out there, where would you do it?"

"If I were building a ramjet, I'd want to keep it near the highest concentration of non-dormant black holes, Mr. Scott," the navigator supposed. "It would be closer to where they'd need it most and harder for us to find."

"Aye, it's worth a try," Scotty said. "Bring us in, course 269-point… whatever you think, Lieutenant," the senior officer decided. "Not too close at first."

Uhura spoke up, from behind him. "Shall I drop a satellite over the landing party's last known coordinates?"

"Aye, lass," he said. "Let's leave a signal for 'em, just in case."

"Aye, sir," Uhura said, taking a fraction of a second to remember the procedure, and then tapping it in to the computer. Less than two minutes later, from the lowest deck of the ship, a hatch opened and a blinking metal object drifted down into a lower orbit, in the silence of space.

A short time later the Enterprise rose up and up, and warped away.

From the penthouse of the great, floating building, the man-made oceans looked like monstrous silent honeycombs in the dark, suggesting a beehive of activity beneath the surface. Allena had excused herself shortly after their arrival in the private quarters, and returned in a shimmering blue gown, with strings of sapphires in her hair. Dinner was wheeled in and consumed, and now the landing party spread out around the perimeter of the building on the balcony, to watch the night above and flying traffic below.

"I must say, I'm shocked, Captain Kirk," she said, after some idle pleasantries.

He only raised his eyebrows, smiling innocently.

"Well, you haven't once said, 'take me to your leader,' or any of those other things space-people are supposed to say when they come here."

"Why would I want to see your leader," he said quietly, still smiling.

"Well, don't you have some message of galactic consequence, or want to challenge him to a duel, or something?"

"I do have a message of consequence," he said, suddenly leaning in to kiss her, and daring to look very closely into her deep, dark eyes.

"Well," she said, exhaling a little, "I must try to get out into the galaxy a little more often."

"And how is Madame Butterfly tonight?" a familiar, Southern voice inquired quietly, from over Kirk's shoulder. And, though he disliked the interruption, Jim Kirk had to admit that the beautiful young woman's gown did resemble that of a delicate, blue-winged insect. But, from Kirk's grin, McCoy realized the captain had already forgotten his admonition about Puccini heroines and Starfleet diplomacy.

"Ah, Doctor McCoy," Allena said, letting the strange reference to Earth opera pass by, "Captain Kirk here won't give me the secret plans to the unimaginable evil your Federation hopes to unleash upon an unsuspecting Universe."

"You're looking at it," McCoy said, raising a glass in the direction of his commanding officer, as she gazed playfully at the captain. It was obvious that both Kirk and Allena expected the doctor to pass on by, now that he'd made his light-hearted contribution. But, instead, the doctor simply squared his shoulders and heaved a grateful sigh after a lovely dinner.

"I don't suppose you have a friend for my friend," Kirk said, after an awkward moment.

"I'm afraid I don't. It's a lonely business, being a mindless figurehead. But I want the doctor to stay—so I can learn how your most intimate friends communicate with you," Allena insisted. Then her manner turned to comical jealousy. "And I demand to know, right away, who exactly is this Madame Butterberry."

"We're not that intimate," McCoy protested. "Oh, and Madame Butterfly is his wife, back on Earth."

"I see," she said, her wide eyes growing even wider now.

"Madame Butterberry is my concubine," Kirk corrected, straight-faced, though it seemed obvious he was too young for such an elaborate life of deception, as of yet.

"A wife and a concubine? My goodness, no wonder you're out to space for years and years," she said, turning to face the smoldering moon.

Finally, McCoy moved on, and Kirk leaned against the balcony wall, to admire her profile. "Tell me about your father," he said.

For a moment, she seemed shocked, sincerely—but with a trace of a smile, nonetheless. "It's funny you should bring that up, at this precise moment, Captain."

"Why is that?"

"Well, I really don't remember him very well, myself. But if you asked anyone else on the face of the planet, they'd tell you he had far more than the average number of wives and concubines, himself." She raised her shoulders up, as though the loss of him was still enough to make her feel a chill.

"People say all kinds of odd things," Kirk said quietly, as McCoy finally meandered away.

"Well," Allena insisted, in her warm, almost childlike manner, "some of those rumors have simply got to be true, don't you think? I mean, there are just too many of them!"

"If history were written by the gossips," Kirk shook his head, "every great moment would occur right before, or right after, some romantic fling."

"Well," she said, philosophically, "some of those great moments had to occur because of a fling. Without a fling, it's quite possible that neither one of us would be here to talk about it right now!"

It was just then that a twinkling golden star caught his eye, nearly overhead.

"But he was much more than that," Allena resumed, staring out at the horizon. "I mean, he was a great man, and the reason our culture went into space in the first place. He threw down a gauntlet, in a manner of speaking, and demanded our scientists explore the moon, the original one, not that one up there now. And thanks to him, we were eventually able to escape our dying sun. Of course, father, King Jonoff was dead himself by the time any of that came to fruition." Then, her eyes turned down to her own delicate hands on the balcony wall.

"It was very shocking and sad really, the murder and all the intrigue… even though I was too young to understand any of it at the time. But all of this, all the floating towers; the great weight of the artificial oceans that helps guide us… tumbling from star to star; not to mention the tremendous power of the energy from our black holes, to keep us alive and thriving, even, in the depths of space…" She noticed he wasn't listening, and then trailed off: trying to see what he was staring at, so intently, up above.

"I'm sorry," Kirk said, after recognizing the silence, and turning his attention back to her, from the blinking satellite the Enterprise had dropped.

"Perhaps I should concentrate more on flings and concubines, in my historical accounts," she said, with an awkward little smile.

"No, no, it's not that," Kirk said. "Would you excuse me for a moment?"

"Of course. I'll ring for more wine," she said, gliding past him. Her soft, translucent gown trailed behind, glowing with metallic threads.

"I saw it," Mr. Spock said quietly, when Kirk came up alongside the science officer. His faintly orange Vulcan fingertips seemed to be tapping out the pattern of the flashing signal light from the Enterprise's satellite, on the balcony's edge.

"And we're stuck down here," Kirk said, as if left-behind on the eve of battle.

Down the length of the balcony, the other members of the landing party were watching the orbiting signal themselves, translating the code into words and sentences, and casting expectant glances toward the captain.

But then Allena returned, and behind her were more waiters with more silvery push-carts loaded down with chilled wine and even more colorful bits of food, what seemed to be some kind of chilled dessert. She walked out close to his side, and for a long moment they simply took in the night: the skyscrapers like great rockets, or ornaments hanging on a Christmas tree. They seemed to be perpetually blasting into space, without going anywhere: hovering across the open air, for miles and miles; draped across the dim moon, like a pharaoh's jewelry. And below that, a quiet, white-edged ocean, and the forests and farms, turning black after dark.

"Doesn't this all seem," Kirk asked, tentatively, "a little extravagant?"

"How do you mean," Allena asked, with quiet sincerity.

"Do the buildings have to do that?"

"You mean fly?"

"Wouldn't it be more efficient if they just rested on the ground?"

"Well," Allena said, as if the topic hadn't come up for a long time, "we've had a terrible problem with seismic disruptions: you know, when the geological plates go smashing into one another," she said, pounding her slender fists together in the air. "It's partly due to the great weight of the oceans, when we fill them up, this one and then another, then empty the first one. It puts a terrible strain on the crust. And there's the nearness of the moon, I suppose."

"Oh. " He tried again: "Well, can't you move the moon out farther away?"

"Yes, but we need it so terribly—it's our sun, you see, when we're out between actual stars."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, the beams of plasma, from the black holes," she said, with a sudden sense of the excitement of the tremendous energy, rushing from the blackest spots in the Universe, to her world, twinkling in the dark. "If you aim them into the surface of the moon, it just heats up like a miniature sun. It's mostly bauxite, after all."

"Of course," Kirk said, growing used to the wildly improbable.

"I mean, you can't lie on the beach and get a tan from it, of course. But it's enough to keep the crops alive, and you even can read by it during the daytime," she said, not grandly, but almost as though she had to make excuses for wearing a patched old sweater that should have gone into the bin some years ago.

"And," she added, with a flourish, "if you heat it up just off-center now and then, it changes the moon's orbit around us, and that, in turn helps change our path through the galaxy. And the water from all our oceans puts moisture in the air, and that helps support the warmth in the atmosphere!" She smiled with a great sense of triumph and cleverness, after drawing wobbly orbits around each other with her fingertips, right under his skeptical nose.

"I see."

"Isn't that something? They have dozens of ways of moving us across space, and we're getting faster all the time! It makes one feel terribly important to go fast, don't you think?" she said, with the lilt in her voice, barely acknowledging her own little attempt at irony.

"Don't you ever think about just moving to another planet?"

"Well, think of all the work we've put into this one," she said, rolling her eyes at the prospect of throwing it all away and starting over again from scratch. "And, really, once you've settled in a place, it becomes special, really. I mean, probably everyone thinks his or her planet is exceptional. But ours really is!"

"But there are tens of billions of other suitable worlds in this galaxy alone," he said. "Someplace new, and unspoiled? Where you wouldn't be covering one grand folly with another, and—"

"But there are millions—maybe hundreds of millions—of black holes out there to power us along, on a grand tour," she countered, seemingly quite assured of the rightness of her world's daring philosophy, but in a thoroughly conversational manner, and even sidling up to him a bit, in a great show of girlish confidence. The cool night air wafted over them, and he put his arm around her.

"Allena," he said, broaching the subject long before he'd planned, "do you ever wonder how all that energy can be harvested so easily? From the powerful swirling cyclone of plasma around an impossibly heavy, impossibly dangerous collapsed star?"

"Well," she said, shaking her head slightly, "if you're asking me how well I did in university, you might be a little disappointed! Of course, I've seen all the feelies on the strand, about the dangers and deprivation of the early plasma prospectors. Some of them died quite horribly, after getting sucked into the maelstrom. Did you know that?"

"Yes, of course," Kirk supposed.

"But what truly great society hasn't had to make some terrible sacrifice or other?"

He didn't have anything to say to that, of course, for it was clear that she really hadn't a clue as to who was sacrificing, or for what. The old Earth expert in palace intrigues, Machiavelli, once said, "behind every great fortune lies a crime." But he couldn't imagine arresting this beautiful young woman for events set into motion before she was born, or when she was very little, or that others had contrived in her name. Could he?

"Suppose I told you," he said, after trying to couch his words more properly, "that terrible sacrifices were still being made for all of this."

"By whom?" she asked, furrowing her brow.

He decided to back up and try another tack. "Allena, we came here in search of the passengers and crew of a large cruise vessel, the Amphora. Do you know anything about them?"

"No," she answered. "Why, what happened?"

But he needn't have answered, as the beautiful space princess was already adding up all of his hints and all of his inquiries, till she came up with a fairly good approximation of his concerns, on her own. Suddenly, she seemed very far away, though they were still standing together in the dark. Her elegant hands drew up into hard fists on the wall around the balcony.

"I believe you're suggesting," she said, leaning slightly away from him, and a raspy tone of worry coming into her voice, "that all of this is tied together, somehow."

"I'm afraid so."

"And now, I suppose, we'll have to give up everything we've built, over the last many years."

"I don't know the answer to that," he said quietly.

"Isn't there any technology, anywhere in the galaxy, that we could barter for?" Now, her hands flexed out flat again, as if she were reaching out for an answer, but after a moment of silence it just seemed she was left looking at some invisible thread in her fingertips, some tenuous and wearying line that unraveled as soon as she'd grasped it. She looked down in hopelessness.

He could easily imagine an antimatter-drive system to distort an accretion disc, as the Amphora had, before she burned out, and burned up. But then he remembered those old men in the boardroom, so easily riled into a fury when they didn't get their way, and tried to conceive of their grand designs becoming even grander, over time. And what was he to do?

Then he became aware of a sound like a distant, rushing wind. Allena saw his look of concern and raised her arm, and pointed out into the darkness. After a moment, Kirk could see that she was gesturing toward the more distant great hexagonal ocean on the horizon.

"That one's just starting to fill up," she said, a tiny note of sadness in her throat, but managing to speak with the matter-of-fact tone of a practiced tour guide.

"Ah," he nodded, though his mind was still on the long-term problems of the people of Chilion, not its calculated shifts from one fanciful non-orbit to the next, across the galaxy.

"It's quite spectacular, if you're interested." She smoothed her gown, as though she were checking imaginary pockets in the gauzy fabric. "I think we have enough fly-suits for everyone, if you'd like to see," she said, seeming eager to change the subject.

"Fly-suits?" he asked, his heart beginning to pound at the thought of flight, and freedom.

She quickly counted the landing party, with its seventh member, Dr. McCoy, and strode purposely off to her royal suite, Jim Kirk following behind. One room led to another, and soon they were standing in a closet the size of a small house, gently lit to match the hour, and filled with footwear and clothing, from floor to ceiling.

"Ah, here we are," she said, energetically pushing apart two tall rolling racks of gowns. The long dresses all swayed in unison, as if caught by some long-ago melody, dancing as she shoved them aside to reveal some much less glamorous mechanical gear behind, hidden away in a back row. And each fly-suit, or collection of bands and belts, had a big, yellow and orange backpack, and lens-like blobs that extended on struts from the shoulders and hips, and arms and legs.

"I should tell you," Allena said, stepping easily into one of the dark bronze exoskeletons, "these are absolutely forbidden under the new emergency conservation rules. So, it's something we'd only get to do at night," she smiled mischievously, having seemed to forget the weightier matters of a few minutes before. Allena helped him into one, and they walked back to the balcony—he, clanging and clattering a bit, while she seemed thoroughly practiced and somehow still quite elegant in her own.

"Gentlemen; Yeoman," Kirk announced, as the others on the balcony turned to look: "Go get your fly-suits." He jerked his thumb back the way he'd come and they hurried inside, following the footprints in the thick carpeting, as he got instructions from the princess.

The humming power packs weren't loud enough to prevent some limited conversation between members of the landing party, as they tentatively hovered over the balcony. And then, one by one, over the edge they went: like bumblebees, above the great beehive.

But as they neared the white ocean barrier, wreathed in steam, the sound of geysers became deafening, roaring out from underground channels. Silvery columns of water arced from every-other great ocean wall, shooting out into the center of the great empty bed, stunning to behold: like an outrageous series of waterfalls rushing sideways from three different "cliffs," to collide in the middle, cloaked in churning clouds of mist, which roiled with the noise. As strange as dark and raging water, though, was the fact that two more ocean beds were filling as well, along the next horizon, sending up lazy clouds of mists.

"How often does that happen," Kirk shouted to Allena, over the roar.

"Not very often," she called back, stretching her hand lenses out to balance the weight of her tall beehive, when she tilted her head toward him.

"Isn't it staggering," she called, hovering closer now. Kirk gave a look to his first officer, floating off to his left that suggested the whole thing was, indeed, quite staggering.

Chapter Four

"Allena, we need our communicators," he said, once they'd returned to the royal tower and wriggled out of their fly-suits. His ears were still ringing from the roar.

"That shouldn't be a problem," she said, stepping up to the captain, and seeming to be glad to be alone at last. "Can it wait till morning?"

He smiled in spite of himself, at the awkwardness. "Sooner would be better," he said, looking for a strand of dark hair on her pretty head that he might straighten, or loosen, purely in the interests of interstellar amity. The wind around the floating skyscrapers rustled her gown, and the warm glow of light from inside, softened the shadows around them.

"Allena," he said, at once leaning in slightly, and also seized by a sense of duty, "I need to know what happened to the people on board the Amphora."

She eased back, ever so slightly, on her heels: as if the romantic mood had passed, possibly for good.

"Well, I believe my brother said something about castaways," she said, still hushed and a bit husky. "But they're all fine, in one of our remote communities. Relocated, the castaways they found, I think he said."

"I need to talk to your brother, then," Kirk said, his brow lowering with serious determination.

"Well, I'm afraid it's a bit late for that," Allena replied quietly, shrugging her narrow, bare shoulders, and thus setting a wave of sapphires a-twinkle at the base of her neck. "You see, he was up inside one of the first buildings that came crashing down. It was quite a shock. Just first thing this past morning."

There was a little pause, while Kirk tried to assess the impact this may have had on her.

"I mean, I hardly knew him, he was thirty years older than I am, and terribly… serious," she said, looking into Kirk's eyes.

"So, you're the next in the… line of succession?"

"I'm afraid so," she said, leaning in to where Kirk could feel the glow of warmth and perfume emanating across the last inches between them.

It would be wrong, of course, to say that Jim Kirk was simply thinking now of a way to distract the young princess from her duties, so Mr. Spock and some other member of the landing party could secure some fly-suits, and go searching for the passengers and crew of that doomed cruise vessel. And, it would be equally wrong to suggest that he was simply looking for an excuse to sweep up this impossibly delicate, funny, alluring woman into his arms and make her his own, even at the risk of his manhood.

But somewhere between those two extremes was enough of something else to settle the matter.

They kissed, and held each other in a moment of perfect stillness. Soon, though, Allena asked to be excused, as is so often the mysterious case with women, and Captain James T. Kirk took the opportunity to step out on to the balcony. There, his Vulcan second-in-command could be seen, several meters away on a separate overhang, brooding over the great 3-D chess game in the sky.

Down in the shuttle bay of the USS Enterprise, Mr. Scott found himself in the bitterest of Heavens, or the sweetest of Hells, standing in the wreckage of that alien ramjet.

Large clamps hung from the high arched ceiling, holding the shiny black barrel of a stinger-like tail in mid-air that stretched nearly the entire length of the bay. And, scattered along either side of that cannon-like tube lay several other giant pieces of alien machinery, as yet to be identified, and dozens of smaller pieces swept up in the Enterprise tractor beam along with it, in archeological squares: like forgotten toys on a hopscotch grid. What had to be the actual ramjet intakes lay on their sides nearby, with blown-out gills like an Earth shark's. Scotty walked silently around the great mess for the hundredth time, muttering quietly.

"Aye, so ye won't talk," he said, as if he was a policeman, and the wreckage some malefactor with a personality of its own: hard and glowering and proud. So he circled around again, putting the entire beast back together in his mind, this way and then that. A tricorder was slung around his neck, and his fingers patted against it idly, as if the familiar instrument were a kitten hanging against his chest.

Finally, as he rounded the long barrel of the robot space-ship again, Lt. O'Neil appeared overhead, slowly wiggling backwards, out of firing-end of the heavy metal cannon, black boots and black trousers first. His blue tunic was scuffed with coal black ash after delving deep inside. And, when he dropped down to the hanger deck, his boots landed smartly on the hard surface. He smoothed his dark hair, and wiped his sweaty round face with a red sleeve.

"I don't know, Mr. Scott," he sighed. "Look at this," he said, holding out his own tricorder. "Just a series of metal plates and—well, I guess, some kind of resonator."

Scotty nodded, with pursed lips and eyes squinting, down at the tricorder, as if he were utterly frustrated.

"All right, lad," he said quietly, as if the mechanism might be feigning sleep, but listening to their every word. "Get over to the screens and see if ye can draw up a schematic. Doesn't have to be exactly right, let's just get started."

"Yes, Mr. Scott," the lieutenant said, and hurried across the hanger to a computer station tucked away in a corner.

Scotty turned and scratched his head, giving a little kick to a scarred piece of shrapnel. The twisted little piece lay glinting, halfway into another red square they'd drawn on the deck. He'd liked to have kicked the whole mess into a giant heap and start over again, but he guessed he didn't have time for that.

"You know, Mr. Scott," O'Neil finally said, his voice echoing across the bay, "I think the little pieces are the key, somehow."

"Aye, that'd figure," Scotty said, scratching the back of his head in frustration. "And a lucky shot'd make them all impossible to put back together, sure as shootin'."

Now, the man in charge of keeping the tremendous engines of the starship Enterprise in top condition was down on his hands and knees, examining one fist-sized hunk of blasted alien metal after another, and trying not to let his Scottish exasperation get the better of him, over the damned incalculable nature of an alien technology. And, fifty meters away, O'Neil was doing the same with virtual images on the large computer screen: like two blind men, patting their ways around an elephant, from the different ends.

Back on the planet or, rather, high above it, Jim Kirk was all alone with a beautiful girl, in her royal sitting room, in the dark. And once again he felt a kind of joy at having stepped off the racing sidewalk of life. All he could think of was the hypnotic peace in her large, dark eyes, along with the seeming fragility of her graceful arms, and her playful lack of artifice.

He wanted to see that shocking honesty, that perfect innocence just one more time. It made his heart rise within his chest, and a foolish grin spread across his face.

"What is it," she asked, leaning in a bit closer, as if some vastly important bit of information had been left unspoken.

"I think you may be too young for me," Jim Kirk said, though he was really thinking of how innocent she seemed.

"Oh. And how old do you think I am?"

Now he felt as though he had stumbled into some alien force field, trapped and rendered helpless by a question that could not possibly be answered correctly.

"Seventeen," he said, pulling a number out of a hat.

"Oh, my goodness, no—I'm a hundred and ninety-two!"

Now it was his turn to be shocked. He felt all the blood drain out of his face, arms and legs.

"But of course we still figure our calendar on the old system. It used to take us just fifty days to go 'round our original sun, every year. Give or take. A hundred and ninety-two old years old, I should say."

"Oh, well, in that case," Kirk frowned, quickly trying to do the math, "I'm afraid you're too old for me."

She punched him in the shoulder, and laughed.

"Well, that's part of how we got thrown out of our solar system in the first place," she said, after a moment's reflection. "We were already going around so quickly to begin with, it just took a little nudge, I suppose, and 'zoom!' Well, of course, there were several tricks involved. But don't ask me about the physics of it."

He took her hands and kissed them gently. But gradually, Kirk and Allena became aware of a light knocking on the door.

"Do we have children already?" Kirk asked, his lips brushing against hers, as he whispered his words.

"I suppose it's possible," she said, slightly out of breath, "the world is moving faster than ever."

"Captain?" came the voice on the other side of the door. Kirk recognized it as Dr. McCoy.

"What is it, Bones?" Kirk called, trying to remain where he was. But the beautiful space princess had slipped out of his arms, and demurely crossed the room to straighten her flowing gown and high-up braided hair. With a sense of resignation, he made his way to the door and opened it, just a crack.

"Mr. Spock hasn't reported back yet," McCoy said, in a slightly dramatic whisper, his face right on the other side of the door. The Vulcan science officer had left with Lt. Riley less than two hours before, and taken fly suits to search for the castaways.

"He doesn't have his communicator," Kirk replied, also with hushed urgency. "And neither do you."

"Oh. Right," McCoy nodded, before regaining his whispering intensity. "Mind if I come in?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Oh," McCoy said, without really seeming to get the message. The doctor began peering into the large, darkened suite, and his shoulder slowly leaned in, following his searching gaze. Then, as if he were changing the subject: "Mind if I come in?"

"You just asked me that," Kirk whispered again, trying to appear to be patient.

"Oh," the doctor repeated, with less of a whisper. "Well," he grumbled, "just… stay out of trouble."

"Yes, dad." The door began to close between them.

"I'll be right outside," McCoy said, louder, out in the gilt-edged hallway.

"No, you won't," Kirk said, in the darkness on the other side of the door.

After a moment's glowering, the doctor stalked back to his own suite, his boots making a soft crunching sound on the carpet. Portraits of noblemen and women watched knowingly as he went, and golden pitchers and ornamental clocks glittered against the walls beneath them, as crystal chandeliers blazed overhead. And as McCoy opened the door to his own chambers, he shook his head, wondering what kind of a eunuch of a captain would be left at all, if this matter were allowed to follow its natural course, against the will of Starfleet.

Back in her own suite, Allena suddenly seemed perplexed, as Kirk joined her again on the large couch.

"What is it?"

"Why," she asked, in her soft-spoken manner, "would anyone want to use this cruise ship of yours for the energy harvest?"

And so, Kirk began to explain about the Amphora's warp engines, and how they distorted the plasma energy accretion disc, making it possible for "harvesting" ramjets to venture closer and closer to the singularity, right up near the event-horizon: to sweep up the brilliant, super-heated plasma before it went spiraling into the black center; and to beam it back to Chilion. Without getting pulled in, in the process.

"But what is it about these 'warp engines'?" she asked, as if he'd utterly missed the point of her question.

And, as any modern student of physics could have explained, he went through the basic equation of matter and anti-matter coming together with incomprehensible force, but peacefully orchestrated through a series of dilithium crystals in magnetic chambers, into an orderly, faster-than-light thrust. And then he just shrugged his own shoulders, as if to say that it was all perfectly commonplace.

"Oh, dear," she said, strangely, leaning back away from him a bit.

"What is it," he said, taking the opportunity to gently rub his fingertips down her soft and narrow back, in what might seem like a reassuring gesture.

"It sounds awfully like what happens to us when we die," she said, tilting her head in bewilderment. She looked as though she was about to have a headache, brushing her forehead with her fingers. "That… all our contradictions will be brought together and the… collision will cause a terrible conflagration. It's what we're told will happen, on the Final Day."

"Everything that's opposite, smashing together in some final destruction?"

"There's more to it than that, I'm afraid. You probably wouldn't believe this," she said, clearing her throat, as if she were about to make an official speech of some kind, "but since the death of my brother yesterday morning, I'm… technically sort of the head of the official church… around here."

"Oh, well," Kirk said, trying to weigh all of this in his head, "I've never kissed a pope before."

"What's a pope?" she asked, hoping to change the subject, even as she despaired of the weight of all the decisions coming into her own life.

"Never mind," he sighed, knowing that the romantic mood had passed, as swift as moonlight behind a cloud. Doctor McCoy would have been quite pleased.

"It might be a good idea," she said suddenly, as they stood up in the darkness and walked to the door, "if you didn't say anything about the ins-and-outs of this warped drive of yours, while you're here. I mean, personally, I'm not particularly religious, or superstitious, or whatever you call it. I'm really quite modern. But plenty of people around here take it quite seriously."

"Really?"

"I mean, I probably shouldn't even venture into talks about science at all. Let alone religion." Then, she folded her arms impatiently, as if all these questions of gravity and physics were quite exasperating. "Science has gotten so strange, after all, from when I was a little girl. It practically forces one to flee into religion for some kind of predictable rationality!"

"I never thought about that before," Kirk smiled, standing apologetically, as he turned to go. He stepped out into the corridor, and a column of light poured into the room, framing her perfectly, though she blinked uncomfortably, as if he'd opened up a harsh new reality to her.

"Good night," he murmured, and closed the door softly behind him, leaving her in a darkness that seemed much deeper than before. She didn't look outside past the long wall of glass, or she might have thought about jumping.

The cold air rumbled against his ears as Mr. Spock flew through the night, and Lt. Riley followed a dozen meters behind. Their arms and legs were splayed out like water bugs', with glowing lenses extending from their hands and feet, and shoulders and hips and knees, just a hundred meters above the dark trees and fields past below, black against the black ground.

"What are we looking for, Mr. Spock?" Riley called, when he was close enough to be heard over the roar of the wind. Each man held a tricorder in one hand but at arm's length, buffeted by the wind, any readings on their scanners were difficult to see.

"Any sort of isolated village or permanent stockade," the Vulcan called back, "which might hold the passengers and crew of the Amphora."

"How do you program your tricorder for that?" Riley said loudly.

"Set for power sources suitable for a small town, Mr. Riley, of perhaps five hundred or less," Spock replied, his fierce-looking brow low over his eyes, against the winds, or perhaps against the slow-witted lieutenant.

Not long after this, Riley went flipping off abruptly in a barrel-roll, like a piece of a clay duck, splitting off from the first officer's side. But then, a few minutes later, he was back with his tricorder dangling from his elbow.

"It's hard to re-program with one hand in this wind," he said.

"Please reacquaint yourself with the manuals concerning elementary equipment handling, Lieutenant," the superior officer remarked, as they flew on through the darkness.

"Now you've spoiled the romantic mood," Riley muttered, under his breath. If Spock heard him with his tall, fluted ears, he gave no indication.

Another fifteen minutes passed in silence, save for the rumbling wind, and what little they could hear from their beeping tricorders. They progressed outward from the original beam-down coordinates in a wider and wider spiral—until, at last, after what seemed like hours, they detected a force-field on the ground, and swept off about forty-five degrees to the north-east.

Then, a few minutes later, they realized they were falling closer and closer to the surface, as the trees all loomed upward like dark monsters, to swallow them up.

"Turn around—get back to the landing party," Spock called, but even as they spun like gulls, toward the glow of the city in the distance, they were still falling. And very soon, the conglomeration of faraway lights disappeared completely beyond the horizon.

Then, as if falling from the sky wasn't bad enough, sudden blasts of light began streaking past them, apparently to keep them from running once they hit the ground. Neither Spock nor Riley could clearly identify a particular color to the train-cars of light that went sailing past, shimmering and almost sizzling as they dissipated over their shoulders. At one split second, they could see a predominance of silvery white, with a bright shadow of red or pink, that jittered and became a coppery greenish yellow, as each oblong block of energy raced by. And each man thought he could hear a sound like a factory door being slid open, as each great sheet of light went by on either side.

Then there was just the chaotic noise of snapping thick branches and the slow "whoosh" of foliage cascading down along with them, and on top of them. There may have been a few white flashes of pain, as they tumbled down through the dense treetops. But their fall, slowed by the flexible pine branches, was only fast enough to crack a few ribs. A short moment passed in complete silence, as the two men overcame the shock, lying on their backs. Then, as quickly as they could, they struggled up on unsteady legs, on a thick layer of pine needles.

"My tricorder," Riley said, in a mournful tone, sounding dazed. He began looking up into the dark sky, where the device must still be dangling from a branch high above. A cool breeze made the pines rustle like rushing waters.

Spock immediately began shrugging himself out of his ruined flight-suit, and Riley was still fiddling with the belts and lashes on his own arms and legs, when they heard the hum of an approaching hovercraft. The science officer helped him by hoisting the crushed energy cell off the younger man's back.

"The power-packs were stalling before we ever came down," Riley said, annoyed.

"Agreed," Spock said. "Evidently some power-dampening field, perhaps as an outer-ring defense for the force-field we detected."

The sound of hovercraft was getting louder, and Spock looked into the tiny controls on the flip-top of his scanner. He adjusted the tricorder till its little screen went a bright shade of red. Then, instead of the usual piercing warbling noise, came a high-pitched sound, and the two men crouched among the heavy fallen tree limbs, pulling branches over their bodies. Gradually, the hovercraft noise faded away. But they waited a few more minutes in silence, beneath the swaying trees.

"Back to the city, Mr. Spock?" Riley said, once the first officer had stood again, and both men were dusting pine needles and gold pollen from their black trousers. Riley began looking around, up in the branches, like a mouse watching for owls, and not very happy to be lost in the wild.

"Negative, Lieutenant. The most probable scenario is that the captain or members of the landing party will come looking for us, long before we could ever hope to reach the beam-down coordinates again on foot. Therefore, the most logical solution is to carry on with our mission, in… that direction," the Vulcan said, orienting himself with almost no difficulty at all, despite the black forest night. Without any hesitation, he began trudging through the infinity of giant redwoods, across fields of soft mulch, with Riley close behind.

"Yes, gentlemen, what is it you want," Allena said, still blinking the sleep from her eyes, as she stood before the high council at the very strange hour of three in the morning. She wasn't terribly surprised they were still here. They were always here, as far back as she could remember, whenever she came in or passed by, as a girl. But now the white-hot light from the lamps in front of each councilman seemed entirely too bright. Her hands were folded over her waist, and she wore a long, quilted dressing gown of pale mauve satin. She didn't realize it at first, but its high sharp neck and the way it flared out around her calves had the unintended effect of making her seem unusually serious and ceremonial, for a young lady.

"Princess Allena," Mr. Brazeltine said, with the appropriate mixture of fatherliness and respect, "as you know, Captain Kirk has placed us in quite a jam, and we're going to have to initiate further austerity moves at once."

"Yes," Allena sighed, weary of the obvious. "What steps have you taken to restore power, Mr. Brazeltine?"

Brazeltine, the chief of council, blinked and pulled back a few millimeters from his friendly, forward-leaning pose. "Well, we're doing everything that's possible, of course, Princess. But our operations are contingent on a number of factors—"

"Like the Amphora," she said, abruptly, as though the name had been ringing in her ears a thousand times, since she'd reluctantly said good night to the captain. And now, the glare of the boardroom lights, combined with her own persistent desire to return to bed, was making her more and more terse.

"Well, yes, that and other things," Mr. Brazeltine nodded, taking great care to appear philosophical, while the other men sat in absolute stony silence, their faces long and green like old alligators'.

"Gentlemen," she said with a sigh, "if you can't maintain stability for my people, I shall simply have to find someone else who can." And with that she turned to go, tossing her head slightly as the quilted fabric of her dressing gown rustled to catch up with the rest of her.

"We also think it would be best," Mr. Brazeltine added, as she paused at the tall, gilt-edged doors, "if Captain Kirk and his crew were placed under protective guard, your highness. For their own good."

"I shall determine the best interests of Captain Kirk. And for all of my people," she said, her voice still very quiet and almost dream-like. But, behind her sleepy eyes, something had caught fire.

"You have something of your father in you, your grace," another one of her legion of advisors said, speaking up for the first time, with a high and reedy voice.

"I'm quite sure that more than a few young women on this planet could say the same, Mr. Allred," she said, with a mild bluntness that surprised even her. Then, out of thin air, she remembered, "and I should like the devices that were taken from the visitors back at once. I will be waiting for them in my quarters, gentlemen, and anticipating a very early start to my day."

The doors were swung open for her as she swept out, and then closed behind her with the usual "click," like the gentle meeting of two billiard balls. Once she was down the hall a way though, a little smile bowed her lips, as she savored her own surprising change of character. Usually, she was scared stiff of those old men. Perhaps tonight was different, because of the matronly comfort of her dressing gown, or the outrageousness of this early hour. Or from being in the arms of her new love.

Mr. Brazeltine was not smiling, once the doors were closed.

"I suppose there's no harm in returning their more peaceful gadgets," he said, his frown turning into a chewing motion, as he paced toward the dark windows at the far end of the room. "Their ship is far away, and they can hardly do anything for one another at the present… But I wonder if the situation can remain stable, when more and more of our city lies in ruins."

"I think it's fairly clear," one of the nearly three dozen old men said, rousing himself from a slightly slumped-over pose, "that we may have bitten off more than we can chew here, Brazeltine."

"Well," the younger man equivocated, "as long as the captain is down here, and his ship is all the way over in the Pocket, we should be fairly secure. In fact, things should be back to normal in a matter of days, don't you think?"

"But for how long," another man said, very hoarsely. When a butler in a silver and black vest tried to re-fill a water glass before him, he angrily waved him away.

"Oh, come now, gentlemen," Brazeltine smiled: surprised they'd lost their nerve so easily. "We have a destiny to follow. Our own path, remember? 'We, not enslaved to some petty star, and no darkness prevails against us...'" He tilted his head, as if reciting well-known poetry. "Princess Allena's own father said it a hundred times, before he died. And if my own intuition is any good at all, I imagine Captain Kirk might be very glad to help a young lady in distress, with some kind of solution to our long-range concerns. As long as his precious ship isn't… permanently damaged."

And by the time he turned back to face the others, in pools of light stretching along either side of the dark stone table, his expression had taken on a strangely harmless, almost plaintive look. Little, knowing grumbles of approval could be heard from the elderly men and slowly, one by one, they twisted themselves out of their chairs and hobbled on crutches, or staggered on canes, or wheeled themselves back from the table, and toward the great doorway, and home to their beds.

Allena, as Mr. Brazeltine might have predicted, had already flown down the corridor and across the length of the great floating palace to tell James Kirk of her triumph in facing-down her own implacable advisors: her long, stiff dressing gown flying apart below her knees as she hurried, revealing sensible long white pajamas underneath.

Then at the last moment, just as she was about to burst into his suite, she paused, steadied herself, and ducked her head toward an ornate mirror hanging on the wall nearby. One little strand of hair on her forehead was coming down toward her left eye, making her look like a schoolboy, she thought. She expertly put it back into place, with a few little sweeps of her fingertips. Then, in a moment of doubt, she went back to the mirror and brushed the auburn lock back down onto her untroubled brow, trusting providence to know best.

The captain managed to wake up as she came padding quietly into his inner room. And, when he saw who it was, and the look of girlish excitement on her face, he merely pulled himself up to a sitting position on the huge bed, up against the grand headboard, with a quizzical smile.

She told him all about her triumphant meeting, and how she made it clear that she was in charge of affairs, for the first very time in her life. And that he'd soon be getting back his equipment, taken from them during their short confinement at the police station the previous day.

"I don't know what it is! They woke me up in the middle of the night, and I simply didn't have time to be frightened or nervous! And I felt terribly formal and aloof in my old dressing gown—I'm going to have fifty made up just like it, in absolutely every color!"

"History will remember you as the pajama princess," Kirk said, his eyes still half-closed, but seeming to stare off into the admiring, distant ages.

"Oh, be quiet," she laughed, though she couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice. "You know, I really think I took them totally by surprise, back there. Ha! If they think they can push me around, they've got another think coming, don't they?"

But Jim Kirk was propping himself farther up now, on his hands and elbows, as if he were expecting a sudden collision on board the Enterprise.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," he said, and slipped out of the bed, cautiously, crossing to the wall of windows across the room. She was behind him, in a moment, and both stood staring out into the meager glow of dawn, as the huge glowing moon warmed again.

"We're coming down," Allena said quietly, her voice full of wonder. She seemed to be measuring the distance between all the floating towers and the horizon below.

"That's odd," Kirk said, quietly peering out, past his own reflection in the glass, "it looks like all the other buildings are still up there, at the regular height."

"It must be another safety descent," she said, though she didn't seem very reassured. She took sudden hold of his upper arm.

"But when these buildings come down—when the power is taken away," he said, wandering down the lane of his own thought process, "they lose their internal structure and collapse."

"Well, yes, if it goes that far," she said, suddenly uneasy, and stepping back from the window with her arms folded. It was obvious now, that the royal house was going down to the treetops, and all the rest of the city seemed to be going up in the sky, farther and farther out of reach. "But we have batteries, reserves of power, to see us through days and days."

"The palace, brought low," Kirk said, and then immediately wished he hadn't.

"Oh, dear," she said, wondering if she'd brought this sudden change about, with her rash behavior.

"Would they evacuate the palace?" Kirk asked, also stepping back now.

"I don't think so," she said, with a tone of wonderment in her voice, for such a thing had never happened before. She was holding the neck of her quilted, satin dressing gown closed very tightly now with one hand, and wrapped her other hand around his elbow. "Besides, what will everyone think, when they see the royal house has been moved into a position of safety? With everyone else still stranded… way up there?" she said, surprised at how far out of reach the rest of her realm seemed now.

"Maybe you shouldn't have threatened to fire all your advisors," Kirk said, wrapping his free hand around hers, around his other arm.

"They're not really my advisors—they were my fathers', most of them, and then my brothers', till he died. I've only just inherited them, I suppose. Do you think I should go and apologize?"

"For what? You're the one in charge," he said, trying not to sound impatient.

"Am I?" She seemed genuinely lost, lowering herself suddenly into a chair in the corner. "Well, I give up. I was wrong to defy them, and apparently it would be just as wrong to try to make things better again," she sighed.

"I don't think that's the issue," Kirk said, drawing her up again, and leading her to the edge of the giant bed where they sat in the faint rays of dawn.

"They're punishing me for defying them," she stared out the windows at the horizon, which never used to be in sight at all, from her own bed.

Then, all at once, there was a terrible sound of shouting and banging out in the far corridor, beyond the receiving room in Kirk's suite. Both of them stood up, all full of self-consciousness, from the silence at the edge of the bed.

"Your majesty!" came a woman's deep voice.

"In here, Hulda," Allena said, forgetting the discussion of the moment, and walking to the open bedroom door. In a moment, a huge mountain of a woman, like Juliet's nurse, came bouncing into the darkened rooms.

"They're on the strand, turn it on, turn it on," the nurse insisted, not seeming to even notice Captain Kirk, in his underwear. Her great chubby hands were all up in her silvery hair and then stretching her round face into a grimace of panic as she looked around the room, silently beseeching the furniture with the dust cloth in her hand.

In a much calmer state, Allena touched the corner of a gold-painted molding, and the wall instantly shimmered and became a holographic viewscreen. A picture flashed on: Mr. Brazeltine, speaking directly into the camera from some ceremonial desk, beneath a silky, half-bundled flag of state on the wall behind him.

"…These precautions are intended to protect the dear child of the king, the lone survivor of the throne, the little girl of our hearts. We will be off-loading her… and her royal retinue to a secure transport, and from the palace she will be taken to a place of safe-keeping."

"So you see," Allena said pensively, as if she were fighting off the first signs of hysteria, "the 'little girl of his heart.' They'll have me bundled off to some guarded compound by breakfast-time." Her hands became fists, and her forearms thrashed this way and that, "and no one will ever hear from me again."

"Trust me," Kirk said, hurriedly pulling on his black trousers and gold tunic, "you'll be in complete control of the planet by the end of the day. Possibly by lunch-time, if I can manage it."

"Oh, dear," Hulda said, looking out the window from where the three of them stood, in the center of the bedroom.

"What is it," Allena said, and then stood stock-still when she saw the vehicle approaching the balcony.

"It's that man from the feelie," the nurse said, filled with amazement.

And, in a bound, Mr. Exmoor had jumped from the edge of his own hovercraft, like a heroic buccaneer down onto the lip of the balcony. In a moment, he approached the sliding glass doors.

"I don't think it's safe for you hear, Princess Allena," the old actor said, suddenly all politeness and humility, in spite of the grandness of his entrance, as he offered his hand.

"Well, I'd begun to suspect as much," she said, staring back and forth between the captain and Mr. Exmoor, and looking slightly wild-eyed.

"Wait a minute," Kirk said, gently putting his hand on her arm. "If you leave before those old men, then they're going to be the ones in charge from here on out."

Exmoor paused, and assessed the young captain, as if he'd forgotten their meeting entirely, when the landing party first beamed-down.

"He's right," was all the older man could say, with a shrug. "Everyone will see you being escorted away like a helpless child."

"The little girl in their hearts," Allena repeated, grimacing, somewhere between anguish and anger.

"Oof," Hulda shook her head, suddenly straightening pillows on the bed, out of habit. "She hates it when people call her that!" She struck a large sleeping pillow on the bed with a walloping blow.

"I'm a hundred and ninety-two!" the princess complained.

"I came as soon as I realized the palace was falling," Exmoor said, beginning to pace back and forth across the chamber.

"That means the government transport won't be far behind," Kirk said.

"Maybe I should park my flier out of sight," Exmoor said, appraising the expression on Kirk's face, as the captain's mind went racing ahead.

"Close by," Kirk nodded. Then he turned to the older woman, who had moved on to wiping down a nightstand. "You, ma'am, I need your help."

"Me? But I must help the princess!" Nevertheless, the great huge woman began smoothing her golden uniform, with its wide white bib and apron, as if she could be ready for anything, given a moment's notice.

"Allena, go down and speak to the advisors. It's on this same floor, isn't it?" He winced at not being able to remember right away.

"Yes, but what shall I say? They'll try to send me off to some orbital prison satellite!"

"Just stall them for five minutes—ten at the most. And don't leave the palace! Agree with them, fight with them, whatever it takes."

He grabbed the older woman by the elbow and she went dancing backward along behind him, out into the receiving room, and out into the corridor beyond. Exmoor, meantime, climbed back onto the edge of the balcony, and Allena followed Kirk and her maidservant, shaking her head.

As she paced down the long corridor once more, possibly for the very last time, the princess tried not to look out at the vast expanse of forests and farms below. It'd never been so close before, to where she almost felt she could reach out and feel all the branches and leaves, as the building continued sinking lower to the surface, gently drifting to ground.

She paused for just a moment to catch her breath, before stepping into the chamber of the council of the royal advisors. Only Mr. Brazeltine and a few of the others remained, as the glowing moon streaked the night into long shadows, coloring the forests from black to green to gold. The council room doors hung wide open, for the first time that she could remember.

"Ah, Princess," Brazeltine said, standing from the far end of the table, extending a hand of greeting. It was as if he were gently summoning her into his presence. She nodded slightly, and glanced down at the rich blue carpet, but stood just inside the great doorway. Her hands clasped one another formally over the belt of her dressing gown.

"Don't be frightened, your grace," he added, with a disingenuous smile, and raising his arm out, as if she hadn't, perhaps, seen it at first.

"Mr. Brazeltine," Allena began, as placidly as she could manage, "I'm afraid I have no intention of leaving the royal house at present."

"But you're in very great danger, the whole building is coming down," he insisted, as if he were trying to talk sense to a very small child, though he also seemed to be holding the edge of the great conference table out of fear, himself.

"Then we should bring down all the other buildings too, for safety's sake. Don't you think?" She merely closed the neck of her quilted old dressing gown again, for reassurance.

"Well," he sputtered, more air coming out, than words. "We'll be crushed when the building loses all power, just like your brother was!"

"I am not concerned at all for myself, Mr. Brazeltine," Allena said, trying to imagine that she really knew what was going to happen next. "But I cannot leave the royal house when the fate of my people may hang so precariously." She realized she was beginning to use the biggest words she knew, to stretch the conversation. But for what? The paintings of old men that lined the long conference room, in large dark portraits, seemed as reassuring as ever, though their heavy wooden frames rattled against the walls as the building descended.

"Princess, really, I must insist—" But Brazeltine's pleas came to a sudden halt, and the whole building shuddered, amidst the sound of terrible thunder, as if his plans had been carried out too well, and they were already dragging across the treetops.

"Summon the transport," one of the other advisors said aloud, to the long, empty room.

On the next floor down, behind the elevators and behind the heating and cooling systems, and behind the water pipes and behind even the electric works, deep within the inner core of the building, in fact, Jim Kirk followed the huge round nursemaid through a small access tunnel and across a dark gantry, and into the central thruster grid. They squeezed between pipes, till they were squinting into a spray of reddish-gold energy that pulsed all the way up, and all the way down, through the central shaft of the palace. She pointed to a giant cable, and made a twisting motion with her great plump hands. He leaned further into the snaking cords and conduits, and tried to mimic her action on the largest flexible tube.

"No, no," the nursemaid shouted, as if ordering cooks 'round a kitchen, instead of yelling and waving at one of a dozen fabled starship captains in the entire galaxy. She could barely be heard, over the drone of the power grid. "The other way, it goes!"

But the giant, slippery black tube seemed stuck permanently in its resting place, in a corner of a metal grid that surrounded the vertical shafts of light. Gradually, he and the nursemaid became crowded sideways into the gantry. Far below, where the light sizzled out into a pink cloud, they could see the shapes of trees not much farther down.

"Not that way! This way," she shouted, indicating that Kirk had been twisting a large buzzing cable the wrong direction, unintentionally tightening it into a heavy metallic coupling. When he tried the other direction, the whole building shuddered again, as if the entire structure would crumble to bits in an instant.

"How did you learn all of this," Kirk shouted back, smiling with satisfaction, even as the tower shook and he held on for dear life. All around them, energy beams flowed like a glowing fountain, forming a hidden framework of neon rivers inside the palace. "I just wanted you to show me how I could get to the central power core, myself!"

"My husband was chief engineer for the king for three hundred years! Three hundred old years!" she shouted back with great pride, patting her heart (he assumed) under the broad white bib of her dress. Then she furrowed her brow and turned her attention back to escaping once more, back through the tangle of heavy cables they had squeezed themselves into. Beyond them, and inside that snaking network, the shaft of neon grid-work was becoming increasingly erratic. The reddish-yellow glow was marred by occasional bursts of pure red, or pure yellow. Each time they adjusted the energy flow, the sputtering mixture seemed to match the quaking of the building. And Jim Kirk was grateful, for once, that it was someone else's ship in trouble.

Back in the council room, two of the older advisors were already out on the balcony, searching for any sign of the transport ship. It seemed like ten minutes had passed since they called, when the building first began quaking, but relief was neither down along the shady promenades, nor up among the commercial towers, already high above. And Mr. Brazeltine still had one hand resting on the edge of the table for stability, though not far from escape out across the balcony. Occasionally he patted the table for emphasis, still trying to convince Allena to evacuate the royal skyscraper.

"I'm afraid that's quite impossible," Allena said, though she felt she had said it at least five times already, in response to each of Mr. Brazeltine increasingly urgent demands, that she should be the first to be led off the balcony 'to safety,' and on to the expected government hovercraft.

"But Allena," the chief advisor insisted. He winced more visibly now, every time the building shook, as if in a storm. "You are the people's most precious possession."

"The people's most precious possession is the people," Allena said, with a sense of irony that surprised even her. "And as your greatest possession is your own life, Uncle Brax, I suggest you get on that transport yourself as quickly as it arrives. As for me, I would rather it be said that I faced the end of my lineage with grace and dignity."

At those words, she really did have to gulp back an impulse to cry out, remembering that she was all that stood now, between the living memory of her handsome and strong father and her brilliant brother, and what could soon become the darkness of a buried past. Impatient with sentiment, she merely clenched the back of one of the boardroom chairs more tightly, holding it at arms' length, as if it were the wheel of a great sailing ship and she its unlikely captain. It steadied her when the building seemed to smash into the ground once again (though the trees were somewhat below them still, she was fairly sure).

Then, to the shock of both of them, a heavy piece of molding around the ceiling came crashing down to the floor with a great cloud of dust, along a side-wall, laying waste to a silver tea tray, under hundreds of pounds of old plaster.

Brazeltine took one look out through the great expanse of windows, and seemed stunned to see the large transport ship was finally looming off the balcony at last. Clearly, he had forgotten the princess entirely, and was halfway up the balcony railing with the other advisors by the time Allena could race to the sliding glass doors.

"Be brave, gentlemen," she called out, over the roar of the hovercraft engines. "Do try to be brave!"

But the old men had gone pale green with terror, and scuttled across the top of the transport toward an open hatch. Inside, infantrymen tethered to cables reached out to them, shouting over the roar of the ship's fans.

Allena glanced across the balcony, toward the near corner, where Exmoor and his cameraman were huddled, recording the entire event for his rescue show. She turned and waved once more to the departing saucer-shaped vehicle.

"Do take care," she called, standing up on her very tiptoes to be seen, as the ship roared up and away. "I know how you've worried, for the little girl in your hearts!"

Chapter Five

The soft rays of dawn produced, at first, just a few burbling cries of birds or other native animals in the tall evergreen trees all around. But soon the business of the forest was in full swing, and small crooning notes gave way to great bellows and tiny shrieks, as the shadows of night folded against the pines. Mr. Spock and Lt. Riley crouched on a ridge, high above a windowless collection of buildings in the valley below.

"We just walk in, in broad daylight?" Riley whispered, incredulously.

"Readings are spotty," the senior officer conceded, "but as their power-supplies steadily diminish, it should be possible to find a weakness in the shields around the installation."

"I'm starving," Riley complained, very quietly.

"You consumed approximately four thousand calories of protein and carbohydrates last night, Mr. Riley. Please do not exaggerate your suffering," the Vulcan said, finishing with an almost Shakespearean rhythm in his otherwise disinterested voice.

"But then we walked, or marched, what? Fifteen kilometers!" It was clear from his tone that Mr. Riley had an entirely different scale for reckoning from the first officer's.

"Let's go," Spock said, equally as indifferent to the lieutenant as the plain light of day. He slid down the face of the ridge on his side, as if surfing down a huge wave of water, with one arm extended overhead, and a loose collection of tiny rocks and clods of dirt spreading out in all directions. His boots occasionally scrambled to keep his body roughly parallel to the eight-or-nine meter high cliff, as a cloud of reddish dust rose up, and his tricorder fell from his grip, till it dangled on the long black strap. Lt. Riley watched this strangely elegant descent, and finally took the plunge, riding down on the seat of his pants. A look of anguish pulled at his young Irish face, as he painfully raced to the bottom.

The first officer was already halfway out to the expansive compound, with his tricorder out in front of him. On its screen, he could see the strong and weak points in the force-field, flickering like tall flames around the low collection of buildings beneath the forest ridge. Riley hobbled after him, a mass of dirt and bruises, once again wiping his pants in hapless exasperation.

Soon the two Enterprise crewmen stood in the shadow of a taller domed building, like the housing for an old-fashioned land-based telescope, with some sort of windowless offices attached all around. Gradually, the science officer extended the palm of one hand forward, into the invisible shielding around the structures.

"Here," Spock said, showing the display on the tricorder to Riley, and they passed through very quickly, and very close together. The stoic Vulcan neither shuddered nor grimaced, but the junior officer gave out a little gasp of discomfort as they penetrated the energy membrane, as he was briefly overcome with a sense of drowning in microwaves.

"It'd be funny if there wasn't any door," Riley said. But he might as well have kept his thoughts to himself, as they utterly failed to register with his commander, who paced around the building walls to the next section.

"You may have been correct," the Vulcan said, several minutes later as they continued their examination of the exterior, which seemed thoroughly unwelcoming to foot traffic. "Obviously a secure facility, though I detect less than ten life form readings inside," he added.

"Somebody has to come out—or in, eventually," Riley observed.

"I begin to doubt that we'll find the passengers of the Amphora inside," Spock said, seeming vaguely disgruntled.

"Beats being on a spaceship," Riley shrugged, finally taking-in the delicate nuances of the forest air.

"Perhaps if we were to create a simple disturbance of some kind," Mr. Spock said, folding his arms, and allowing his tricorder to dangle at his side. Both men stared off into the forest for a long moment, in different directions.

"They kind of worship their high energy sources, don't they?" Riley said, with the mild sarcasm of an off-worlder.

At this, the Vulcan seemed utterly caught off-guard, and he looked at the young Irishman as if he were seeing him for the first time: with a newfound respect that likewise took the lieutenant by surprise.

"What?" Riley said, warily.

"That is a remarkably insightful comment, Lieutenant," the first officer said, with a trace of amazement. And, a second later, the Vulcan was running through the long menus of protocols on his tricorder, arranging a bit of sabotage.

"But we can't blow up our only tricorder," Riley protested, slowly overcoming his pride and embarrassment.

"Regrettably, it is our only powered instrument," Spock said pensively, taking up the portable scanner and adjusting the tiny controls and touch-screen with alarming fluidity, navigating his way through some far-flung programming menus that Riley couldn't remember ever having seen before.

For good measure, they walked all the way around the blank-faced, connected buildings, till they'd reached the spot where they first passed through the force field at its weakest point. There was no road leading up to any possible entryway, and certainly no sign directing any visitor, nor even a warning to intruders. Like the whole culture of the planet, with itself at the center of its own solar system, with hardly a thought toward anything beyond, the compound seemed to be entirely inwardly directed. If he had to gamble, Spock would have wagered that everyone on Chilion spoke the same language, and ate the same foods, and shopped at exactly the same markets, all around their world, and worshipped the same gods, too: as part of a completely insular and controlled society, whose greatest measure was its own self love.

And then, having exhausted all other possibilities in the task at hand, he tapped one final icon on the instrument screen, placed the tricorder on the ground, and (with the tip of his black boot) nudged it out in the grass, into the invisible barrier of the energy field. Both men half-crouched and scurried away, shielding their faces against a blast. Nothing seemed to happen, though.

"Is it supposed to short-circuit?" Riley asked, after a hushed minute passed.

"Wait," Spock said, his dark, brooding eyes switching left and right.

And with a sudden whoosh, there came an assault team, down from the high ledge of the building, wearing more compact versions of the royal fly-suits, and clad in black fatigues.

"What did you do," Riley hissed, as the Chilion soldiers, four in number, cautiously poked at the tricorder on the ground, almost out of sight of the two Enterprise crewmen.

"I merely took your comment 'to heart,' Mr. Riley," Spock said, with a grace and charity that Riley, himself, had never seen. The science officer stood and straightened his blue tunic, as if he were about to step out and accept some achievement award from the armed guards.

"To borrow your phrase, as they 'worship' great energy," Spock said, putting his fingertips on the corner of the building, "I adapted the tricorder to absorb as much of that energy (from the force-field) as it could hold. In effect, by denying them their energy source, I have 'blasphemed' their god."

Finally, there was a loud "bang!"

The scanning device had exceeded its power capacity at last, and the concussion from the explosion popped Riley's ears. A moment later, they stepped out in the open and found all four soldiers lying on the ground, with one or two of them moaning softly as Spock hurried to approach.

The tricorder was destroyed, of course, with no remnants of even its padded case to be found, and only a few memory panels scattered here and there. The smoking remains of the power-pack sizzled and smoked quietly a few meters away in the grass. The science officer removed the fly-suits from all four of the unconscious guards, and Riley used their victims' own black belts to bind up their hands, though his fingers were shaking all the while. They disabled the two additional fly-suits by snapping off the lenses at the wrists and ankles.

Mr. Spock gathered then up the weapons on the belts of their quarry, and studied the little controls on his new fly-suit's wristband. Then he floated up in the air, and over the edge of the rooftop. Riley followed awkwardly, soon after.

The complex looked very different from directly above, consisting of several large buildings, hedged-in by a collection of inner rings beneath the height of the outer walls, not visible from the forest ridge, and a vacant landing pad for hovercraft in the very center. Behind each of those ring-sections, vent-openings and hatches and baffle-plates interrupted the inner walls. Eventually, Mr. Spock descended between two of the sections, with the lieutenant right behind.

They crawled into a dark vent outside, and hid their fly-suits there in the first turn of the ductwork. From there it was farther inside the ventilation system, and another series of quiet steps from corner to corner, within the building at last. In a few minutes, whether by instinct or natural attraction, Spock found a computer room: down a flight of stairs and twenty meters from the guard doors.

Tentatively, at first, he pressed a few pads on a large control panel, with no apparent results. Riley watched the door behind him, but as the moments of experimentation dragged on, the young lieutenant became more distracted by Spock's seeming indifference to the pure fear of being found out. Then, as the lieutenant's eyes wandered again, he noticed the reflection of light seeming to dance on the floor in the next room, through another doorway.

It seemed to Riley this tantalizing, faint movement of light and shadow was somehow connected to what Spock was doing at the alien computer controls. And as the idea came into his head, the young Earthman was slowly drawn toward that other room, as if to catch the mysterious technology in the act of doing … something. For a long moment he listened, one hand nearly touching the door between: eager to see if anyone was on the other side, but squeamish about being caught. Then he tried to see through the opening, leaning his head, one eye sweeping past the crack, and then the other—but seeing only those strange reflections on the polished floor, like faint, jousting dust devils.

He turned back again, seeming to verify in his own mind that Spock was controlling some dream-like vision reflecting vaguely off the floor tiles. And finally, hearing no sound on the other side, and overcome by a fierce curiosity, Riley stepped into the next room.

All that would come out of his mouth, as he stood there aghast, was a sort of "whu…" noise, under his breath.

And then, Mr. Spock rushed in behind him. His mouth fell open, too, for just a moment, before he recovered himself. He was caught off-guard, and automatically reached for his tricorder, which should have been draped around his torso, on a long black strap. But that was gone now, of course.

There before them, on a huge war-room 3-D chamber in the air, under a huge domed ceiling, was the Enterprise, in fierce battle with a handful of cannon-ships, smaller than the ramjet they'd previously blasted to bits. But, faced with multiple attackers, all of the same mysterious sort, the fight was not going well.

Riley glanced sidelong at the Vulcan commander and, for a split second, it seemed he was half-mouthing a series of commands, as if he could save the ship from here at the other end of the star-cluster. But it was a hopeless task, as most of her shields were down already.

As the cannon-ships closed in, it became clear that they were watching the struggle from a viewscreen on the attacker's command vessel, as it slowly descended from above, relative to the great saucer section of the Federation starship below. Riley and Spock could see various gashes in her hull, from stem to stern, and an unusual amount of fire and smoke and even bits of debris coming out of the shuttle bay, from a couple of nasty hits. But there was nothing they could do to stop the loss of the Enterprise, on which they relied for every certainty.

"Should we get back and report to the captain, Mr. Spock?"

A hardness of attitude came over the Vulcan now, as he resorted to the clarity of command, and a remorseless desire to scramble for some kind of position, however unlikely.

"Negative, Mr. Riley, that would be pointless at this time," he practically snarled, though he recognized at once that his sudden change in posture and tone betrayed some anxiety. Instantly, he straightened again, and became more everyday in his manner and speech. "We must continue work on the computer system here, to see if we can contact the ship, or even subvert the attack force using their own—"

But it was too late. They could see the Enterprise's great engines had gone to a dim, idling tumble, in the energy swirl at the tips of the warp nacelles. They were barely moving at all, as if the ship had simply gone to sleep. Meantime, nearly a dozen cannon-ships were latching themselves on to the under-side of her hull here and there, like long-tailed bats along the roof of a cave. Slowly the starship began to slide out of view, born away to meet the fate of the Amphora, and however many ships before her: to fuel this unknown world, in all its glory.

"Hold it," a stern voice said, from the doorway to the computer room. "Hands in the air."

The voice came from an outpost commander, a grizzled, no-nonsense type of man, pointing a ferocious-looking blaster at them, which had something like a small black, artichoke-shaped device for a muzzle. Spock and Riley raised their hands, as the Enterprise was hauled away on the screen behind them.

In that first full morning of her rule, by a new decree, all the great towers of the floating city were brought down to exactly as low as the royal house, as a safety precaution. In her announcement, Allena explained that this would make them safer in the event of any unforeseen evacuation, if further power cuts became inevitable. Volunteers in work crews began setting up tents and food and gathering centers in the parks below, whole refugee camps, as "negotiations continued for alternative sources of energy."

"Is this what you call 'negotiations'?" Jim Kirk asked, as they huddled in the back of a long black, private hovercraft, and she gently tried to peel off his Starfleet insignia, from the front of his tunic.

"Yes," she said, slyly. "I'm going to chain you up to me, and send this back to the… Federonians… as a sign of my cruel intentions."

"You'll just make the other captains jealous," he said quietly, kissing the back of her neck.

"Why? Are they all madly infatuated with you, too?"

"All the Federonians are."

"Well, there, see?" she said, smoothing out his captain's uniform here and there, "we're not so different after all." She turned to face forward now, primly, as if everything had become clear and settled again.

They watched as the enormous skyscrapers descended from high above, one by one, till every tree in sight billowed gently under their contrails.

She reached for a little control panel on the armrest by her side. Two viewscreens came to life in the back of the seats up front, and they watched until the news showed the royal counselors fleeing the palace, while Allena stood bravely on the balcony, waving them off, even as the building shuddered.

"Oh, I'm bored with that. It's all they show," she complained grandly, as if her own triumph had become tedious to her now.

"You ought to thank Mr. Exmoor," Kirk said, still admiring the way his camera crew had thrown mud on the cabal of men who'd been running the planet for so long.

"He's quite a dear old thing, really," Allena sighed. "You know, people treated him like a sort of a clown for years and years—after he got famous for sort of playing my father on an old feelie on the strand."

"He played your father? In some kind of history?"

"Well, not exactly my father," she said, trying to catch the wild generalization before it raced out of her hands entirely. "You know, my father ordered the expansion into space—and got us started flying between the stars, as a whole planet, really, it was all his idea."

"And then he was killed," Kirk remembered. It seemed to him that she'd said something about it while he was trying to read the satellite overhead, the night before.

"Yes," she said, her voice going husky for a moment. "Anyway, eighteen years later—'old' years later, give or take—there was Mr. Exmoor, and he became what you might call a great 'extrapolation' of the king, with his own version of a royal court, flying hither and yon, between the stars, confronting all sorts of space-dangers, every week. It was terribly inspiring."

Eighteen "old years," Kirk now felt comfortable in assuming, was about three standard Earth years.

"I suppose," she said, a bit wistfully, "it was a kind of therapy for the whole culture, coming so soon after my father's death. Keeping the legend alive, you might say."

"And now he's some sort of news-person?"

"Oh, my, no—well, going by modern standards, he may be, but only in the loosest possible sense," Allena rolled her eyes, lamenting the current state of her own planet's journalism. "He just puts on these shows, these feelies, about real-life emergencies now. Full of real-life drama. What is it they say? 'So real, you'll think it's real.'" She looked away, out at the passing scenery, as if embarrassed by all her peoples' illusions.

"I see."

"But people treated him as a joke, you know, for years," she said, suddenly feeling very sorry for the older man. "I suppose it's perfectly natural, don't you? We outgrow our need for mourning over past events. I mean, eventually, you don't need that kind of therapy anymore, do you?"

"And now he's madly in love with you?"

"Is he? I really hadn't any idea. But I am, after all, 'the princess of people's hearts,'" she smiled weakly, though the whole topic had exhausted her good spirits.

"Does he know he's sort of a father-figure to you?"

"Well, he's not really—I mean, the space-man Mr. Exmoor played on the strand was a terrible womanizer, and he defied all sorts of orders from his top, top commanders in the faraway Space Patrol, during all of his terribly dangerous adventures." She paused, glanced up at the head-liner inside the hovercraft, and then out into distance for a moment. "On the other hand," she said at last, "perhaps he is a sort of father figure to me…"

At this, Kirk felt a pang of jealousy, though it seemed silly.

"Well," she sighed, as she prepared to launch into a lesson on local history, "I suppose I mentioned the concubines and mistresses," she said, smoothing the sleeves of her big, blousy white sweater. "And then there was the military…"

"That supposedly helped to kill him?"

"Oh my goodness, you were listening last night!" she beamed, in spite of the subject matter. That night he had seemed to be more interested in some blinking star overhead, than in her own personal history. "Well, before we moved out between the stars, fueled by the coils of Orion, that's what we call them, the energy discs around most of the collapsed stars… But before all of that, we had some quite hostile neighbors, in our old system, the Mahlons, which was part of the reason we had to move on, of course, to leave our enemies behind. But, at one point, my father actually dared to negotiate with them. And this was totally against the principles of our warrior chieftains. And, then, there was a totally botched invasion, which brought disgrace to the military," she added, as if he surely must have heard about that by now.

"I see," Kirk said, taking her long, slender fingers in his hand, to comfort her.

"But you don't think he's madly in love with me—do you?"

"Who?"

"Why, Mr. Exmoor, of course!"

"Well, you have to allow a man to have some kind of dreams," Kirk said, looking straight ahead, as if he didn't care at all.

"Ah, now you're jealous!" she said, as though it was the 100th flaw he'd exhibited in just the last few minutes.

"How could I be jealous?" Kirk reasoned, trying not to sound annoyed. "I'll probably be fifty trillion miles away next week!"

"Well, I didn't mean to scare you off," she said, as if astonished at his own romantic cowardice.

"That's perfectly all right," he answered, as if it were certainly not all right. "I understand: you want to have someone to romance you. In fact you want to have two different men compete over you, I'd say. You want to be all grown-up, now that you're in charge. And having a couple of drooling men following you around just gives you that little bit of extra confidence that you might possibly need, the next time some Councilman or other tries to push you around."

"That's not true—I stood up to them all by myself!"

"But I chased them out of the palace with the power cut-outs!"

"You caused a great deal of damage to the royal palace! And though you certainly don't admit to it, you happen to be the very reason my entire world is falling apart right now!" They rode in silence for a moment, while their tempers cooled a bit.

"Your planet has been stealing ships—for all I know, killing their passengers and crew, for years, Allena." He tried to maintain his temper, but something told him things were doomed to go from bad to worse. "All those ships destroyed, to give you these outrageous fireworks, to satisfy your sense of… exceptionalism!" he said, dredging up a phrase from the history books, and waving at all the rocket-like thrusters under all the descending towers. "And to help you run away from your enemies, no matter what the cost!"

There was a very unpleasant little silence.

"I'm trying to put a stop to that," she said quietly, folding her arms and looking away: suddenly very sad about the whole thing.

"Well, you've got me and Exmoor to thank for that," he said.

"And he'll still be here next week," she muttered, dismayed at his proud claim on her, for services rendered, as she looked out the window. Gradually, more and more buildings were roaring down against the forests. It was as though the whole planet were being subjected to dozens of blowtorches, all at once. So far, though, the trees were merely swaying around under the blast.

"He's just an old actor," Kirk muttered.

"Who's to say he can't be a great leader? Actors are the most empathetic people you'll ever meet!"

"He's old—he could be dead next week!" Captain Kirk's own romantic jealousy had reached its peak, or so it seemed to the beautiful brunette.

And then, after just a second of introspection, Allena threw her body across the back seat, and started kissing and trying to restrain the young starship captain, as if she were suddenly determined to make him stay or, at least, to annoy him to death with her energies.

Chapter Six

"I believe it's time to acknowledge," Mr. Brazeltine sighed, taking control again after a pause in the royal counselors' meeting, "that Captain Kirk is becoming a very bad influence on Princess Allena." He slowly brought his palm down on the desk in a dark lobby-like room for emphasis, in another government building halfway across the city, but likewise hovering near the treetops. The room was dark with heavy curtains and dimly lit paintings of timeless landscapes and dramatic hunting scenes.

"We are receiving word now from our scientists," a quavering old advisor said, very slowly, in the middle of the room full of leather couches and chairs, "that's not the only problem. The very moon itself has become dangerously unstable in its orbit, after the cutoff of plasma energy by the Enterprise. It's cooling in an irregular manner that suggests inner-core… fragmentation, and a new center of gravity, after long-term heat damage, as the molten core bleeds into off-center caverns."

"It's not just that captain," another white-haired old gentleman piped up, as if the comment about the moon had gone by, entirely unnoticed. "It's that damned fool Exmoor."

"He can be dealt with very simply," a third elder grumbled, hunched and sagging in a very upright padded chair.

Mr. Brazeltine leaned back. And though his brow hooded his dark eyes, his lips spread wide in a strange smirk, and he nodded, as if this latest development was in confirmation of his overall thesis.

"Well, it won't be but a matter of days before we're more powerful than we've ever been before," he said, philosophically. "Surely, by then, we can correct the unplanned cooling in the moon's core."

"If we're successful, restoring power. The Enterprise is no peaceful vacation vessel," another counselor warned.

"Their shields are no match for our gravity beam," Brazeltine said, with a bureaucratic drone of confidence that would normally brush every doubt aside. "Everything is in place for the adoption of the invading ship into the plasma harvest, and everything will be back to normal here before our own last reserves are exhausted."

"We ought to have a back-up plan, Brazeltine," another counselor warned. "By the time the Enterprise is fully adopted into the harvest, our existing power reserves will be down to less than five percent! Five percent of reserves, not five percent of normal!"

"Gentlemen," the chairman chuckled, waving aside the last dire complaint. "We've been at this for most of our lives, haven't we? And—think about this—it's also the first time we haven't had to send out a scout ship, to bring back a fresh helper-vessel. And with the tremendous resources of the Enterprise, we'll be far more powerful than ever before— it's Fate, gentlemen, and a glorious new day for our world," he added, warmly. "The only question is: does the princess want to be part of it, or not?"

"And what about the two prisoners, at the north-forest station?" It was another raspy, reedy voice, from somewhere in the midst of all of the couches and chairs. All the stuffed furniture glowing in golden lamplight made for an atmosphere like a crowded gentlemen's club, surrounded by ornamental rugs underfoot, and ancient flags on darkened walls. And all around this last speaker, elderly men were falling asleep: their heads nodding down until their chins were lost in folds of scarves and shirts and dark, elegant jackets. Meanwhile, sprites of fusion energy winked and crackled in a large fireplace on one side of the large room, opposite a bank of French-style doors, covered in heavy draperies.

"Oh, some sort of fly-suit accident, I suppose," Brazeltine said, thinking of the "official" fate of Mr. Spock and the young lieutenant, in the north-forest station. "They're not going anywhere. You can rest assured of that."

A warm trickle of fluid dripped hurriedly from Lt. Uhura's delicate ear, into her dark hair, as she lay gasping for breath on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. They were slowly towed through space, and she could hear the tut-tutting of the ship's computer voice describing the various levels of damage throughout the ship, after the lost battle with the cannon scouts, and the same small ships had clamped themselves onto their hull.

"AG reading is now plus three-point-five," the computer said, as if reminding the crew of some forgotten dilemma on board the great, captured starship, even as their hearts and lungs were crushed within their chests. "Automatic re-start of artificial gravity system has failed; re-start will be attempted again at oh-two-hundred. Readings indicate zero air pressure in shuttle bay, and bay door failure. Repair crews are not responding to reports of hull breach on decks four, six, ten, and fourteen. Impulse drive has been rendered inoperative. Engineering has not responded to request for damage report."

And so the computer announcements went on, at once full of detail, but also missing the key point of the list of sudden insults: that a swarm of attack ships had poured out of the sensor-blindness between collapsed stars; and that every crewman on the Enterprise had collapsed down on to whatever deck they'd been nearest, where they lay straining for breath. It was just as it had been when they first entered the star cluster, nearly three days before, except that first attack had only lasted only a moment.

On the main viewscreen, the blinding swirl of a quasar-like disc ahead had grown till nothing else fit. Somewhere in the center would be the black singularity with the weight of thousands of suns. The swirling fires at the outer, curled edges of the plasma disc burned in every conceivable color, gradually turning whiter and brighter toward the inner, black horizon, as the space rubble roared against itself, nearing the speed of light, ripping its particles to pure energy.

Slowly, when her arm had nearly stopped throbbing from the last attempt, Uhura used her long fingernails and her heavy hand to allow her arm to crawl up from the deck. Slowly, she pulled at the grate that covered the circuitry below her station. Around her, she could hear the rough, shallow breathing of fellow crewmen, and the slow dying sound of a yeoman who had landed on her stomach, across the circular bridge. Here and there, some of the men had been shakily hoisting their immense new body weight up, to reach their own control panels: Chekov at the weaponry; and Sulu crawling back now and then, inching closer to the navigation panel at the helm, from the command chair. A red-shirted engineering lieutenant was lying motionless, with his chest going down the step to the center of the command deck, his head down, a dark shade of purple, his face a motionless mask of anguish.

With great effort, Uhura slowly turned her own pounding head away from her shipmates, to the dim glow of energy pulses behind the access panel over her right shoulder. Her fingers felt like claws, and not her own at all, as she scraped at the corner of the grate: the only thing (besides her station chair) within reach. Occasionally she simply had to stop and gasp for breath—the weight of her breasts on her heart seeming impossible to bear. But, if she rolled on her side, she feared she might just tip all the way over onto her stomach and stop breathing altogether, like the crewman across the empty center-seat from her.

So she scratched lightly at the corner of the circuitry covering, pausing occasionally to breathe. It took all her concentration and effort, and for the first time in her career, the rectangular panel simply refused to come loose at all. She had to admit, she didn't know exactly what she'd do once she got the panel off—if it would ever budge—but she had this fierce, undeniable conviction that it was the only thing she could reach, and one of the few things on board the crippled Enterprise she knew she might control.

Now and then she had to collapse and stare at the domed ceiling overhead, like the inside of some cathedral, until the red pulsing inside her eyes shrank back to just the warning lights at the fore and aft of the command level. And then, as near to refreshed as she could get, she twisted her heavy head and started scratching at the metallic rectangle again, producing the tiniest abrasive noise, barely discernable over her own desperate breathing.

Barely a meter beyond her own knee-high black boots, a science department lieutenant was trying to crane his neck to see what the scratching noise was, and what Uhura was doing. In a minute or two, he too began rearranging himself with great difficulty, his arms and legs, to do likewise. To say that neither of them knew exactly what they were doing, or where this might lead them, would have been needlessly cruel.

A high-backed padded chair came crashing down at the helm. It was Mr. Chekov's, where he had tried to hoist himself up to the controls. Now, it seemed, they would certainly be without their weapons as the Enterprise parked helplessly above the swirling, blinding rings of the singularity.

It was, apparently, church day on Allena's planet, and the first such day since the unexpected death of her brother, the prince. As such, the royal suite was frantic with activity, not the least of which centered on whether or not the princess would wear one of her new high-necked, quilted dressing gowns, which had just arrived from the draper's, or something a bit more somber, or ceremonial.

"Malcolm always wore whatever he pleased," Allena said, as three different lady ministers stood before her with a choice of more traditional, gauzy vestments. "I certainly don't want to put myself below him—besides, he was the most irreligious person I ever met!"

"Everyone is irreligious to their sister," one of the priestesses said, becoming impatient with the young woman. "Sisters always think themselves the most religious of all, and that's precisely the problem we have right now!"

"I don't think it's a problem at all," Allena said quietly, to herself, remaining perfectly calm in the face of the growing disapproval of the three older women. "I shall wear the white one, thank you very much. You may go now."

There was an extremely awkward silence, as Hulda, the great fat maid, reluctantly stepped forward with a new white quilted dressing gown. In just a minute, Allena had slipped into that, and it was tightly fastened around her waist. Just like the old pale mauve garment Allena had worn for years, this new one billowed out around her calves, revealing a wisp of sheer undergarment that actually did look a bit like the robes of the other women, from a distance.

A single great sapphire was hung from her neck, on a latticework of diamonds, and more gems were quickly woven into her hair. As calm as before, and with the other women almost reluctantly falling in line behind her, she left the great gold-framed tri-fold mirror and walked to the outer doors of her suite.

Captain Kirk was waiting for her, out in the hallway. His look of surprise was all the encouragement she needed, and she could barely keep from smiling.

"And how are you, this fine morning, Captain James T. Kirk?"

"Late for church," he answered, falling in alongside her, as the older women trailed behind, pretending not to notice as he took her arm.

"Yes, it's going to be a great vexation," she moaned, though she allowed a little smile.

"I seem to recall you promised me my party's communicators," he said, as casually as he could manage.

"Oh, yes, I'm terribly sorry, it's just been pandemonium," she said, briefly covering the middle of her face in embarrassment. "As soon as we're finished this afternoon, you have my word."

"And I haven't heard back from two of my men yet, if you can find out anything about that," he said, growing serious.

"Of course, you know I will," she said, becoming agitated at all the obligations being thrust upon her.

"And about yesterday, in the car," he said, under his breath, now, "I'd prefer it if you kept that to yourself."

"Oh, my goodness!" she exclaimed, her voice snapping like a huge rubber band. She stopped suddenly in the long hallway, and nearly causing a collision of female church elders behind her.

"It's utterly maddening. What do I wear, where do I stand, what do I say, what do others expect of me? You can't imagine, going from being absolutely useless around here, to having, well, I suppose, a much more ornamental form of uselessness, at least."

"Maybe it's time you started making your own rules," Kirk said. And then he imagined one of the older, clerical women behind his back quietly slipping a dagger between his ribs, for his helpfulness.

"Yes, well," Allena half laughed, to herself. "The planet may wend its way through the galaxy, making up its own rules as it goes along. But figureheads like me will probably always be ground to dust by the few rules we still do have, among ourselves. For the reassurance of the people, I suppose." She said this last part with a quiet, taut sadness, though her lips were spread apart in an ever-gracious smile.

And so, Kirk concluded, there would be no grand revolution today. They rode to the great, floating cathedral in approximate silence, just the merest checking and double-checking in anxious, half-whispered tones, as you might hear before a wedding or funeral or some other great ritual. But whatever Jim Kirk had been expecting, he was unprepared for the spectacle to come.

"Oh, do you have a robe, or something, for the captain?" Allena inquired, very politely, of the elder ladies.

An uncomfortable silence, and a disapproving crush of eyebrows, fell in the shining black hovercraft as it flew in under the cathedral, and then rose up, into a secure parking area. Clearly, the lady prelates and priestesses had not intended for the captain to be seen, or to be heard. Kirk himself was not invested either way, and merely watched as the honor guard outside lined up for Allena to step out of the car.

He had to resist the urge to inspect the troops, as she strode in and he followed along. All eyes were on Allena, anyway. His main perception, though, was of a band of intelligent, but awe-struck and even sentimental young men, in their black and crimson tunics, which looked far more fierce and grave than the young faces atop their rigid collars. As usual, he could never quite tell if military designers were trying to diminish their troops' humanity, or heighten it by contrast, with their severe uniforms.

The air in the first antechamber had the stuffiness of heavy fabrics, and seemingly the echo of ceremonial tension of years gone by, as well. This latter sense was reinforced by the faraway rustling of bodies on pews, and the occasional distant cough in the grand sanctuary, somewhere down the darkened hallways.

He had the strange feeling that he was in a dream, and had all of a sudden been thrust into a marriage with a girl he'd only known a day or so. There she was, in a satiny-white gown, a flock of matrons behind her, pensively waiting, while she gathered her thoughts. He resisted the nightmarish compulsion to check his pockets for some sort of a ring he knew would not be there.

At last, they walked down a pillared stone hall and, after a few twists and turns and half-staircases, emerged at the rear of a vast altar. It was the same polished mineral as the black stone pillars that framed the backdrop, joined overhead by a long, swooping swag of velvet, in a tyrannical shade of red. And, out before them in the pews, there stood thousands of parishioners: waiting politely for the princess to take the tall silver-trimmed throne at the center of the rear wall. Another thousand or so remained seated: the elderly, who had become divorced from one or more of their own limbs, as they hobbled through the final stages of life. Meantime, in her white gown, Allena seemed startled by the series of events that had landed her in the post of a living royal saint so quickly.

Kirk imagined the place would look entirely different if their world were orbiting a bright yellow sun like his own, back home. Here, the crystal panels that loomed along the walls and overhead, in the ornate ceiling, were bathed in projections of dark flowing images like deep rushing waters, and long white crackling hairs of lightning, which never quite began, and never quite resolved themselves, rattled through those dark currents.

"You may be seated," a familiar voice intoned quietly, from a lectern before them, once the princess had taken the black stone seat of power, and Kirk had quietly seated himself as innocuously as he could, on a bench in a far corner: almost hidden beneath a great fold of the red velvet overhead.

Kirk looked carefully at the back of the man in a zebra-like striped cassock, and realized that it was Mr. Brazeltine himself, the chief advisor to the royal family. Allena was very still, and staring straight ahead, as if the great doors at the far opposite end of the sanctuary would slowly come closer, if only she could wish it fervently enough—so she could rush out the common man's exit to freedom before anyone could possibly grab her back. Her spine arched, like a sport-fisherman's, as if to reel-in the most everyday means of escape, though it refused to budge.

"Open your Scripture to book one, chapter one," Brazeltine said, doing likewise himself, with a huge book on the lectern before him. There was a sort of massive rustling as books were being paged through quietly. "Verse one: In the end of all that there is, there shall be the thrusting together of many things, the like and the unlike, the good and the evil. And all, in their terrible opposition, shall come to a day of reckoning. And all things shall be transformed, and the gulf between what men think and what they say shall be resolved through great power."

"Bless'd be the power," the huge assembly said, quietly, as they had many thousands of times before, with quiet reassurance.

"And, if I may direct you… to the very close of our great book," Mr. Brazeltine said, attempting to flip the entire contents of his scripture all at once, quietly across from the front, over to the back. "Book sixty-six, chapter twenty-eight, the final verses, "And this is how it all began. For men believed themselves good, in spite of their evil, and their light did shun the darkness, and darkness forbade the light. So the world began, in perfect twilight, and born to brave the cold, in fires of the heart; and born to brave the damned, in fires of furious light, and fires of frozen dark."

"Bless'd be the power," the congregation said softly, the thousands as one, echoing against the high stone pillars and walls, as images of lightning crackled silently across the great cathedral walls.

Well, Kirk thought, his Iowa politeness still more or less intact: at least it has a sort of internal logic. But he also knew now: the princess wasn't joking around about the dilithium crystals; nor about the matter-anti-matter warp drive, and how it seemed to echo their dreadful end, in the beginning of their book of social wisdom. He glanced over at her again from the bench in the corner of the altar. She seemed almost as pale as her new dressing gown itself. The small diamonds in her long necklace shone proudly above that dark, huge sapphire, glinting like the deepest arctic ice against her heart. And if the dark black throne behind her were dripping in icicles itself, Allena could not have looked more as though she was freezing where she sat.

"Now, how many of us," Brazeltine wondered softly, "have felt the sin of contradiction, in our own lives?"

At this, a quiet, knowing chuckle drifted through the great hall. Mr. Brazeltine seemed utterly relaxed, even beneficent, as he patiently surveyed the vast ocean of worshippers.

"Prince Malcolm was, of course, full of contradictions," he said at last, glancing down and then up to the domes of crackling light in the ceiling. "He was brash, and kind; serious and whimsical. And under his leadership we travelled much farther, even, than under his father. He rode astride the galloping steed that was our fate." And, like any good speaker, Mr. Brazeltine could barely resist the urge to pause and listen to his own musical words, as they echoed back to him again. "His contradictions were like the positive and negative charges on a great battery. They jolted us into action. And now he's gone."

"As you've probably noticed," he resumed, after a reverential pause, "we have a guest today. Captain Kirk, stand up and let them see you."

A strange, malevolent stomping of feet began beating, out in the congregation, once Kirk had fully stood up and gotten out from behind the protective velvet swag, onto the altar. Brazeltine turned and nodded, and Kirk turned to sit again, on the bench. Allena merely glanced down, in a show of respect. But paired with the jagged rhythms of lightning quietly raging along the walls from the altar back to the far end of the sanctuary, the thunderous stomping noise created an even stranger, barbaric feeling in the holy arena.

"Of course, one day we'll find a new star to revolve around. We'll benefit from its warmth, and from the light," Brazeltine mused. "Our crops will grow better, and our children will play out of doors. And, thanks to Prince Malcolm and his legion of scientific experts, sometimes we have already gotten to interact with local breeds of humanoids, and even enjoyed… the possibility of trade and alliance."

"But, for now, to our spirits, those same local stars," the chief advisor to the royal house was saying, still as if he were caught up in a daydream, "are like some addictive potion, creating a kind of… complacency in our blood." And then, suddenly, Mr. Brazeltine was swept into some invisible wave of irony, like all men when they realize their folly. "When we're dependent, and locked in orbit around one single star or some picturesque double-star, or even a doomed and blazing supernova, well… bless'd be the power than can break the shackles of our own momentary weakness, and hurl us away once more… to freedom and self-determination!" In those final words his voice rose, nearly, to a shout.

When the inevitable response came from the congregation, Jim Kirk was already imagining the sermon was aimed at the princess, and her growing dependence on a starship captain from far, far away.

"Bless'd be the power."

I'm going to have to read that book one of these days, Kirk told himself, as Brazeltine glanced downward, for some scriptural endorsement of his words. Then, he looked up, and spoke with an eerie, faraway look in his eyes.

"Our own ingenuity, and perseverance as a race, provides the fruits of moral gladness that sustain us in the darkness between those stars. And our children play in the warmth, not just of our scientific advances, but also of our dedication… to a principle: that we must be the freest people in the galaxy, and, perhaps the whole Universe. Making our own way. Finding light where others knew only darkness."

Then, the combined stomping of feet, multiplied by thousands sands on the cathedral floor seemed to shake the whole floating building, and threatened to send it crashing down into the parkland below, out of sheer patriotic fervor.

"And yet, there is the contradiction," Brazeltine smiled, once the noise had died-down. "For we are a simple people, simple… pioneers of the stars. Now, of course, we're dependent on the energy roaring 'round ancient, long-dead stars. Energy that would disappear and be useless, without us. We cling to this reverential, redemptive power. And that energy, that life-force, would spiral down and never be seen again, never be of any good to any one, were it not for the ingenuity of Prince Malcolm and his father before him, to put it to some life-sustaining use!"

"Don't let your light," he said, quietly but intensely, "be swallowed up by some strange, alien belief we know nothing of… that we might encounter along the way, along the path of freedom. Don't let your white-hot energy be poured into the darkness of something… out of reach. We have an obligation to use that energy that's been set before us. And to burn bright! To turn away from irresistible, dark gravity, and live our own lives as Prince Malcolm, and King Jonoff would have us do: in absolute freedom."

"Absolute freedom," the congregation called back, with great conviction, and the stamping of their feet raged like multiplied drums of battle.

"May the full blessings of power and freedom be upon you, as you go through this day, and the week ahead," Brazeltine called, trying to be heard over the great storm of noise, and raising his arms up in benediction, as the projections of lightening lashed out from behind him, across the body of the church.

Chapter Seven

Lieutenant Kevin Riley sat on the floor of the guards' office, looking glum. He was imagining that Mr. Spock, next to him, was secretly trying to hypnotize the armed Chilion that sat across from them at a desk, in an office chair. The Vulcan stared silently at a spot just off the guard's left shoulder, even as the guard himself kept his eyes fixed on the strange, pointed ears of the senior starship officer, seeming vaguely offended by the artful quirk of nature. Riley's own eyes went back and forth, to see who was winning this silent battle, though it seemed to have been going on for an awfully long time.

And so it went, for at least two hours, in the forest outpost. And whether it was still day, or if night had fallen, Riley couldn't tell anymore. Their guard, far from becoming entranced or stupefied, actually seemed to be growing more and more angry as the hours passed. When the commander of the post stuck his head in, to check on the prisoners, the guard issued only a terse little growl. He hadn't signed up for babysitting duty, Riley supposed.

But Riley was quite sure he could sense something in the air, between the Vulcan and the guard, and that some bizarre energy was pouring out of Mr. Spock, through his eyes, across the room, eroding his target's very will to live. And finally, indeed, something seemed about to snap.

The guard let out a little choked cough, and chafed inside his tunic. His whole body seemed to be itching, if Riley was any judge, and the guard's own eyes were making little darting motions, as if watching a few invisible flies, without wanting to be seen watching, even so. Then he seemed to recover his steadfast composure, for another minute. Mr. Spock, of course, remained unaccountably impassive the whole time.

The tension was becoming unbearable, as Riley's eyes secretively went from one man to the other, with little detours to the floor or the corner of the desk. And after all those hours, during which Kevin Riley expected some zombie-like transformation in the guard, his office chair suddenly whirred back from the desk, and the security officer flew at them in a rage, his fists in the air.

"Hey, cut that out," he snarled, and gave Riley himself a harsh kick in the boots as he towered over the young lieutenant, astonishingly, as if the young man had somehow caused all the trouble himself. In a second, Mr. Spock went springing across the young Irishman, flipping the legs of the guard out from under him. And just as suddenly, he had the alien weapon at the guard's own throat.

"What is the mildest setting on this weapon," Spock demanded, very quietly, holding the black, artichoke-like muzzle against the guard's temple. It seemed the guard was indicating, with a nod, that it was already set at its least lethal level. And, without seeming to give the matter another thought, the Vulcan gave the downed guard a quick, efficient neck pinch. They left him unconscious, on the floor.

"I thought you were up to something," Riley whispered to Spock, as they peered out the office door and made their way back the way they'd come.

"In fact, Lieutenant, I simply waited. Your own human imagination was a most sufficient offense to cause a confrontation, luring him into a vulnerable position."

"Huh. Will I get a commendation?" Riley wondered, imagining a great assemblage on the Enterprise, in his honor, when he eventually got her free. Then, that stuffy, impossibly beautiful woman in xeno-archeology would fall madly in love with him, and…

"You are doing it again, Lieutenant," Spock said, with a quiet tone of reprimand, seeing a faraway look in the junior officer's eye.

"What? 'Imagining?' What?" Riley pleaded to know, but the Vulcan was walking briskly, ignoring him completely. When they reached the doorway to the computer room where they'd been caught, Spock couldn't resist one more look inside. He bent over the control panel once again, and Riley tentatively peered into the next room again, at the big holographic viewscreen in that domed conference room. A jagged rush of static, and black bars like horizontal lightning, flashed across the screen.

Then, as if Spock had finally broken the code, and as if an expert in this alien computer system was managing it, the visual chaos resolved itself into a picture. It was, at first, the Amphora, the cruise ship, nearly black in its own shadow against the white-hot plasma around Proxima V. Then, apparently, a view inside, with lifeless bodies flattened against the decks, in corridors, around swimming pools, and in vast, elegant dining halls, where the plasma-light glared through long observation windows like Judgment Day, and everyone lay inside, as if bowed in the most abject prayer, flattened with humility with their noses in the carpet. Except they weren't praying.

Spock stood looking over Riley's shoulder now, as the computer shuffled through file after file, revealing the fate of the tourists and crew-beings on board, in their final days: typical old people, typical families, and a lot of broken cocktail glasses and deck chairs. Blackened tongues protruded from blackened lips, and unclaimed jewelry cut into their long-dead flesh.

Riley backed out, and squeezed nervously around the Vulcan in the doorway, who seemed to be burning the images into his brain, for lack of a tricorder. Then the lieutenant heard the scurry of boots coming down the hall, and hastily grabbed Spock by the forearm.

Now aware of the guards' approach, the first officer dove across the computer room floor, and by the time he'd stopped skidding on his shoulder, his head was barely out the door and he was firing quickly and efficiently with the alien blaster, till there was silence in the hall once more.

"By my count," he said, getting up and straightening his blue tunic with no show of triumph, "we should be free, momentarily, of the guard staff. Assuming the men we subdued outside were the same ones coming back just now, of course."

Spock and Riley found the obscure heating vent that got them inside, and the military fly-suits where they'd left them in a corner of the vents. They strapped them on hurriedly, and were on their way: flying back above the endless pine forest.

"Then, at the last possible moment, we reversed polarity, and escaped certain death!"

There was an appreciative release of long-held breath from the two security guards, and Yeoman Tamura, as they sat listening to Exmoor describing the plot of one of his old feelies, spun out anew for a fresh audience. On the other side of the room, Jim Kirk and Dr. McCoy were engaged in a quiet discussion.

"Jim, you're painting a picture of a world in complete denial of the facts."

"I know," the captain said, as he looked despairingly out the bank of windows at the city, floating just above the trees. "And Allena says she knows nothing about the way they 'harvest' their energy."

"Well, it sounds like push is coming to shove in a mighty big hurry," McCoy concluded, turning in his armchair, to gaze out at the swaying treetops. "That's when this turns into a rescue mission, I guess."

"Worse than that," Kirk sighed. "Hundreds of millions of people live on this world. In a matter of days, they'll freeze to death, without the heat of their moon. We can't rescue them all."

"When the Enterprise comes back," McCoy said, putting on a show of confidence, "we can organize relief centers and make sure there's plenty of clean food and water…"

"But we can't just… fire phasers into the moon all night and day," Kirk said quietly, feeling that nightmarish sense of unbearable compromise coming their way.

"And even if we put all the Enterprise's shuttlecraft out in the middle of that accretion disc," McCoy sighed, "it wouldn't even match the Amphora's output."

An uneasy silence fell on the two men, as the security officers and the yeoman laughed at something Exmoor had just said, across the room, looking comically hopeless, while Jim Kirk wore a smaller, more personal version of the same expression.

Just then there was a simultaneous whirring sound, accompanied by the sudden scuffing of boots out on the balcony. He turned to see, at long last, Mr. Spock and Lt. Riley land in the military fly-suits. Instantly, the security men hurried to help them out of the insect-like contraptions and Mr. Spock began his report the moment he saw the captain coming out from the elegant living room.

"The Enterprise has been captured," he announced, without any flourish or preamble, though Kirk himself stopped dead in his tracks to listen. "From the ongoing emergency status here in the city, it is logical to assume she will soon be forced into the same slavery as the Amphora, before she was destroyed." The other crewmen were gathering around to listen to Spock's account, and Exmoor trailed along behind them.

"We also saw computer records revealing the fate of the passengers and crew of that ship, as victims of the same gravity beam. And for them, the results proved fatal."

"I've got to get to Allena," Kirk said, still recovering from the shock, which seemed to him like some great bandage being ripped off his soul, some foolish illusion of comfort and reassurance torn off to reveal a painful wound underneath.

"Jim," McCoy interrupted, "from what you've said, she really has nothing to do with this at all. How can she stop it?" But there was something else in his voice, a kind of harsh sensibility that suggested Kirk might also be seeking comfort in a time of crisis, and confusing his obligations along the way.

Kirk noticed that Spock was looking around, as if he had some sudden, new reason to be uneasy.

"What is it?"

Now, the Vulcan knelt down on the floor and began tracing a haphazard, curving line across the widest part of the blue carpet, between the furniture. His faintly orange finger almost glowed against the thick pile and, quickly, he twisted little dots here and there into the fibers, in a pattern the captain recognized as the local constellation of stars, both living and dead.

"When I was searching for computer files on the Amphora and the Enterprise, I also found some basic historical information," the science officer said, pausing to look up at the others standing in a circle around him. "But what I found was simply not logical, based on what we understand about this civilization."

"How so," Kirk asked, flatly.

"This is the path of the world we now find ourselves on, as quoted in their own historical documents," Spock said, referring to the long and winding line, which extended under a glass coffee table, and threatened to loop under a chair as well.

"Looks like your first estimated path," Kirk said, in a complimentary way.

"Indeed. However," the science officer said, with something like a disappointed sigh, at his own inaccuracy, "this is the actual state of affairs." And now he added a similar, dashed line, close to the first, in the latest few twists and turns. But then, going backwards, the two paths diverged wildly, in what must have been the preceding decades.

"You see," Spock began, for the landing party, which gradually knelt all around him and the carpet-map as they were drawn in by his account, "if their sole ambition had been to traverse across the simplest path within convenient range of their local collapsed stars, as their primary source of energy and life, they should have followed this earlier, estimated, route."

"But they didn't," McCoy said, breaking the puzzled silence.

"No."

"Then you were wrong!" McCoy said, at once triumphant and perhaps a bit silly.

"To follow a course logically is not, in itself, a mistake, Doctor."

"But to assume," the ship's surgeon teased again, on behalf of every victim of Vulcan empiricism, both past and present, "that all species of men act as you do, is 'illogical' on the face of it! Isn't that right?"

"Shall I burst into a cloud of smoke and flames, Doctor, like some short-circuited computer?"

"Sometimes, I wish you would," McCoy grumbled, seeing he'd get no traction in this argument.

"Can we get back to the map, please?" Kirk wondered. His own eyes had never left the disparate tracings in the blue carpet, between the great white couches and glass tables. Mr. Spock returned to the long, wiggling line he'd drawn, and the divergent dashed path, and the loose collection of twisted "black holes" off to his right.

"Obviously, I am not fully able to illustrate the 'Z' axis, for verticality," he resumed. "But, if you will allow me, I shall add these 'tails' at various points," he said, dragging his fingers here and there along the dotted line, as if to add legs to a striped serpent, "and you can see the additional details of the rogue planet's transit, and here" he said, adding lines to his previously assumed route, "diverging from my own, incorrect assumption."

"Conclusion, Spock," Kirk said, as kindly as he could.

The science officer of the Enterprise spread both hands out over the impromptu map as if the answer was plainly evident. "Clearly, they have been following a strategic, or possibly even military plan of tracking and evasion. Rather than conducting a simple 'grand tour' of this portion of the galaxy."

"Tracking and evasion of what?" the doctor wondered.

"Precisely," the Vulcan agreed. Both men now looked at the captain, as if he could get their answer more quickly than either of his two immediate subordinates.

"Allena said… they left their home system, partly, because of some enemy, the Mahlons," Kirk remembered.

"Then it may be logical to assume," Spock said, "they still fear them, or some other enemy they made along the way. Just as they are making an enemy of Starfleet."

Now, filled with dismay and frustration, Kirk looked back at Spock, still kneeling deferentially on the floor. And it was Kirk's turn to admit, to himself, that he'd made a terrible mistake as well.

Finally, he became aware that Mr. Exmoor had pushed himself into the circle of crewmen surrounding the captain. All of them crowded between soft couches and glittering glass tables.

"Does any of this ring a bell with you, sir?" Kirk asked, as Exmoor was the only native in the room.

The old actor's eyes wandered around the room for a moment before he answered.

"King Jonoff, before he was killed, faced a great battle, which sent both cultures in our home system out on separate paths," the old actor began, and you could almost hear the sound of distant shofar, calling legions to war. "He had found the science of the transmission beams that linked us to the plasma discs, and our enemies had likewise escaped further hostilities. It's all played out on dozens—well, literally, hundreds of epic feelies since I was a little boy."

"Go on," Kirk said, quietly.

"And in most of those stories, the Mahlon fleet was lost in the maelstrom of a black hole, and we were the great victorious heroes, of course," Exmoor added, as if such a thing were well-known and completely inevitable, in retrospect. But then, he seemed to be overcome by a kind of cold shame, of some distant memory. "There are other stories, as well, most of which were never made into feelies, that the enemy is still lurking out there, in some kind of extra-spatial network of… tunnels, you might say, that somehow form between the extreme conditions of our own particular network of collapsed stars."

"Wormholes," Kirk said quietly.

"An odd way of saying it, but essentially yes," Exmoor said, as apologetic and rueful as Kirk himself could be, in his own moments of dismay.

"And your own military remains on guard against the sudden reappearance of the Mahlons," Mr. Spock said, with a strange note of disbelief in his voice.

"So the rumor goes," the older man said, as though he'd spoken the words many times before. Then, he became more expansive, and almost comical again. "I, myself, starred in a huge blockbuster, where they tried to lure us into destruction like that, but at the last possible moment—"

"You reversed polarity," Kirk interrupted, a bit sarcastically. But Exmoor, the former matinee idol, looked back with a sort of distant condescension. It was as if he had merely been cornered again, by a very persistent fan.

"Uh, no. That time, we dropped our engine core, and, uh…" Exmoor's eyes searched the ceiling for a moment.

"Escaped certain death?"

"Of course."

Both men laughed a little at that, before a strange, quiet moment of reflection swept over the room. Finally the old actor broke the silence.

"You have to free your ship. And I have a little space ship of my own," Exmoor said politely, looking around at the blank expressions of the actual galactic explorers themselves. Then, Yeoman Tamura spoke up, flanked by the two security men, who seemed a about a meter taller than she.

"Perhaps if the princess could arrest her father's advisors, she could free the Enterprise on her own orders."

"Going by historical precedent, yeoman," Mr. Spock said, as he rose to stand, "her advisors would most likely arrest her first."

"Unless I could persuade her to have me arrested," Kirk said, regaining his sense of confidence. "To bolster her own position as leader of an embattled planet."

"Jim I don't think she'd ever do that," McCoy said. "If she did, she'd have to put on some kind of 'show-trial.' And, judging from what we know of those men behind the throne, they'd have you standing in front of a firing squad the very next morning!"

"But it would give Spock time to get away and check on the ship," Kirk said.

"I don't think the princess would let any harm come to the captain," Exmoor said, with a quiet, jilted sadness in his voice. At this, Kirk paused and nodded very slightly, gracious in a kind of romantic victory over the older man. McCoy, himself, looked impatient.

"Well, he may not come to any harm while he's here on your planet," the doctor brayed. "But I'm not sure how many compromises he's willing to make before Starfleet gets wind of all this!"

"They must know," Johansen, the security man, spoke up finally, "that Starfleet will send a rescue mission."

"Perhaps they do," Spock agreed. "But we are dealing with a people who are accustomed to indulging their every whim and enjoying every possible technological convenience. And many of them have no experience with a superior military force in their own living memory. Their hijacking of the Enterprise may simply mean an even greater energy source than ever before, to them. And an even greater sense of arrogance, shielded, as they are, behind a natural curtain of gravity wells."

At this assessment, all eyes turned to Exmoor for confirmation or dispute.

"Well," he began, "don't confuse the military with the political side. It's the counsel that controls the energy harvest. The space-force can't stand them. And the counsel becomes stronger every time they capture a ship like yours, through the energy ministry. If they can also prepare a defense quickly enough, who's to say the next ship that comes looking for you won't end up just the same way? Usually, our space force just looks the other way, for the sake of stability."

"Then we stop them ourselves," Kirk said, fierce in the face of the unknown.

"How the hell do we do that?" McCoy's own eyes shining with intensity. An uncomfortable silence ensued.

"Like the man said," Captain James T. Kirk finally shrugged, suddenly looking relaxed: "Spock to the ship; and me… to the firing squad!"

The Vulcan nodded, though he seemed especially grave at the prospects. Then, he and the older man from the feelies walked out to the balcony, where Exmoor's personal hovercraft was tied up. They climbed in and were gone in a moment, with a great rush of fan noise and a flashing of bright wing-lights. Kirk used the distraction to quietly cross to the doorway, and sneak out into the corridor. Indeed, he had one hand on the doorknob to complete his getaway, leaving the rest of the landing party behind.

"Not so fast," McCoy said, trotting to Kirk's side and catching his arm, before the captain could leave the suite by himself. And, when the he turned, the captain saw that every remaining member of the landing party, except for Mr. Riley (who had fallen fast asleep on a couch during Spock's lecture), was close behind.

"Now," Kirk chuckled, faintly touched and amused by their esprit de corps, but holding out his free hand to restrain them, "this is liable to have an emotional element to it, where I'll be negotiating very closely with the princess, in a one-on-one manner, and it could have a very personal component to it, with a very sensitive little—" He was holding out his thumb and index finger to illustrate the slight but measurable potential for personal embarrassment, when McCoy brusquely interrupted.

"We've seen it!" the doctor said, brushing Kirk's measuring fingers aside and, likewise, the landing party members behind him showed no sign of retreating back into their suite.

So, at Kirk's behest, Yeoman Tamura quietly woke Riley just enough to tell him they'd be back, though the young lieutenant was already curled up in the pillows of the couch, like a puppy against his mother's belly. Tamura left him there, and quietly closed the door behind her. And then, being the tiniest member of the party, she had to scramble to catch up to the others, running down the hall in her tight red mini-skirt and long black boots.

The bat-like cannon ships were still clinging to the hull of the Enterprise as she hung in space above the plasma disc. And, from her tilted-up angle, she looked as though she might blast away at any moment, despite the brutal truth. At last, an invading crew of technicians in spacesuits boarded through the blasted-out shuttle bay doors. They saw no trace of Mr. Scott or Mr. O'Neil, who had been working to understand the alien technology when the first red alert sounded: before the battle began, and ended so quickly.

The Chilion brigade marched in thick silvery spacesuits, across the shuttle bay, with servomotors assisting them against the punishing artificial gravity. And once inside the pressurized areas, they popped their helmets, their dark green faces looking fierce but drawn, stepping over bodies as their boots clanging against the deck.

After a minute or so of searching up and down the first corridor, the technicians made their way forward to Engineering, ignoring the men and women on their backs, panting here and there. The invaders had little oxygen-type straws that rose up out of the round metal collars around their necks, straws that lightly hung over the corners of their mouths, to help them breathe.

Once the team had congregated in the middle of the engine room, alien clamps and cables and blinking processors were quickly and efficiently hoisted from a gurney, across the great accelerator tanks, and strapped down over the heart of the matter/anti-matter drive with heavy mesh. The familiar weighty cylinders soon looked like great whale heads, caught beneath a sturdy net. And on the other side of the echoing room, a round magnetic panel was slammed against the main controls. From inside that large round disc, a series of metallic probes drilled their way into the engine relays. And, one by one, mysterious lights began flickering to life on the face of the alien controls. The warp drive thrummed to life, and the ship was theirs.

"Look, we're going up again," Allena said, without enthusiasm. She was far across the room, silhouetted and facing the windows when Jim Kirk walked in. The other Enterprise crewmen waited just out in the corridor and Hulda could be seen dusting and straightening, worrying each crystal knick-knack as she worked her way toward the next room. Inside her private suite, wearing a sort of white Athenian gown, Allena didn't turn; but stood quietly watching the other buildings rise from the carpet of the billowing forests, her arms folded hopelessly across her chest.

As he approached, and the castle tower rose, the distant hexagonal oceans became more visible on the horizon. It almost appeared the planet itself was falling downward to some horrible fate, as the city rose toward the flawed moon once more. Allena seemed small and helpless in the midst of it all, an idea that was reinforced by the flimsiness of her dress. It exposed so much naked green back and quite a bit down in front, that she backed up against him for warmth when he finally stood behind her.

"You know why things are returning to normal here, don't you?" he asked, very quietly.

"Yes, I'm afraid I do," she replied quietly.

"Allena, I need a weapon of some kind."

At this, she spun furiously around, her eyes filling with tears. "They're the only family I have left—I can't just kill them all!"

"When Starfleet comes looking for the Enterprise, they aren't going to ask a lot of questions. They'll know, soon enough, what happened."

"What am I supposed to do," she said through gritted teeth, like a desperate animal, "tell my people to live in tents among the ruins, or burrow underground for warmth, till—"

"Tell them you care, and that's why you had to remove those old men from power. Because they don't care; and they haven't cared. Not for a long time, except for themselves."

"And tell them that the rest of the galaxy regards us as a band of power-mad egomaniacs, who'd kill innocent thousands to support a life-style we don't deserve?"

"Believe me, there are a trillion people in the Federation who manage to get by, very happily, with a lot less."

"But you can't just unplug paradise and not call it a prison," she said, sounding choked and exhausted and turning back to the endless sky, as stars began twinkling all around, even below the skyscrapers.

"People have good will. They want to think of themselves as good and decent," he insisted, taking her cool hand for commonality.

"But if you've spent a lifetime being told that you're the most good, and the most decent, it's pretty hard to accept the notion you're even capable of… the slightest evil," she said. Then Allena furrowed her brow and looked even more wretched, in her timeless beauty. Cold diamonds glittered around her neck and wrists, making everything else look humble.

"Allena, let me ask you something," he said, wrapping his arms around her waist, and managing a little smile in spite of everything. "Did you ever know anybody who really was 'the best'?"

"No, of course not," she said, though she sounded like a terrible sob was still caught in her long, graceful throat.

"Neither did I. Everybody with a lick of sense knows they're deeply flawed, one way or another."

"Like the moon," she muttered, nestling closer, in the evening breeze.

"What's that?"

"Hadn't you heard? It's worn out. After decades of being heated this way and that by great plasma beams, the center's been fractured. And now I suppose we'll probably have to find a new one."

"Ah," he said, as if it were a very minor concern, compared to all the others.

"Besides," she said, returning to the topic at hand, "they've got it all figured out—just the same way they keep trapping your ships to harvest our plasma coils. They've got it all figured out! They tell us we're just that close to some terrible disaster, and then they tell us that because we're so great, that we'll find a way out. But of course they mean that they'll find a way out, and I suppose they mean they're the ones who are really so great. And so we daren't do without them. No matter what the cost. Because without them, of course, we'd be lost!"

"Maybe so," Kirk said, smiling again at her wit, in spite of all the underlying sadness. She became tense in his arms, like a fighter going into the ring.

"My goodness, you'll need a weapon!" she said, wiping her tears with a sudden realization, and an almost comical intensity.

But Jim Kirk's smile faded as he glanced up at the evening sky, and saw the artificial star the Enterprise had dropped, orbiting far above the city. It had turned from gold to red: blinking a simple, new signal, over and over. He could almost hear the insistent whoop of the alert klaxon.

Chapter Eight

"Aye, there they go," Mr. Scott muttered, as he and O'Neil watched the Chilion technicians' vessel drift away from the torn doors of the shuttle bay. In another moment, the alien ship fired its engines and sped off to the enemy flotilla, on the other side of the blinding whirlwind. In their own shuttle, floating three hundred kilometers away, the two Earthmen plotted quietly from their hiding place behind one of the Enterprise's drifting hanger doors.

Their options were fairly limited, and quite possibly non-existent. Reasoning the Enterprise had no defense against the gravity beams, the two men slipped into a shuttle at the first sign of attack. And now all the cannon ships were locked on the underside of the starship, where they projected their crippling energy into the decks above. So, Scotty supposed, the first order of business would be to try to maneuver the shuttlecraft onto the "top" of the engineering decks, below the revived, roaring engines, and hope the gravity beams wouldn't stop them entirely, through the mass of the vessel. There were two black ships clinging to the lowest deck, just aft of the giant sensor dish, and forward from the shuttle bay launch-deck.

"When's the best time?" O'Neil wondered, looking as surprised as ever, as Mr. Scott began tweaking the controls inside the shuttlecraft.

"No time like the present, laddy. Now that they've got everything they want, maybe they'll just let their guard down a bit."

They both knew there were four access points across the top of the lower hull, but the closest two were just small monitoring stations, for engine diagnostics. And they couldn't take the engines off-line, without all of them tumbling into the maelstrom, chewed up like the Amphora.

The tiny shuttle arced high above and then raced down one of the long engine struts toward the lower hull of the Enterprise, whose engines were spinning like mad. They could just begin to glimpse the other cannon ships clinging to the upper saucer deck, all with their tail-like gravity guns pointed the other way: all pointed directly at the shuttlecraft; and any of which might wake suddenly, at the slightest disturbance.

"We should have gone out in two shuttles, sir," O'Neil said, leaning forward with worried eyes, watching each enemy ship casting a long, narrow shadow away from the accretion disc, against the hull.

Suddenly, a great bang! passed through the shuttle, and they broke free of the Enterprise for a moment.

"Look, sir!" O'Neil said, still trying to whisper, but his whole body rose out of the padded chair at the co-pilot's console.

Up above, on the under-side of the great saucer section of the ship, the cannon ships had been knocked free, as well.

"Aye, they've put a charge into her hull, good lads," Scotty nodded, with much more caution and restraint.

Everything after that happened in a single breath-taking moment: the engines overhead were still blasting away at warp factor three; but the ship was no longer locked in place. She was spinning to a new heading; and the sudden maneuver further scattered the jolted cannon ships. As quickly as all of that, the Enterprise vanished in a blur, far away and into free space.

"Well, good for them," Scotty said, throwing the toggles of the shuttle's engine controls so they, too, could get some distance from the cannon ships, which were spinning in all directions for the moment. And, with an almost playful sense of wickedness, the chief engineer said, "Let's go have a look at where they all come from."

At that, O'Neil looked very surprised.

The landing party met Princess Allena on the front landing of the palace tower, on the way to the advisors' temporary meeting hall. It was an entryway halfway up the great height of the building, with carved stone flourishes on either side, like a royal crest with a very large balcony sweeping out across the middle of it. A cortege of four impossibly long limousines hovered patiently, blacker than even the black boots of the livery men standing in smart pairs at regular intervals, across the front of the building's entrance. But the cars caught a million reflected lights, from little glowing spirals that decorated the space overhead, under a polished, sheltering arc of granite.

She was wearing a fur coat, with tremendously wide half-sleeves, which had the effect of making her exposed face and gloved hands seem even smaller and more helpless by comparison. And her great glittering earrings and elaborate beehive seemed far too grand as she stood waiting alone, looking rather sad and uneasy. Approaching from just out of her sight, Kirk realized she must be too new at being a 'head of state,' to have assembled any courtiers, to serve as her own sort of travelling cocktail party. So, for the moment, she merely looked like the most unlikely victim of ever being stood-up.

"Is that you, hiding in a stack of teddy bears and Christmas ornaments?" he said, even as his eyes swept along the line of hovercraft before them, the chauffeurs standing politely on the other sides, seemingly to float out in space, a mile up in the pink sky. That great troubled moon was not far behind them.

"I don't know what that means," she said, looking off toward the horizon with a great show of innocence. "But I'm willing to bet it's something quite awful."

"Not at all," Jim Kirk smiled, the whole conversation too quiet to be heard by the others behind them. "Where I come from, the children are never bad till after Christmas morning."

"I have so much to learn about your people," she sighed, sounding diffident and vaguely diplomatic all at once, as she stepped forward. And with her sudden decision to move, the footmen all reached out in unison to open up the wide doors of the waiting vehicles. The other crewmen, including Dr. McCoy, poured into the second car, and then the drivers stepped into their cockpits, on the other side. And the entire line sped away, like a formation of black barracuda.

Night seemed to be upon them, once they were enclosed inside, with the darkened windows all around. And the captain could tell the beautiful space princess was not about to pounce on him this time, as extravagantly decked-out as she was, and as dismayed by the growing conflict with her advisors, and by the terrible connection she began to understand between the restoration of power to the floating city, and Captain Kirk's separation from his own great ship.

"You don't look like a man who's about to go pounding on tables and throwing chairs around," she said, after appraising him as well, with her own tentative, side-long glance.

"Not enough furniture in here," he shrugged.

"Well, you haven't seen the lobby of the old Armory building," she said, with a funny little dry harrumph. "It's absolutely loaded with both—chairs and tables!"

"Did it really used to be an armory?" he asked, ducking his head a bit to see frighteningly ornate building as they approached.

"Well, not any more than I'm the great King Jonoff," Allena said, clasping her gloved hands together in the folds of her fur coat. "Apparently it's got a lot of old bits and pieces from the one my father lived in, in the final days 'round our old sun."

"When you were at war?"

"Oh, everyone's always at war," she whispered impatiently, as if he'd touched a nerve, and still looking out ahead, over the chauffeur's shoulder, a good three meters away. Somehow, her words sounded more sarcastic and annoyed than her own sad expression should have allowed.

"And your old enemy disappeared into a black hole?"

"Now, you know how I feel about all that advanced physics talk," she complained, rolling her dark eyes comically. "It's really no use trying to convince me of that nonsense!"

"My first officer thinks you're still on the run from them."

"First, teddy bears and Crispness. And now, running from ghosts in black holes. Where do people come up with these things?"

"That's how you fuel your whole planet," Kirk said, pretending mild dismay at her attitude toward black holes.

"I prefer to believe it's all rainbows and good wishes," she said, lifting her fingers tiredly in the air, as if strumming a lute, and watching the great buildings drift by in silence.

"Yes, well," Kirk said, unwilling to bang her over the head with the awful truth. "That's what they want you to believe." The next silence was especially terrible, and her beautiful eyes seemed to have misted over.

"Until the next poor cruise ship wanders into our coils, I suppose," she said, quietly. And now she dipped her little chin down into the rich fur of her coat, till her whole face disappeared nearly, and he could barely see her elegant eyebrows over her collar.

"You know," he said, after a moment had passed, "it's hard to believe you don't have something like warp drive. You've got so many other great advances."

"I suppose that once you get everything you could possibly want, and accomplish some amazing feat or other, something," she sighed, as if the pride of the world was like a heavy crown, "that makes you totally different from any other civilization, well then your priorities shift," she said. Her face had come out of her luxurious shell again, but she was looking pale, the sun gone out of the moss.

Jim Kirk thought about that for a moment before replying. "Isn't it also possible that every new technological advance just brings with it some sort of threat to the old order?" He was already imagining his next run-in with the royal advisors, and how the last two had ended in absolute chaos. And how much they seemed to like things the way they were.

"Here we are," Allena said quietly, pretending to have completely forgotten the line of questioning, as their hovercraft sidled up like a gondola against the Armory entrance. Mr. Brazeltine was waiting under the awning, already leaning forward in anticipation, though the chief advisor's smile hardened a little when he saw James T. Kirk.

The princess emerged from the hovercraft like a practiced ballerina, her fur coat parting a bit to reveal a red cocktail-type dress, as her long legs easily bridged the gap. Mr. Brazeltine took her gloved hand.

The captain followed, more in the fashion of a paratrooper dropping out of an old-fashioned helicopter: with bent knees and one hand holding on to the frame of the hovercraft door, as the depth of the sky spread beneath the car and the tower. The other landing party members were likewise scrambling out of the limousines behind.

But, in spite of her grace, Allena looked as though she were being led to the firing squad. She followed the smiling Mr. Brazeltine into the golden glow of the armory building, but the concentration of the princess seemed to be fixed only a few feet ahead of her, or perhaps as if she were peering down a dark tunnel that no one else could see. Watching her, out of the corner of his eye, Captain Kirk had a sudden sense of understanding: that the whole planet was peering down a wormhole of its own, in dread, looking for a vengeful enemy, whether it was the Mahlons, or the Federation, or their own ambition. With a nervous air, she shrugged her way out of the huge coat, and a uniformed servant held it, stepping smartly backward to the leather-trimmed wall.

"Please don't get up," Allena said, her sweet voice calling out, and one gloved hand extending along with it, toward the crowded lobby, where all the old men were suddenly grabbing for canes and pushing themselves up out of deep-cushioned armchairs and sofas, when they realized she'd walked in. A few of the old men who couldn't hear her gentle admonition went tumbling down again, on to their chairs, or onto their fellow advisors, creating another slow, cantankerous avalanche.

She surveyed the scene with mild embarrassment, at having caused a disturbance—or so Jim Kirk thought, as the old men were sorted out, and set into their own deep cushions once more.

"I wanted to thank you… for your many years of loyal service," she began, a warmth and kindness in her eyes shining across the lobby, from where she stood in a tailored red dress. "And to express my sincere gratitude for having kept the memory of my father, and his great victories, alive during our bold and independent journey."

There was a very strange pause, as she seemed to have trouble swallowing, or as if she were about to break up with a steady.

"But after much consideration, I have come to the conclusion that we can no longer support ourselves in the manner of decades past." She paused to look down, as if reviewing the text of an important speech, though of course there was no such document before her.

And in that moment of silence, both she and Jim Kirk could hear a weird, distant thunder, as the beginning of an echoing siren, which spread from distant building to building, across the floating metropolis. It seemed so alien even to her, that she seemed to dismiss the sound for the moment.

"And it is with a very deep sense of gratitude…" But she had to pause, first with an awkward grimace, and then with a quizzical alertness that made some of the advisors stir and sit up and look over their shoulders, to see what she was gaping at so intently. She quietly realized that the distant thunder and insistent sirens were not going away. If anything, the thunder seemed to be louder, and deeper, and a rustling wind had stirred up from far below the armory like a consuming, invisible fire rising from the surface of the planet. Like a dangling Christmas ornament, the building twisted just a bit.

"Captain!" It was Johansen, the tall blond security guard, rushing in from the entryway, into the main lobby. He looked as though he'd just run a thousand meter race, and might be ready to collapse right there in the wide doorway. Kirk turned to exchange a wide-eyed stare with Allena, and then hurried out after the red-shirt. The princess was left to try and regain her train of thought, as a little grumbling conversation stirred up among the old men. It seemed they could barely hear the very high, screeching siren, or perhaps they just felt the very low thunder that roiled the air.

"Enterprise, come in. Commander Scott to Enterprise," the Scotsman said, his fingers poised on the controls before him, in the shuttlecraft.

"Mr. Scott, look at that!" O'Neill had his own hands on the co-pilots' station, and had one screen showing a long-range scan of Chilion behind them. "It looks like the moon has hit the planet!"

"Aye," Scotty said, after a double take, and a sudden, surly look he couldn't quite suppress. "And it's no more than they deserve, if you ask me."

There, on the little screen, it looked like the planet had grown a terrible carbuncle, or was being sideswiped by its smaller companion, in a very slow, glancing collision. Soil and debris had already been plowed up from the crust of both bodies, like a dark froth, lit red by the glow of the heated satellite. It all seemed a dream-like pas des deux, from this great distance. And gradually, the moon's energy turned the cloud of dust into a sort of jagged glowing nest, nearly black in the lower reaches, turning to dark red at the top, along the horizon of the planet.

"This is Enterprise, come in, Mr. Scott." It was a familiar voice emanating from the shuttle console.

"How're ye doing up there, Uhura?"

"We have eight dead, sir, but we're re-routing engines through auxiliary control."

"Good girl," Scotty nodded gravely, glancing up at the stars, through the three windows over the control panel.

"We thought you were dead too, sir!" came Mr. Sulu's grateful voice, from the captain's chair.

"Ach, don't worry about me. Ye ought to get back to the captain, though, and see about rescue and relief for those Chilion bastards."

"Aye, sir. Course plotted and laid in. Shall we come and collect you, first?"

"No, no, no! Take as wide a course around us as you can. Mr. O'Neil and I are going on a little side-trip."

"Understood. We'll have repairs to the shuttle bay in about… forty-eight hours."

"Scott out," he replied, snapping a little control switch. A brief moment of silence fell upon the shuttlecraft, except for the steady instrument noise. "Now what have I taught them about those over-eager repair estimates, all along?" Scotty sighed. "Forty-eight hours. Can ye beat that?"

O'Neil just watched as the stars streaked by. They had left the cannon ships far behind, once the shuttle entered warp drive. But on the little screen below the windows, the moon still seemed to be stuck tight to the planet, though the splash pattern of its impact was rising, in the shape of water after a belly flop. Ice crystals from the some of the oceans reaching out into space, lending glitter to the dust, and long sections of white ocean walls could be seen, tumbling like shards of glass.

"May I enquire," Mr. Spock said, as he and Mr. Exmoor flew through space in the actor's small runabout, "as to how your society developed its gravity beam technology?" He could have said, "gravity weapon," but he knew enough about non-Vulcan psychology to avoid the more dramatic term.

"Well," Exmoor said, with what sounded like an embarrassed laugh, "we stole it. From the Mahlons—from our enemies."

"Indeed?"

"I'm afraid so. But it made for a first-rate feelie, where I had to grab the weapon off of a Mahlon ship, under dire circumstances." Exmoor looked proud at the memory, of a fictional re-telling of an historic crime, and Mr. Spock merely nodded in a pretense of understanding.

"Approximately how many of these 'feelies' were made, devoted to the subject of your interplanetary wars?"

Exmoor paused, at Spock's question: dumbfounded at the request, and then let out a little exhalation of breath through tightened lips.

"I honestly can't say. Hundreds, I suppose."

"But, invariably, in these 'entertainments,' your age-old enemy was sent into apparent destruction…"

"In a black hole, yes," they both repeated, at the same time, Mr. Exmoor, and Mr. Spock, gliding across the starry deep.

"But then, there were any number of what we like to call 'alternate histories' written, and even put on the strand, calculated to inspire 'spine-tingling suspense.'"

"Of course," Mr. Spock said, trying not to roll his eyes.

"I didn't do any of those, by then I was in my regular serial of inter-galactic adventures—all made up, of course, all fictional," the actor was quick to point out, to the literal-minded Vulcan.

"Yes," the science officer drawled. "But," he tried again, "there was no clear, scientific evidence that the Mahlons may have survived, somehow, in the interstices between collapsed stars."

"Lots of things… survive between collapsed stars. I can tell you that, personally," Exmoor said drily, with a side-long look out a narrow view-pane, and a wryness of tone that even Spock could recognize as some sort of attempt at humor: possibly involving the loves or hatreds of old celebrities.

As this was becoming more and more difficult for Mr. Spock he, too, began staring out ahead at the stars, and counting the days till they would reach what he believed was the remote transfer station that should exist between the last known whereabouts of the Amphora, and the string of black holes. In his mind, he was simultaneously reviewing the equations for wormhole formation and estimating the gravitational distortions between the loose barricade of black holes, between Chilion and the Federation. And wondering how a society as obviously advanced as Mahlon could have been defeated.

"I am particularly interested in the pattern of your planet's transit since the disappearance of your enemy," Spock said, trying not to sound curt or fatalistic, about the actor's ability to relate simple scientific information.

"How do you mean?"

"Most of your life," the Vulcan began patiently, as both men faced forward in the cockpit, "you have lived on a world that has re-told certain legends, and labored to produce many stories, about the sudden disappearance of another planet—or rather, the disappearance of their space-militia, following the apparent evacuation of their own home world, after a major loss in battle. Since then, it would appear to me that your own planet has been engaged in a continuous monitoring of the seven largest dormant gravity wells in the region, which you call 'the pocket.' In the process, Chilion has made a series of occasionally quite challenging maneuvers, ostensibly to stay within certain mathematical arrangements, or loci, within the dark constellation—in spite of the often great distances separating you from the active, energy-consuming black holes that are so vitally important to your sunless world."

Exmoor blinked several times, as he attempted to digest this entire line of thought. The old actor knew it was "about him," in a general sense, but it all sounded so different from what he was used to.

"What you're saying is… alien to me," Exmoor shook his head in quiet disbelief. "We chart our own course, through the galaxy. We blaze a trail… no slave to jealous suns." But the rhythmic way he spoke these last words made the Vulcan think they must have been reciting from some sort of national anthem, to be mindlessly recited in the face of danger.

"And yet," Spock observed, without any trace of condemnation, "all the indications, from the gravitational disturbances throughout this region of the galaxy, suggest," he drew a polite breath, "that you could have proceeded much farther in the time you've had, since your plasma/gravity economy was first realized, than you actually have."

"You're saying," Exmoor responded, in quiet disbelief, not unlike Captain Kirk himself, "we've just been going… 'round and 'round in circles?"

"The illusion of freedom can be far less costly than actual freedom itself."

Exmoor fell utterly silent at this, for a long minute.

"I've spent the greater part of my life," he said, ruefully, "making people believe they were bold and brave and full of daring. And now you're telling me, it's all a show, a mass… hypnosis? Done out of guilt, or fear?"

"Sometimes," Spock filled=in the strange, heartbreaking silence, with polite compassion, "the act of simply surviving, and going on with life after war, requires all one's daring."

Finally, after feeling more and more ridiculous for the last five minutes, Exmoor seemed to come to peace with all his fictional accomplishments. "I'll bet you're a damned good first officer, Mr. Spock."

"I'm sure you played a very noble captain, sir."

"I have some old feelies, on the computer here, if you'd like—"

"Visual detection," Spock said suddenly, "of a large metallic structure, bearing 005 mark 327."

"Where's that?" the actor asked, blankly.

"Ahead, slightly to the left; and then up," the Vulcan said. Exmoor leaned forward, squinting, till he saw a very distant object, with the stars glinting behind: toward something like a faraway, cage-like space station.

"How perfectly awful," Allena said quietly, though the words sounded husky and hollow in her own ears. Beginning to fear that some sort of curse long-held in abeyance had finally befallen her people, she stood with Jim Kirk on a balcony outside the Armory lobby, surveying the damage that would soon stem all the way from one horizon to the next, from down in the desert regions. It would surely be visible across half the planet by now, as the stars disappeared in the debris clouds, one by one.

The captain stood silently, holding her fur coat over his shoulder, which suddenly gave him the look of a barbaric warrior, the faint golden light glowing from inside, and the awful red of the moon out in the distance.

And of course he wouldn't mention it under the circumstances, but he was pleased to see the Enterprise' communications satellite overhead had started blinking gold again.

The wind was steady now, whipping out of the south, buffeting her red dress, as the thunderous roar continued in the distance. Unsure of what to do with her hands, she folded her slender arms, even as she refused the furs again when he offered. Braving the elements might strengthen her but, as Jim Kirk watched, he guessed it could just as easily provoke a bout of nervous hysterics at any moment.

The upper atmosphere was gradually turning to red with moon dust, and the great plume thrown up from the planet's surface stood like an inescapable tombstone across the sky. Long white sections of artificial ocean frames seemed to form a tiny, indecipherable epitaph of white ruins, rendering their fate even more uncertain.

"You can always get another one," Kirk mused again, regarding the dangerous moon, which must eventually glance away, but seemed to have taken up permanent residence along the edge of the sky for the next few days at least. He tried once again to put the coat over her shoulders, but she just shrugged it away, with a little step to one side. And yet, she knew that she was running out of room on the balcony, as each refusal took her another awkward step back toward the lobby doors, where she might be seen by her father's old advisors.

"I wish you'd take me away from this," she said, leaning back against him for warmth.

"I wish I could," he said quietly, in her ear.

All she could do was sigh and square her shoulders, and walk back inside, where the old men were waiting. He turned to watch the unfolding disaster in the sky.

"Well," Dr. McCoy said, coming out to stand by the solitary captain, as if it was all faintly amusing, "it looks like you two are getting along nicely."

"I thought that was supposed to be a bad thing," Jim Kirk said, unable to keep a tone of bitterness from his voice as he looked down, now, into the dark forest below.

"Her own people have used her a lot more badly than you ever could, Jim."

"No one at the Federation high council is going to lose any sleep over her feelings, or mine, Bones."

"No, but even the high council would have to agree that half of all diplomacy would just cease to exist," the doctor said, with a sweep of one hand, "without the personal feelings of the people who make things happen."

"The day it gets that calculated," Kirk said, quietly but severely, "is the day it stops working."

"Jim, a week ago, that girl would never have even thought about standing up to her own advisors, the way she's doing now. She was just a nice girl whose brother died unexpectedly, thanks to us, by the way," McCoy shrugged. "They attacked the Enterprise, and that led to the power crisis, and now, surprise: you have to make it all work again, with or without that royal mafia, back in there."

"You make it all sound so easy." Now both men turned to look through the plate glass windows, and the draperies, as Allena spoke with some of the older men inside, under the glow of antique lamps.

"From the looks of it, I'd say she's fully graduated from the Jim Kirk 'school of charm,'" McCoy said admiringly, folding his arms as they watched the royal advisors going all dewy-eyed over the lovely young woman.

"She was probably just a little girl, a week ago, to them," the captain nodded. And then, as if one of the old men had said something terribly witty, Allena burst into smiles and gentle laughter, remembering to put a gloved hand to her lips, as if she feared a breach of royal decorum. And though neither Kirk nor McCoy could hear a word of what was being said, the pantomime, followed by a sudden, laughing competition among the advisors, gently pushing and shoving one another for dominance before the princess, was loud and clear in its meaning. Canes and walkers clattered together, as the elder statesmen stood on one leg, or jockeyed for attention from their wheelchairs.

"Of course," McCoy pondered, "they could just be trying to out-charm Allena, for their own good."

"Bones, you think too much," Kirk said, watching as Allena primly declined a little crystal cup of some glittering drink. Then, as far as the two Earthmen could tell, the old advisors made some sort of a toast in her honor, raising their cups and then drinking from stooped shoulders.

"She never got to make her little speech," the doctor warned mildly, as he strolled back into the lobby, jingling an empty crystal cup in one hand. Inside, several of the ancients had fallen asleep in club chairs, white moustaches billowing like clouds on green faces. The whole planet seemed to be falling asleep, even as some awful truth gouged its way in from behind. Even the nightmarish public warning sirens had finally been cut off.

And there she was, that marginalized little girl from last week, with glittering diamonds and that beehive hairdo, laughing and lavishing her attention on the men she seemed about to throw under a bus, half an hour ago. Gone, too, was the worried new ruler of this ravenous world, who wished for an escape, with no questions asked.

Kirk reluctantly turned away again to regard the moon, with its own broken heart deep inside. He immediately imagined Mr. Spock, his friend and science officer, straightening uncomfortably at the description, when it was really just a terrible fracture of the moon's crystalline core.

And he remembered his own recent, blithe words, too: "you can always get another one," he'd said, not realizing they might just need a whole new planet after this was all over. And entirely new rulers (unless Allena really was the romantic magician she suddenly appeared to be), and new residents… Hell, Kirk thought, why not just let the whole planet spin off in darkness, till it finally wobbled into a white-hot accretion disc itself?

The party went on, inside, as though the devastation was happening on some entirely different globe. And he remembered Nero, who went down in history as "the ruler who fiddled, while Rome burned." And another three or four such cases across the galaxy, though of course it was never as simple as that.

He wanted to commandeer a limousine to go and survey the damage, but the risk was too high, till the moon had completed its sideswipe of the planet. The thing could still crack apart, before exiting the atmosphere, and things could become far worse—or, who knew, perhaps heating the largest floating fragments might solve everything, if they could agree on who should manage it.

For the moment, he felt the wind and heard the endless rumbling, far in the distance, and the two seemed to merge into one thing, like the madness of mortal glory.

It was no longer a question of whether or not he could stand to leave this girl who seemed to be blossoming into perfection; or whether she could stand to be left alone without him; or whether he could trust the ruling class to act wisely on behalf of their people, and not to fuel their world with depraved indifference to any warp-drive vessel passing by, unawares. Now it was a question of how to stop them from having some great romantic notion about their destiny, which destroyed the people who got in their way and, of course, now seemed destined to destroy them as well.

He thought he loved her, and that she loved him too. And yet she seemed utterly oblivious as Jim Kirk stared quietly through the plate glass doors, from out in the strange red darkness. The plasma energy beams shown bright and clear now, from the base of every tower in the sky, rising up in all directions: like pins of light, thrusting down into a cork-board, from some collection of exotic insects.

Chapter Nine

"I'm terribly sorry, I should have got these back to you days ago," Allena said, as a guard in a black tunic stepped forward with a tray that held the landing party's communicators. Not surprisingly, their phasers were missing from the collection. It was just minutes ago that Jim Kirk had been standing out on the balcony of the armory, alone with his thoughts.

He gave her a little nod, picked one up, and flipped open the protective grid, as the last of the old men were led away to their own apartments. So, they got to keep their status as advisors to the princess, and he got his communicators back. Done and done.

But when he half-turned away to hail the ship, he got no reply through the hand-held device. "Still out of range," he said, almost quizzically, as he closed the lid again and attached it to his belt. He also put away a false little rush of reassurance he felt, with the gadget on his waist once more.

"Could you take these out to the captain's people, please?" And the guard bowed his head and quietly marched out into the corridor, the perfectly level tray held out before him, over his white gloves.

"Thank you," Kirk said, remembering his manners, but still searching in her eyes for some trace of the girl he'd met, when first he'd lost his equipment.

"Captain," came the booming, nearly friendly voice of Mr. Brazeltine, "I believe we owe you an apology. I think we got off on the wrong foot, so to speak," he said, with a sudden guilty air, for there were still a few of old King Jonoff's advisors staggering around on crutches or in wheelchairs, here and there.

"Of course, I understand," Kirk said, with practiced graciousness.

"You know," Brazeltine said, draping an arm around Kirk's shoulders and turning him away from Allena for a private chat, "I never thought I'd say this, but we may be in desperate need of your help, what with this moon business, and all."

"I understand," Jim Kirk said again, as a passing waiter put a crystal cup in his hand.

"Not just for that, though."

"Really?"

"Well, it seems our old wartime foe may be getting ready to emerge from hiding any time now."

"We don't take sides," Kirk said, automatically.

"I'm not asking about that, Captain," Brazeltine chuckled disarmingly. "We just want to make sure the status quo is preserved. Now that our own energy harvest has been disrupted, we're especially vulnerable. And some of us, on the royal advisory board, feel…"

"Vulnerable?"

"Exactly," Brazeltine nodded, and signaled another waiter. Almost immediately, Jim Kirk had a crystal cup in each hand, weighing them both like the scales of justice. "Now, I hope you won't be offended, Captain, but we've been keeping pretty close tabs on things 'planet-side,' if you get my drift. And we know that silly old fool Exmoor—oh, I know, he's quite charming, and I apologize—but that he's been telling your people a sort of 'entertainment' version of history, not the real history of our people."

Kirk shrugged, partly to free himself from the long arm of the chief advisor.

"Now, apparently, he's been telling your people about the last great war we fought, before we struck out on our own, from our sun, weaving our way across this little part of the galaxy."

"Go on," Kirk said, wondering what this could possibly be about, but expecting something parasitic.

"Well, the war ended with our enemies being forced into a full retreat," Brazeltine smiled, "into one of the collapsed stars. But, well, legend has it that they are just biding their time in a sort of network of passages between those super-dense points in space."

"In wormholes."

"As you say," Brazeltine said, though the word seemed ridiculous to him. "In any case, our scientists believe they could possibly emerge at any time, possibly even triggering a major regional war that could impact the Orions, and points within your Federation."

"I see." Now Kirk drank down the contents of the first cup, to stave off an irritated headache.

"Because, well, you know how the Orions are about energy resources," Brazeltine confided, surprisingly well informed on his closest Federation neighbors, even without the benefit of warp technology.

"And you really believe these adversaries could survive in such extreme circumstances, for a life-time, or more, just planning their next attack on you?"

"Oh, Captain, I assure you, there was no shortage of hard feelings… and no end to their technical cleverness. Our top men believe the Mahlons could easily navigate the extreme conditions of these inter-dimensional spaces, almost indefinitely."

"I see." Kirk stared into the brown liquid in his second cup.

"You see," Brazeltine said, now seeming almost embarrassed, "we are actually able to use our gravitational technology to 'strum the chords,' you might say, of the connections between collapsed stars, and more or less gauge the presence of their old warships, which disappeared some sixty years ago, in your scale of reckoning."

"And you really think," Kirk said, hiding any trace of disdain behind a façade of scientific discussion, "they're just waiting for the right moment… to pounce."

"Oh, you don't know them the way we do," Brazeltine assured the starship captain, with a cold, dry chuckle. "The war did not end well for them, they faced utter defeat. And you know how people are, when they've been utterly crushed."

"Yes," Kirk said, though he thought perhaps a civilization as advanced as Chilion should have known it, too. Brazeltine's unacknowledged guilt on the subject seemed more and more obvious.

"But this is hardly the time or place, Captain, I apologize—I shouldn't have taken you away from Princess Allena—well, Queen Allena, one of these days, when we finally get around to the official coronation!" Kirk suddenly had the impression that he was being offered a bribe, in the form of a certain young woman.

"Your royal highness," Brazeltine said, having wheeled Kirk around like some clumsy dance partner, back to where she stood, looking at the chief advisor as if he were an embarrassing father figure, who had obviously said too much to a man she'd already been intimate with.

"Thank you," Allena said, as Kirk stepped out of the chief advisor's overly warm embrace. And, soon, the room emptied out, and the two were left alone. "What is it," she asked politely, though she seemed to feel strangely exposed.

"I don't know," he answered, remembering to smile. "You just look… different."

"I'm not very tall tonight, I suppose," she said, modeling some very modest slippers at the ends of her legs. "I suppose I didn't want to tower over my father's old compatriots. They get shorter and shorter, every year," she insisted, speaking more quietly, though the room was almost empty. A few stevedores gently banged big covered trays on to pushcarts to be taken away, leaving a long bright white tablecloth at one end of the vast collection of dark chairs and sofas and tables. Outside, the distant thunderous noise continued.

"I wonder what the chances are that your moon could just split in half, under the strain." His mind was now racing, even as she seemed to be blissfully ready for bed.

"I couldn't possibly tell," Allena said, stifling a little yawn.

"Is there anyone who can find out for us?"

"They've all gone to bed—it's very late for them," she said, with a little smile that would have been naughty, if she were more awake.

"Allena," Kirk said, looking her straight in the eyes, calmly but very seriously, "it's getting very late for all of you."

She looked down, and her beehive of hair came towering up, to the space between them. "I know it," she whispered. "But what can I do?"

"It's not your fault," he sighed, daring to take her in his arms now, though it seemed to miss the seriousness of everything he'd been trying to tell her.

"What if it does break apart," she asked quietly, her face buried in his chest.

"I'm not sure," he said, at last. But he was damned sure he wasn't going to let his ship be the slave of these fools. And as he held her, he had to remember the future she faced was likely to be very different from whatever she'd ever been taught to expect.

After a long, strangely hopeless moment, they sat down, side by side on one of the couches. Their hands were laced together but, on the walls around them, the hanging mirrors, and the glass on the doors to the darkness beyond, only seemed to multiply the emptiness, and the endless expanse of mossy outdated luxury, and they were adrift in the bygone dreams of others.

"You've changed so much in the last week," he said consolingly, putting an arm around her. "With the old men, too. Suddenly, you were irresistible to them. And you got us our communicators back," he smiled, not mentioning how long it had taken, or that Mr. Brazeltine may have arranged that, as a sort of bribe to enter into a decades-old blood feud.

"Now you can leave any time you want," she said, trying to smile, though tears of exhaustion filled her eyes till they glittered up at him, like the diamonds from her earlobes.

"Law of the Sea," he whispered, kissing the side of her head.

"What does that mean?" She smoothed out the gathers in her red gown, waiting for another silly human history lesson.

"When you come upon a castaway, floating in the middle of the ocean, you can't just look the other way and pass them by."

"Oh dear," she whispered, not having seen herself in quite such desperate straits till now.

"Well," he said, and rubbing her cool arm gently, drawing her closer, "let's just say you're 'moral castaways.'"

"Oh, yes, that's much better," she smiled, in spite of herself, sniffling back her childish tears. "I suppose we are, adrift in pride." Then, she straightened a bit, next to him, to show her resolve. "And now we'll have to bring the towers down low again. For safety."

"It's so ridiculous," he said, remembering his first vision of the city, when he looked up at the great buildings, like the old Saturn V and Tupolev rockets, at the dawn of Earth's space age. But these great structures were thrusting forever into the air, glorying in a perpetual moment of launch, on a mission to nowhere.

"Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time," she recalled, wistfully: "The seismic instability of the planet, and all, with all the gravitational rigmarole. And it looks rather fabulous, don't you think?"

He nodded patiently, recalling the pyramids of the pharaohs. And a thousand other egocentric monuments, across the stars. And it seemed that there was no point in mentioning that the seismic instability was a direct outgrowth of this world's own vaunted ambition.

"Every man a king," he whispered enigmatically, from a very different corner of his mind.

"Is that like 'the law of the sea,'" she said, sniffling again.

"It may be just the opposite," Jim Kirk considered, raising his eyebrows over his gentle, hazel eyes. And then he settled back in the couch, as if he were about to confess a terrible truth, in as kindly a way as he could manage. "It usually comes along well before the shipwreck. Clever men will promise you the moon, to get your taxes. And then, the moon ends up with the cleverest man's name on it, and he just walks away with all the peoples' money. Somehow. Magically."

"Mmm, that does sound magical," she whispered sleepily, burying the side of her face against his well-muscled shoulder. "Until it all falls apart," she added, not looking toward the glass doors.

But the moon seemed to have gone down below the horizon at last, and all he could see past her shoulder was an empire of furniture, probably all exactly where it all had been, since the death of the great king. The two of them sat there quietly: one dozing; the other feeling the strange stagnation of the racing rogue planet, spiraling between collapsed suns, lurking in guilt and calling it glory. And he still didn't know if the wormholes between them were real, or entirely made-up. But all the questions came out now, like angry ghosts to perch on every seat around him.

Of course he knew that wormholes themselves were real, elsewhere in the galaxy: the insanely small, sometimes impossibly long connections between super-dense points on the space-time continuum, but very difficult to keep opened, much less intact, for more than the tiniest fraction of a second. And for the remnants of a civilization to survive in there, inside, for however long it was… seventy, eighty, a hundred years? In their defeated spacecraft? The Mahlons would have to live on recycled air and "water" and "food," as nomads, eternally scorned from ever emerging at all, as their victors plumbed the depths, back and forth.

And yet, inside those desperate straits, those Mahlons would have to hold fast (he imagined) to some strangled hope of life, beyond the infinitely small confines of their hostile existence. Could they really have survived, crushed into the almost non-existence? And if the scales were suddenly balanced and the nomads set free, would Allena's civilization simply fall and turn to ice, powerless and adrift?

It was all too cruel and incredible to believe, any way he looked at it. However advanced they must have been, to have developed the sheer mathematics of a gravity weapon, the Mahlons themselves would have to live on almost nothing in the wormholes, while another world exploited their knowledge and resources.

The beautiful girl in charge of it all now nestled against Kirk's side, and couldn't possibly have known the answers to any of those questions. And soon the men who did would die, in their beautiful apartments above the parks and promenades collapse. And the private wormhole between these two lovers would just snap shut.

Finally, gingerly, he picked Allena up and carried her out past the guards. He stirred the landing party in the hall, McCoy, Tamura, Johansen and Michaels, and they shook off their own sleepiness to follow him out to the windy ledge outside. There, he placed her in the back of a long black car that hovered just beyond an inch-wide chasm in the dark. And with the luxurious, bland reassurance of great wealth, their just drivers sped them back to the palace tower, where Jim Kirk would lie in bed thinking, for several hours.

At long last, the USS Enterprise tilted gracefully back into orbit over Allena's world, though it was an orbit that kept the ship nearly opposed to the newly errant moon on the other side, as the debris cloud spread across the planet. Almost immediately, repairs commenced upon the shuttle bay doors, two shuttles themselves zipping out to unroll the long crescent-shaped panels between them that would replace those ripped away in battle.

Jim Kirk stepped off the pad in the transporter room, on board his ship. The others had come up first, and were politely waiting in a dispirited little group, for the captain.

"Where's Mr. Spock," Lt. Kyle enquired, as the group shook off the dust of another world. The captain had already disappeared out into the corridor.

"He wants to learn how to make a gravity beam," Lt. Riley muttered, passing the transporter control board, with the others.

"But that's where Mr. Scott and Mr. O'Neil have gone!" Kyle just shook his head in dismay, at the wastefulness of it all.

When he stepped onto the bridge, James T. Kirk was satisfied to see a "cutaway" diagram of the moon, showing a sensor probe of the inner layers and the broken core of the satellite, already on display on the viewscreen.

"Report, Mr. Sulu," he said, as the navigator practically leapt out of the command seat, eager to return to his usual place at the forward console.

"It'll crack apart, sir," Sulu nodded, as both men looked up at the screen, "but probably not for another solar week."

"Present danger to inhabitants?"

"Outside of the impact area, minimal, sir. When we first got here, we mapped a lot of farming acreage, but very few humanoid readings."

"Lieutenant Palmer," Kirk said, turning to the beautiful blond at the communications station, "has Starfleet been notified?"

"Yes sir, but we've had to re-route subspace down through Rigel, due to the interference. No reply to our status reports."

"Very good," he mumbled, automatically, though of course, it was not good at all. He tried to imagine the curving corridors of the Enterprise crammed with refugees, if his was the only ship on hand to evacuate the planet, but immediately dismissed the notion as wildly impractical. Until it actually happened; and then it would become unpleasantly… unavoidable.

"Ten day simulation."

Subbing at the science console, Mr. Chekov inserted a yellow memory plaque back into the computer port, and reset the time-frames with the touch of two buttons. In a moment, the main viewer had three different simulations on it, from left to right, in descending order of probability, playing over and over, like the end of one of Mr. Exmoor's disastrous space-feelies.

"Eighty percent on the left," Chekov said, trying to focus his own mind as sharply as Mr. Spock's. "Due to rapid, off-center cooling of the fractured core, and the strain of the collision, the moon should split as shown, approximately seventy/thirty, forming two new bodies with minor debris."

Then, the center simulation enlarged, at the touch of a button.

"Seventeen percent probability: some minor core repair is accomplished by steady phaser fire," Chekov said, in an almost disinterested way, as if steering his captain away from the idea. "But still the moon fractures, probably worse than before, due to the unknowns."

"And three percent," Kirk nodded, "no fracturing at all."

"Affirmative, Keptin."

"And those are our three alternatives," Kirk mused.

"Unless we return to their enslavement," Chekov shrugged, helpfully, "and use our varp drive to let them keep the status quo."

"At least then," Sulu said, almost to himself, from halfway across the bridge, "they don't freeze to death."

"Well," Kirk said, folding one leg over the other in an almost comical gesture of relaxation, "at least we have… a week or so. To think about it."

There was no communication with either Spock or Mr. Scott, to avoid drawing attention to their smaller craft. But, now and then, Chekov thought he had a glimpse of one of their vessels on long-range scanners, against the background disturbance of the Pocket.

"Look at that, will ye, Mr. O'Neil?"

The lieutenant leaned toward the shuttle control panel, and pulled a hinged metallic arm toward him, to show a sensor read-out on an eyeball-shaped display.

"Looks like a very small space station or probe, probably unmanned," O'Neill said, though, as usual, he appeared certain of absolutely nothing. Quickly he checked the view portholes above (though it was still much too far to be seen with the naked eye) and then the instruments below for confirmation.

"Aye. Set us a course there, first. Might be a little easier to get into."

And the shuttle veered off to starboard, from where they'd been watching the "great ribcage," as they'd decided to call it: an immense, open and curving black metal structure that seemed to house a series of outer-space factories, which seemed to sweep off to the port side as they turned. Clearly, it was too busy to approach unnoticed.

The view back toward Earth, and the whole brilliant panorama of the galaxy, was weirdly punctuated and puckered by the intervening black holes, which turned the vast arm of stars and interstellar gases into a hodge-podge of unfamiliar, glowing images. Some star clusters were crushed together by the visual distortion, into single blobs of light; while others were magnified to appear much closer, by gravitational lensing. In any case, the new arrangement certainly didn't look like "home."

"Aye," Scotty said again, once they'd zipped across the several billion miles to the object that now lay in their path. "Looks like the same kind of cannon we had in the shuttle bay, except for that middle, there" with the grim self-assurance of a policeman in a bad part of town. O'Neil nodded in agreement, and they dropped out of warp drive. The whole structure was about four times the size of those black cannon ships that sucked themselves onto the hull of the Enterprise, but without a ramjet's blown-out gills. This one had attitudinal thrusters pointing every-which-way on most of the corners, as though it were intended to stay floating out there indefinitely. And then, at the far end was that one, long firing barrel: just pointing out into nowhere, like a battle tank that floated out to sea, in the majestic confusion of a D-Day.

The shuttle flipped nose-up, relative to the outpost, and in a moment the under-side of the Federation vessel was sealed over an access panel on the smallest side of the remote object. After leaning down into the airlock with their tricorders, the two engineers sat quietly, checking their readings for a moment. Then, as if un-stopping a drain, Mr. Scott simply reached deep inside to twist a handhold at the bottom. With a "pop!" of air, the hatch opened, and both men slid down, into zero gravity inside.

"What can we do, sir?" O'Neil glanced around in the darkened crawl space, and then back up into the airlock, to the reassuring light from the shuttle above.

"Give them a taste of their own medicine, for one thing, lad," the Scotsman grumbled, slipping down farther into the mechanism, between bulkheads that now seemed a bit more familiar thanks to the ruins in the shuttle bay. Cautiously, at first, he began playing with the touch-pads on one of the alien keyboards.

Then, suddenly a whole wall of lights and instruments came to life, with a barely inaudible whir from a power source. Mr. Scott pushed himself back from the blinking, blazing alien controls in cool satisfaction, squinting as his eyes adjusted.

"There we go," he said to himself, and began searching for control menus on a computer that seemed to be formatting endlessly as O'Neil floated above, upside down, looking just over his shoulder.

Chapter Ten

Halfway to the great black ribcage themselves, Spock and Exmoor were intercepted by a larger military vessel. Much farther out, the stars were squeezed into odd shapes glowing like banks of luminous coral, or a rough, frozen wall of cataracts above a luminous waterfall.

"That is… a transport ship," Exmoor said, looking up as the ship grew from a point of light to a sort of broad-headed corkscrew before them. He tapped several little light panels on the controls before him, and they waited a moment, before the ship darted away again, on its own journey across the space between the plasma pinwheels and Allena's own world.

"Do you have any 'historical' documents," Spock asked, trying to word things very carefully, "to show the true nature of your war-time adversaries?"

"Well, I have dozens of feelies in the computer here," Exmoor said, barely able to hide his own enthusiasm to show his own life's work, but already knowing the Vulcan well enough to shelve the idea of a private film festival. "Most of them were made by Hindemunt, after the merger with Ondro. Lots of action, lots of romance," he smiled.

"Perhaps something more… in the nature of a 'documentary,' would suffice," Spock said.

Exmoor let out a little, deflated sigh, but managed to resurrect his self-confidence as he tapped on another control panel, waking another monitor screen overhead, larger than the others at their fingertips below.

In a moment, as they hurried onward, the screen overhead came to life with a series of dramatic crowd scenes, people on fire with emotion as troops marched past, and ships blasted into space far above, after stomping into the Chilion soil with their primitive rocket engines. Spock recognized it was Exmoor's own voice reading the narration within the video.

Dramatic music echoed along with every heavy beat of the troopers' march, and crescendoed as each rocket shot up into the heavens. Eventually, the perspective changed and the screen showed the world below, from a roaring rocket.

There were no majestic, floating towers, and no signs of hovercraft, and no strangely glowing moon to be seen; and from this Mr. Spock knew right away he was viewing the world before the world he knew. No great hexagonal oceans, and the lush forests that covered the dry land now had not yet been planted—in their place were regular cities with streets and buildings stretching out in all directions, lit by a very typical six to eight billion year old star.

And then the view shifted again, and a mighty space battle ensued, or was re-enacted, or both. A heroic death scene was played out, and justice or vengeance was sworn and swiftly meted out. To an outsider like Spock, it was all rather dull and predictable. But to Mr. Exmoor, it seemed fraught with emotion and captured his full attention.

"When do we see your enemies?" Spock asked politely.

"Shh!"

Once again, Exmoor's own recorded voice marched on, like a dispassionate god, over shots of ruined ships and weeping mothers, back on the home planet, and the swelling music that signaled an end to the proceedings. After a moment, the old actor turned to look at the Vulcan, for a reaction.

"Well?"

Spock was neither pleased nor displeased, but seemed more like an early scientist, removing one little glass slide from under a microscope, and now looking around for another glass slide to examine next.

"It was…" Spock began, not really having an "exit plan" for the sentence, but unable to deny the actor's imploring stare.

"Yes?"

Spock realized he was being called on to give an appraisal of the artistic or perhaps patriotic components of the visual documentation he'd just witnessed. Why his opinion should be of such interest was, of course, quite beyond his own understanding, but he was familiar enough with non-Vulcans to have some idea of the need for validation.

"It was clearly in the long tradition of a victor's hagiography, and showed all the signs of professional and artistic completion, in a lineage that could easily trace its beginnings to such works as Earth's Homeric exploits, to the Twentieth Century works of Leni Riefenstahl, or perhaps the visual and personal narratives excavated by Ken Burns, concerning the struggle to end slavery. And on through to Elizabeth Havermeyer, recounting the early, desperate Romulan clashes, endured in the most primitive of star ships. I should hasten to point out that no such emotionally charged historical works exist on my own world. But I am, after years of study, somewhat able to appreciate the form." And then, unintentionally adding insult to injury, Spock gave a polite little nod, as if completing some dull ritual of humanoid socialization: somewhere between a dry handshake and a highly choreographed waltz.

Exmoor seemed about to say something in return, though his own look of buoyant expectation had gradually worn away, like an Ozymandian visage, to a wounded sense of disappointment. The two men flew along together, in silence, for some time after.

"Ach," Scotty said suddenly, pausing as he went through the various computer menus again and again, inside the gravity cannon. He seemed to be wrestling with something in his own mind, and impatient to be done with whatever it was.

"What is it," O'Neil wondered, still hanging upside down, his tricorder floating in front of his chest. The air inside the little space buzzed with something pervasive, like electricity, and the air from the shuttle gradually grew warmer around them.

"I don't know, lad," he answered, backing off the controls in a kind of consternation. "Somethin's tellin' me I'd better check back with the ship, and make sure she's all right."

O'Neil pushed himself out of the way, and Scotty slid past, upward, into the shuttlecraft again.

The junior officer paddled gently farther down into the control bank, quietly examining what appeared to be a system of batteries and cables, when he noticed one of the main control screens behind him, below his boots now, was flashing black and white. As he turned around and drifted back up to the central array, he could see a long column of programming phrases rushing upward on screen after screen, from bottom to top, like an epic poem of protocols. The lines of instructions would halt suddenly, and then jolt back into action again. He couldn't help wondering if he'd accidentally kicked a switch somewhere, as he passed a minute ago, and the sensation of guilt and growing panic made him examine all the other controls for any other signs of change. He even looked into his tricorder for a visual record of the switches and buttons, and where they had been set, just before Mr. Scott had drifted up and away. But it seemed like a wasted effort, as now all the readouts were looking different, and he couldn't possibly have kicked every one of them…

"Mr. Scott," he called, up toward the cabin. He could hear the chief engineer trying to contact the Enterprise, far away at the planet, via subspace. Not wanting to be left behind if something awful were about to happen, and certainly not having any recourse to stop whatever seemed to behappening, O'Neil swam around and climbed back into the shuttle, to catch his commander's attention.

Then a rumbling down in the remote outpost grew until it shook the shuttle, as well. O'Neil hauled himself out of the airlock, like someone anxious to get out of a swimming pool before lightning struck, and (for good measure) kicked the hatch closed behind him. Scotty was up and out of his pilot's seat with a strange, imploring look on his face. O'Neil could only stare back in amazement.

And then, all at once, the terrible rumbling stopped, and the change to silence seemed twice as bad. Only the polite telemetric sounds emanated, as usual, from the shuttle controls. Both men were frozen where they stood, waiting to see if anything would happen next. And after a moment, it seemed they were safe.

"Let's see if we can do that, again, lad," Scotty said, suddenly intrigued.

A few minutes later, O'Neil holding his breath the whole time, they examined their tricorder readings and tried to make the cannon controls roughly the same as before.

"Aye, I think that's as close as we're gonna get, Mr. O'Neill," the chief engineer said, without any apparent satisfaction. The two men floated side-by-side, gingerly touching one button, and then another, and studying the energy reaction on one tricorder, as they matched them up with the last active readouts from the other handheld device.

Then, a minute or two later, they just started trying different ideas at random: tentatively at first, and then with growing confidence that absolutely nothing would happen, either way, no matter what they did.

"Maybe if we shake it," O'Neill joked, in a quiet way, as the gravity cannon refused to engage. Scotty reacted silently, as if it were just a bad joke, quickly to be forgotten. And then, perhaps inevitably, he gave a little laugh, as if remembering the one time in his life when something like that actually worked.

"Get up above and see if ye can put a little spin on us, or somethin'," he said, smiling and feeling like a fool at the same time. Then, as O'Neil disappeared up into the shuttle, his boots just hitting the deck above, Scotty added, with a sudden cautious impulse, "not too much, though."

Now he was alone, confronted by a wall of levers and panels and touch-pads.

"Ach," Scotty said, pessimistically, to himself now, "she'll probably just lock down completely." And, a little impatiently, he jabbed a few more buttons, thinking it was some sort of sequence he'd seen in the tricorder playback, wanting to try one more meaningless idea before they called it a day.

The rumbling began again, with the same programming instructions racing up the monitor screen, just as before.

"Are we movin'?"

There was no reply from above. But the rumbling grew to an intolerable roar, which Scotty could feel coming even through his floating boots, and straight up through the marrow of his bones. And this time, it continued, unstoppable.

"Message from the planet," Lt. Palmer said, as the captain continued going through logs and reports in the center of the bridge.

"On screen."

"It seems to be a personal message, from the royal princess, Captain."

If he took the call in his cabin, he'd end up spending the rest of the morning writing condolences for the families of the crewmen who died the other day in the gravity beam, which he wasn't in the mood for right now. And he was over half-way finished with the reports in his lap and, well, something just told him to stay put, for some reason.

She appeared on the bridge screen in an elegantly tailored white suit-dress, with a matching hat that was nearly spherical in shape. But strangely, she wouldn't look up at the transmission camera, or the monitor to see him. That's how he knew something was wrong.

"Allena, what is it?"

"I just wanted to… express my deepest gratitude for all of your help…"

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she said, though now her countenance sank even more, till she seemed to be struggling on the chair in her suite.

"I'll be back down in a few hours. To discuss emergency planning."

"No, that won't be necessary." And then he just sat and watched her, for what seemed like forever, till she finally looked up at him, on her own screen. And she seemed so remote, so academic in her recognition of her first great love. Except for her dark eyes, which were shining like a street after the rain. Her green skin glowed like the edges of a coppery fire.

Now Kirk was utterly mystified and vaguely fearful on a level he was quite unaccustomed to, for he realized that she was about to break up with him. And it was a sensation he had almost never felt before, in so one-sided a manner. He became aware of the formal tidiness of everyone around him on the bridge, how all of the usual movement, the swiveling of chairs, the leaning to reach for the farthest instruments on control panels, and occasional glances left or right, had all vanished. Everyone seemed to be smaller, and slightly petrified: looking down and away and wishing they could be somewhere else, rather than here to witness this painful, personal moment.

Of course, something within him wanted to cry like a child, something that brushed heavily against his heart, like a broom held by some antique god that was sweeping him aside, and he could feel its bristles against his eyes, as well, as if he'd been thoroughly shoved out of the way.

"Is Mr. Brazeltine there, with you?" He didn't mean it to sound jealous but, in an odd way, of course it did. Everything he wanted to say or do seemed ridiculous, all of a sudden, and everything she said or did seemed somehow inevitable.

"You may come down, if you wish," she said, at last. But once again, she was looking at the corner of her room, where the wall met the floor, and not up at him.

"Is it because your brother died? Because your towers are falling? Because your energy has been cut off?" There was a long pause.

"I suppose I'm just not accustomed to the wild pitch and yaw of great events," she said, trying to chuckle at herself, but half turning away, looking down, as she realized the little attempt at a well-rehearsed girlish giggle sounded too dark and strangled at this particular moment. Her beautiful neck had become exposed, and the arteries stood out, as if she'd surrendered herself to a pack of wolves.

"You're a grown woman, Allena," he said, at last, wondering if the connection would be entirely broken at any moment.

"I know," she said, not very pleased about it, though.

"From a great and long-lived civilization," he added.

"I don't care about that," she said, and started to cry openly. Below the viewscreen, the telemetry lights, blinking back and forth like the impact of a tennis ball in a furious, invisible game, lit up here and there, in a way that seemed utterly meaningless and maddening at this particular moment. When the turbolift doors opened behind him, it threw a shaft of light out against the backs of Mr. Sulu and Mr. Chekov, and he was suddenly embarrassed again. A yeoman appeared with more reports, and waited at his side, utterly unaware of the tension of the moment.

"We have to find a way to keep everything from freezing," he said, feeling sickened by the inevitable romantic metaphor.

"I'm sure everything will be fine," she said, at last, taking a deep breath of air. "After all, our scientists are terribly clever." But she raised a white-gloved hand now, and closed the top of her white jacket.

"I'll be down again in a few hours," he said again, feeling the entire pressure of Starfleet and the Federation, in the presence of the bright-faced young yeoman at his side, eagerly awaiting his signature on the wedge-pad she held out, and then let fall quietly to her side.

"I know," Allena said, and then the screen rippled and nearly went blank, before revealing the planet and the horrible dark patch where the moon had grazed against it. Nearly the whole hemisphere around it had gone murky with clouds. And the wounded moon had gone round to the other side.

He couldn't feel his arms, as he took the reports and signed them, watching his hand scribble his own signature before giving it back to the girl in the blue miniskirt at his side: the only person on deck who seemed to resemble anything like a proper recruiting poster at the moment. And then she marched away, as he fought to dispel a dark cloud from enveloping him now.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he got up and went down to sickbay. Dr. McCoy, quite reliably, was working at his little desk, under the watchful gaze of a shelf full of bleached alien skulls, neatly arranged behind a sliding glass panel.

"I may be ready for those shots now," Kirk said quietly, as Nurse Chapel thoughtfully retreated to the next room.

If he expected Dr. McCoy to look relieved or to slap down his writing stick and slap his hands together in some decisive moment, the captain was a little surprised. Leonard McCoy did neither, but regarded his friend with a kind of stunned, saddened amazement.

"Jim, I don't think I could do that."

"Why not?"

The doctor shrugged his shoulders, and almost ducked his head down, as if he were avoiding a headache that swung toward him like a wrecking ball.

"Jim," the doctor said, and then stopped. Then, still seeming distracted, he made a little half-gesture toward a plain chair on the other side of the desk. The sound of the engines humming, and the air sighing through the overhead vents, and the distant chatter of voices all seemed to cancel each other out.

"These people, even Allena, the girl down there," McCoy said, folding his hands together and resting his chin on top, as his eyes wandered from blank wall, to computer screen, to a patch of the deck just beyond Kirk's boots. "They don't struggle anymore; except to keep things the same. And we all know that's not the way the Universe works. The minute your body stops struggling to stay alive, something in your brain… is uneasy. I don't want to say they're 'evil.' But maybe there's something essentially wrong with their success."

"Then I'm so glad I got dumped just now," Kirk said, in whimsy without smiling.

McCoy searched his features for a moment, before putting his own hands in his lap, and leaning back a bit.

"Jim, we'll be moving on soon. You stopped these people from hijacking innocent ships and sucking their power dry, to support some ridiculously high standard of living. If their cities lie in ruins, it's simple justice."

"Bones, she's so wonderful."

"Hm."

"And if they had warp-drive of their own, they'd probably be no worse than we are," Kirk supposed.

"And," McCoy nodded, "if we didn't have it, we'd be just like our great-great-grandfathers, pumping oil out of faraway deserts, and bribing dictators, who crush rebellion. Till rebellion crushes them."

"Oil runs out."

"But not ambition," McCoy said.

Now, both men sat in silence, and Nurse Chapel strode purposefully through again, scooping up a little stack of memory plaques from a computer station at the other end of the office, and then bustling out again.

"Did you know their people just gradually fall apart?" Now it was Jim Kirk, suddenly dispensing medical information.

"Everybody falls apart, Jim."

"No, I mean, the old men: they lose a leg, or both, and just gradually they're gone, bit by bit. Till the last of Uncle Ezra just gets lost under the couch, I suppose."

McCoy resisted the impulse to chide his captain. He could hear Allena's style of speech coming out of Kirk's mouth, and it bothered him. Though what a young man or woman didn't know about hospitals and geriatrics was, of course, their own business. Finally, Kirk looked at McCoy, as a flint might look to a match, waiting for some kind of spark.

"Jim," McCoy repeated, "we'll be moving on, soon. Somebody will catch a disease, or somebody will go crazy, and, who knows, somebody might even die. But it won't change the essential nature of any of the people living down there—on any of these planets. You and I, we fly around in a big tin can, and if something goes wrong, the tin can scoops us up, and we move on. And if something goes wrong with the tin can, another tin can comes along and fixes things. And we move on."

Now Jim Kirk's eyes drifted away, to study the empty eye sockets inside the skulls in the cabinet on one wall, each resting in perfect indifference, and each seeming fearsome, stripped of its natural padding and color.

"But the rest of the galaxy," McCoy sighed, "they pile up some credits, they apply to get a world of their own, full of ideals and good intentions. But the hard work is more than tilling fields and keeping livestock and staying alive. The hard work is… moving on."

"And she knows I'll be moving on."

"Of course. She's a fool if she doesn't." And when Kirk's eyes finally met the doctor's, it was clear the same statement applied to him, too.

"Yes or no, Bones," Kirk said, slapping his hand lightly on his own black trousers. "In the Federation or not," he added, as a clarification.

"You're asking me?"

"I'd be a fool if I didn't," Kirk said, as lightly as he could manage.

"I'd say yes: if only to keep them from doing worse to the next ship that passes by. And to keep innocent people down there from complete and utter destruction."

"They are their own worst enemies," the captain admitted.

"Well, I guess we're stuck here, until some accommodation can be reached," McCoy said, still strangely upbeat about the whole thing.

"Do you actually get pleasure out of my romantic misadventures, Bones?" Kirk's initial surprise had turned to haughty comedy.

"As a matter of fact, I do. The wind blows, the sail stretches out like a young man's chest, going into battle. The wind stops, and the young man slows, and everything seems to pass him by. Till the wind comes up again."

Kirk shook his head, and silently beseeched the heavens to relieve him of this poetic wisdom.

"Haven't heard from Spock, or Scotty, have we?" McCoy was now fully intent on his little work screen.

"No. I'm afraid it would tip them off," Kirk said, frustrated again, thinking of the danger of sneaking up on a venal, wounded empire, as his science officer and chief engineer were doing, right now.

The little boatswain's whistle sounded politely in McCoy's computer. He touched a lighted oval switch. "Sickbay."

"Doctor," Palmer's voice came soothingly, "message for the captain."

"Go ahead," Kirk said, sitting up straighter now.

"Message from the princess Allena, sir: requesting you for dinner at your convenience."

Kirk nodded as if he'd expected just such a thing though, of course, he hadn't. "Acknowledged. Kirk out."

He got up, and walked to the automatic doors to the corridor.

"Wind comes up…" McCoy said quietly, with a smile, and returned to his medical record keeping.

Jim Kirk stepped into a turbolift a few moments later, standing next to helmsman Pavel Chekov. After exchanging familiar nods and polite, vague smiles, Chekov spoke, as the lift rose up to the bridge.

"Forgive me for asking, Keptin," he began, "but are you still… romantically involved… with the lady on the planet?"

Kirk shrugged and raised his eyebrows at the unexpectedly personal question, and his own inability to answer the question with any degree of certainty.

"I'm not sure."

Chekov nodded, staring off into space, though that dimension was somewhat confined by the capsule wall. "If you don't know, then probably you are. It is the nature of women," he insisted, with confident reassurance.

"How did you hear about this?"

The doors to the bridge opened up, and Chekov ducked his head toward Kirk's shoulder. "I vas on the bridge, then I was down below decks. Then, here I am again!" It was all the explanation either officer required. It wasn't that big a ship, Kirk supposed.

They stepped forward and Kirk took the block-shaped captain's chair, swiveling casually in one direction, and then the other, his recent heartbreak quite forgotten, though his eyes lingered for a moment on the glowing, cracking moon, rising around the far side of the planet. Chekov relieved the ensign at the helm.

"Captain!" It was Mr. Sulu.

"On screen."

The orbital view of the planet shimmered and faded, as if a wave of water were had washed it away. Then the crew on the bridge gazed at something like an enormous ruddy dust storm on the planet, from some much lower vantage point below: an impenetrable cloud, with tendrils of moon dust leading out from the slow-moving wave.

And there, from the impenetrable dust cloud, came smoldering tall banks of lights. They seemed for a moment like some hellish vision of the Mahlons, emerging from their own underworld, in a vengeful return. But it was the floating towers themselves, coming out of the choking blanket that had covered most of the northern hemisphere, and the old realm. Slowly, each tower gradually became clearer on the viewscreen: first as a faint glow, then a dream-like grid of warm colored lights, and finally as a recognizable building: each emerging like wanderers in the desert, one by one.

Kirk shook his head at the pure determination of this world to go its own way. Then he reached out for a wedge-pad. Magically, a yeoman appeared at his elbow and presented the miniature writing desk. And he was finally getting down to the business of writing death-letters to the families of the men and women who'd lost their lives at the plasma harvest.

He tapped around on the writing screen with his finger till he'd found the list of those who died, and called up a photo and service record of each man or woman, who'd made their own final voyage under his command. He began imagining himself standing before a line of officers. And instead of giving them medals, he was sweeping each one up in his hands like brittle sandcastles, till the sand from each drained into the long sleeves of his own tunic, and into his chest, and his heart was crushed by the weight.

Three were from Earth, and two were from Rigel. One was from little colony outposts, scrambling from one to another till she managed to get into Starfleet, and the last was evidently one of the clones of some much-admired scientist. So, this was that great soul's step-fate, unless someone deemed he'd live again, if the preserved body were still viable for further cloning. Re-born to space, died again to space: perhaps to live again and again.

Did he have someone to write to, about this young man's death? There was a scientific colony to contact, and Kirk made a note to preserve the remains. Naturally, when he sighed quietly to himself, he glanced up to see the great towers emerging continuously, one after another, from the wall of billowing dust along the equator, first like tall heaps of embers, gradually coming into focus through the dust storm.

"That's what you died for, son," the captain muttered. The young yeoman next to him was startled, but covered her little jump with a bow of the head, though he doubted she'd heard his words exactly. He paused to imagine the fame of the cloned boy's progenitor. Not to mention the quirky reverence with which a few microscopic cells were turned into a baby, and finally, a man. There must have been the extravagance of education and the usual ascension to the Academy, and the twist of fate that placed that re-incarnated explorer on the Enterprise, the flagship of the fleet. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble, just to have that boy choke to death on his own blood.

He tried to clear his head of all of that, and write the details of the crewman's death as nobly as he could, with an understanding of his borrowed life. And then, most painfully, to imagine and explain how, working together, in the smallest agonizing steps, the whole crew had managed to secure freedom for those who survived. And how, in duty, he played as much a role as any man inching their ship free.

And yet, when someone got the news, five thousand light-years from here, they'd need something more than just a terse little telegram. He wrote, furiously, and with too much force, then going back to streamline his stoic poetry as best as he could. He knew he was passionate by nature, and that people who knew him tended to smile whenever he'd start "giving a speech," but there were times when nothing else would do.

And in another hour or maybe two, Jim Kirk would be sitting in one of those great floating towers, as they ran away from the choking dust, into clear skies, with deserts or unlikely shimmering oceans below.

He felt very still and very tired after writing. And when he tried to focus his eyes again, looking up at last, the blinking lights, gold and green all around him in the curve of the bridge, had become like an unbearably grand set of laurel leaves that stretched much too wide to be carried on his own head. And then, the illusion went away, as his eyes regained their perspective.

Once again, he began to hear the distant chatter of reports filtered into the bridge stations, and the computer voices and the endless call-and-response affirmations of believing man could fly through empty space in a shirtsleeve environment, if he just managed every second properly. But, for just a fraction of a moment, he didn't believe it at all.

He lifted the writing pad off his lap and held it out to his left and, of course, a yeoman took it to be put into the ship's computer and sent off by subspace transmission, through some ridiculously convoluted route around the barrier of black holes, so that seven mothers in seven homes on Earth and Rigel and far-flung colonies could have their lives pinched off and suddenly segmented like sausages, into "before" the news, and "after."

And one little science lab would get the news, and perhaps remorse would be put away in a file somewhere, and scientific detachment would wick remorse away like water in the driest desert air. And then each family would go through the whole painful realization again, some weeks or months later, when the physical remains arrived. But the thought that anyone, even a scientist, might want to put themselves through all of the trouble all over again seemed too much to bear.

He imagined the Enterprise's powerful phaser banks sending vicious blue-white streams of fire down on the planet below, and its self-important towers twisting and sending wreckage billowing downward like feathers from a pillow, high above the six-sided oceans. One by one, he could picture trails of smoke and fire and… well, what kind of dinner chat would that be, when he met the princess in an hour or so?

Then he remembered Spock and Scotty, each one crawling along toward an unlikely rendezvous with some long-gone, probably long-dead, vanquished foe: an enemy that had probably been crushed down to a Plank's length on the surface of one or two of the dead stars at the edge of the local reality, decades ago. But he was at least fairly certain neither of his friends would end up like that. Just as he was fairly certain he would eventually walk out of this mess himself, at least half-alive.

Chapter Eleven

He didn't really notice her newest, extravagant dress, and he tried not to acknowledge her luminous eyes, and he very nearly found her hairdo to be ridiculous, as they lightly embraced an hour later.

"What's wrong," she would ask him, any minute now, and he'd have to explain about the pile of death-letters he'd just written that afternoon. And then she'd express her remorse, mixed up with her own sense of helplessness, and he'd just have to admit that she was a victim of circumstances, and so on and so forth. It was the least carefree "carefree romance" he could ever remember.

So, he tried to get ahead of all of that, and just be the "young captain," or rather, the youngest starship captain, which was supposed to be several orders of magnitude sexier, of course. And still, phaser-fire raced across his brain. It was threatening to become one of those Jane Austen moments, where the man was stiff and distracted, and the young woman would soon begin feeling like she was dealing with a moody but powerful little boy.

"I'm not sure what we're supposed to be doing here, together," Kirk had to admit, as she drifted up behind him at a wall of windows, though she still hadn't asked what was troubling him. Below was a whole new vista: canyons and mesas and a series of dark green splotches, oases that seemed to follow a river out to their left. Back out to the right, now a hundred kilometers or more distant, the weird wall of dusty clouds loomed to the north. The little islands of green would be swallowed up before the night was done, he realized. A shimmering artificial ocean had nearly passed out of sight below them, and the white sailboats near the southern-most edge of it raced along silently, as if fleeing the looming orange storm.

"Oh, I don't know," she admitted, glumly, leaning her head against his arm now, in weary, comical resignation, finally (after some effort) lacing her cool fingers into his warm hand. "Half my uncles think you should be put to death, and half of them think we should get married right away, or something. It's not very helpful, when all old men think your life is so simple."

"And what do you want?"

"Does it even matter?" she asked, her face rubbing across his shoulder again, looking back into the royal suite. "You'll be gone in a few days or a few weeks. That makes the part of me that loves you want to strangle you. And then I feel guilty, and then I feel mad for feeling guilty. You see? Time makes everything we say or do or think into a kind of reprehensible lie."

At that, he could only smile, for it was the first time a woman had ever let a sentimental, roguish man off the hook so easily. "So much for the old men, and one young woman. But what about your maid? What do the old women think?"

"Oh, don't even ask about that. She'd marry you herself, in a hearts' beat."

"We say 'heartbeat.'"

"Well, maybe, if you only have one heart. I suppose life would be much simpler then, too. You'd never have to argue with yourself, over what you wanted, or didn't want."

Now he really did smile, and finally turned to look at her, though it rankled his sense of duty, slightly, and the gold braid at his collar chafed his neck. Orions had two hearts, too, though it always seemed overly clever to him.

"We have two minds," he admitted, after a moment.

"You mean, two minds, between us? That may be the nicest thing a man's ever said to me," she said, suddenly quite put-off the idea of men altogether, when she considered them as one large group.

"No, two halves to our—human—minds, each."

"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry," she said, changing her mind and caressing his back. "How confusing for you! You must find yourself always getting stuck in doorways and lingering over salad forks and dessert spoons all the time. It's a wonder you ever got out into space at all!"

"Look who's talking," he said, his human pride slipping out for a moment.

"Well, we are out in space! A long way from where we started," she insisted. "We just couldn't stand to be where we were. And we couldn't bear to leave our old world behind. How hearts-less would that be?"

"Don't give it a second thought," he said, as they truly embraced, for the first time in about a million years.

It wasn't solving anything, of course, but it was soothing to hold her, and to feel her trying to scoop up the bulk of his shoulders in her own arms. And yet, when he looked up, he could see the ruined atmosphere in the north, following them as the royal tower flew south.

Finally, when he felt better—or, felt better about Allena—he drew away slightly, though their hands were still together.

"How many people do you have on this planet," he wondered.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, suddenly plunged against the shoals of mathematics. "Three hundred million? People keep popping out at a remarkable rate, it's hard to keep track."

That was a hopelessly large number, and far more than the Enterprise could ever hope to save, of course.

"Care to try for three hundred million and one?" she smiled with a naughty twinkle in her eye.

"What is it about the seriousness of men," he said, ironically, "that always brings out the animal in women?"

"Is that really the way it is, all around the galaxy?" There was a pause as she gave up on trying to encompass his shoulders, and just playfully wrapped her arms around his neck.

"I'm still… collecting data."

"Well," she sighed, "as long as it's in the interests of science."

But as soon as they'd come together, close as petals in a bud, Jim Kirk began pulling back, and gently pried her arms off of him, for the first time.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Look, I just can't. I'm sorry. There's too much going on, and this isn't helping any of it."

"Oh, I see."

"I mean, I'd like to, obviously," he added.

"Yes, obviously."

"But for all I know, I'll be tried as traitor when I get back to Starbase, for not putting a stop to all of this." He tugged his satin dress tunic down at the waistline, so it was smooth and taut again over his chest, and straightened his hair. In doing so, he'd worked his way over to a mirror by a chest of drawers, and after a moment, she followed.

"Well, you've certainly tried," she said, lightly pressing her breast against the back of his upper arm.

"It's time for more than trying."

"Well, like what?"

"Here's the problem," he said, turning around, and leaning on the bureau behind him. "The only way you can keep up this astonishing way of life, this grandeur, is by hijacking ships with warp drive. And I've just lost a lot of good men because of it."

"Yes, I'm very sorry about that, but—"

"But if you don't have that capability, to harvest all the plasma energy around those black holes, and all the power goes out, and the buildings come crashing down, the next thing you know, you all just freeze to death."

"Yes, I know," she said, balancing herself warily now, a little bit away from him.

"But before you all die, or burrow deep underground to save yourselves from being out in the middle of nowhere without a real sun to keep you warm, we can help you." He paused and said it again, with increased emphasis: "We can help you: we'll set up shelters and some kind of survival system. But we're taking down all the mechanisms of glory."

"But then we'd be just like anyone else," she said, with an innocence that was still somehow both charming and maddening, as she began to seem quite abandoned.

His reaction was shocking, to both of them. But her own words were like a punch in the chest to him, in some back-alley mugging in the middle of the night. So he followed his instinct.

"You are just like anyone else. Don't tell me you're better. Don't tell me you're exceptional, or that you're the New Jerusalem, or whatever you want to call it. You're pushing everyone else down, to make yourself the shining city on a hill. And now it's over. And you can put my name on it, and call me the devil, if it suits your purposes."

As he spoke, in his fury, he had charged forward toward her, and taken her up by her own narrow green shoulders in his hands, and spun her half-way around. And her own arms had come flailing up in surprise, as she twisted to get free.

"And the sooner you get it into your head," he added, not quite ready to release her, "the fewer of your own people—and mine—will die a horrible death." He could see that she was trying to put up a wall of anger and pride in her regal, yet girlish face. But all of the golden color had drained out, and her lips had parted in a word-dry attempt at a grimace or a groan.

"I think you had better go," she said at last, looking down, her voice trembling. But he was already halfway to the balcony, where the moonrise had drawn crimson shadows on the desert.

"I wish I could go, but I have a lot of work here, and I'm very far behind." He drew his communicator from the back of his belt and, in spite of his words, he was gone in a dazzle of golden light.

All she could do was sit on the bed, and stare out the window, and try not to waste her time crying.

And a few hours later, there were Enterprise crewmen down in the chilly sand, setting up tents and cables and plastic-looking tunnels, like the kind you'd see on an icy, remote moonbase. By the end of that day, a whole network of domes was constructed though, of course, far too little to support the entire population from the coming disaster.

"It seems… illogical," Mr. Spock said, as he and the old actor hovered in space, near the great black ribcage, "that an armada of demonstrably superior technology should fall at the hands of another force, much less advanced."

"Would you like me to apologize for winning?" Exmoor delivered the line with a mixture of humility and light-heartedness, as he looked up to the cockpit windows and down to the instruments at his fingertips.

"No sir," Spock continued, oblivious to the wry remark, "however, one must admit, it is equally illogical that such a superior force as the Mahlons should be driven into the fatal grasp of one of your black holes."

"They were very advanced," Exmoor said, "but I guess we just wouldn't give up. And, the thinking goes, they must have been in some kind of tactical retreat. And that one day they'll come sweeping out of the sky with a horrid vengeance."

"Indeed," Spock said, becoming less and less entranced with the entire equation. "I believe you refer to what is sometimes called a 'doomsday prophesy.'"

"Well," Exmoor said, perfectly at ease with the doubting Thomas at his side, "it's what a lot of people happen to believe: that our nature is to reach an absolute pinnacle, which some would say we've done; and that after that, one day, the towers will begin to fall. And then there'll come 'a great day of reckoning,' with all sorts of weeping and wailing," he added, letting one hand clench and then relax in an imitation of struggle and death, in the small cockpit. "So I suppose we're done with the first two, and now it's time for the reckoning!"

"And, is there a 'feelie' to correspond to this scenario?" Spock sighed, in one of the few times that he allowed his sarcasm to show so openly.

"I thought you'd never ask!" Exmoor said, oblivious to the Vulcan's withering tone, and typing away like mad into a touch-screen on the control panel.

But Mr. Spock was spared the torment of another fanciful re-telling of the collective subconscious, when a ship appeared on the monitor above the controls. The primitive sonar-like device let out a low-pitched, clumsy sounding "boo-boop!" over and over, to indicate the other vessel was slowly coming their way. Gradually the sonar blip rose on a sort of musical scale, as it became visible and grew larger.

"It's a patrol ship," Exmoor said, verifying his guess by looking up and down, between the cockpit windows and the instrumentation. "If they take us into holding, just let me do all the talking."

Spock restrained an impulse to shake his head in dismay. Even for such a devoted pacifist, he was developing a remarkably long record of arrest.

A chilly-sounding voice hailed them, and soon they were following the patrol vessel toward the ribcage which was, of course, a space-station about the size of a very large sports arena, with several attendant structures or mother-ships stationed nearby, glowing in the darkness.

When they'd docked inside, at a secondary control tower, Exmoor popped the hatch and climbed out, with Spock following close behind, through the airlock. An affable-looking commander stepped up immediately to the pneumatic doors to clasp hands with the old actor, and suddenly, from all up and down the height of the tower's stairwells and corridors, came a long cheer, as if some great victory had come, unexpectedly.

Spock looked up and down, through the echoing lattice-work of pipes and tubes and hoses, to see cheering men and women in uniform, leaning out over railings and waving and slapping hands against bulkheads and hollow ventilation tubes, creating a fearsome racket. Mr. Exmoor seemed to take it all in stride, acknowledging the thunderous ovation with a smile and a wave of his hand. The roar continued until the two men had followed the commander out of sight, into a long corridor and, finally, to a pleasant office with a thick, green glass desk and countertops, and brass lamps here and there.

"Well, you certainly require no introduction, sir," the commander said, with a big, sardonic grin, as he sat down and bid the actor and the Vulcan to sit across from him. "My name is Lysander, I'm chief of this base," he added, for Spock's benefit.

Spock looked inquiringly at Exmoor, remembering the actor's admonition, not to speak.

"Oh," the celebrity said, with a sudden start, "This is Commander Spock, science officer aboard the space-ship…"

"Enterprise," Spock completed, barely missing a beat.

"From the Union of, uh—"

"The United Federation of Planets."

"The United Federation of Planets," Exmoor recited, exactly as Spock had, as if he were being fed lines from just off-stage, and as if Mr. Lysander couldn't possibly have overheard. "From the planet…"

"Vulcan."

"Just so," Exmoor agreed, as if the whole thing had been carried off without a hitch.

"Well, a science officer may be just what we need around here," Lysander grumbled, amiably, like a poker player who might have drawn a particularly bad hand, early in the game. "Look at this," he added, turning a computer screen around to face his two visitors.

There, on the flat screen, was an Enterprise shuttlecraft, linked to a very small black space station. The visual image was very poor, grainy and distant, but easily identifiable to nearly anyone from a Federation culture. To avoid any contention, for the moment, Spock said nothing.

"It appears that one of the Mahlons old pre-war intelligence stations has been compromised by some unidentified vessel," the commander said, turning the computer screen halfway back toward himself, with a precise little jerk of his fingertips on the side of the frame. "And now it's acting all strange and funny," he added.

"In what way, sir?" It was the first time Spock had spoken without prodding.

"Well, these remote stations have been lying dormant for decades, really, after the last great war," Lysander said, with a nod to Mr. Exmoor, as if the actor himself had probably fought and won the whole thing single-handedly. "We think they're designed to detect sub-dimensional pathways between collapsed stars, where the Mahlons could still be hiding out. And we don't want to be surprised, one day, to find out we're still in the middle of a terrible old war, instead of well-into the peace."

Spock nodded. But he didn't really think a worm-hole could be toyed with so easily, or turned into a kind of battlefront-refuge for the defeated warrior. At least, not by any science he knew. The amount of energy it would take to "open" a wormhole, and the odds of surviving inside for seconds—let alone decades—made the idea seem far-fetched indeed.

"I would very much like to see the designs for one of these remote stations," Spock said.

"Well, of course, that's classified," Lysander demurred. Again, Spock nodded.

"And," the Vulcan asked, politely, "you're quite sure this enemy of yours still exists out there, somewhere."

"In a way," Lysander admitted, "our whole existence is built upon that very idea. Much of our technology came from their conquered bases, and captured ships, and abandoned world. I suppose because all of that still seems to work, the Mahlons live on in our own memory as the victors."

And from that, Spock began to surmise, there was a kind of "survivor's guilt" at work, here: and no matter how slight the possibility might seem, they clung to it, and every important decision now stemmed from it. And so, the whole psychology of the victors had become the way of a desperate killer on the run, and in a way, became the ultimate defeat.

"Fascinating," Spock said, at last, with a kind of pitying chill in his voice.

"I beg your pardon?" Lysander demanded, suddenly shaken and offended, at being startled from his own reverie. Spock quickly changed the subject.

"What danger could that pose," he wondered, looking across Lysander's desk, at the image on the screen: the Enterprise shuttlecraft, and the strange folded-wing, bat-shaped outpost.

"Well, at minimum, an alien vessel could damage the Mahlon station beyond the point of repair. At maximum…" And now, in what seemed an utterly stagey and contrived manner, Lysander (a man of otherwise impeccable military bearing) slowly glanced over at Exmoor, with a dark expression.

"At maximum, we fear, it could signal them to come out from their refuge and prison."

At this, Spock actually smiled a very tiny bit, in outright disbelief. Neither of the other two Chilions saw it, as they both seemed to be cringing, deep inside, very slightly, and looking down in deference to some unknown power. Naturally, the Vulcan quickly extinguished his foolish little grin. He looked around the room, at the various pictures hung on its walls, celebrating great assemblies of men in uniform, and the christening of great ships, and the bright happy faces of young soldiers, some of whom, inevitably, must never have lived to see their own old age. And the Vulcan chastened himself for his microsecond's amusement at their troubles, with an almost undetectable bow of his head.

"Sir," came a voice over a little communicator-device on Lysander's shoulder.

"What is it?"

"Disturbance in tangent—tangent plane—seven-twelve-sub-four."

In his own mind, Spock had an entire map of all the possible lines connecting the string of black holes in the region though, of course, "sub-four" could be any other line that ran cross-wise through that loose, dark constellation (if he was understanding things correctly so far). But guessing which triangle of coordinates the plane consisted of was a little like trying to find a flaw in a diamond in a pool of water.

"That foreign craft?"

"I doubt it, sir."

"Go to full alert."

And almost instantly, a hard, metallic honk-honk began echoing through the ribcage station and its control towers, and Spock could see a bright, white light pulsing on and off in the corridor outside the office. Lysander rose, and so did Exmoor and Spock. Far out, beyond the observation glass, lights seemed to flicker in the distant enclosed tubes and gantries and gangways, as enlisted men and women scrambled to their posts and formations.

"Would you gentlemen care to accompany me in the main room?"

"She's got quite a mind of her own, Mr. Scott," O'Neil said, though he seemed half-amused by the reactions they were getting from the little space station their shuttle was attached to.

"Aye, lad," the chief engineer grumbled, still completely mystified. "If we say 'orange,' it's for sure she'll hear 'ostrich.'" Communicating with an actual, living, breathing life form was always easier, for some reason. Machines? They were more like the half-hidden faces of the great-great-grandsons of their designers.

"If ye can ever figure out a godforsaken alien contraption," Scotty said quietly, "you've broken every secret of who-ever built it."

"That's the engineer talking, sir," O'Neil smiled.

"Aye," Scotty agreed philosophically. "Well, it was either that, or run me uncle's bakery." But from his tone, O'Neil couldn't tell if Mr. Scott was joking or not.

Then, with predictable unpredictability, the alien switches and lights came on again, like some long-dead nerves in a hopelessly numbed arm or leg: testing itself, and gradually trying to come back to life.

"There she goes again," Scotty said, literally throwing his hands up in exasperation. He'd been trying to provoke a reaction like this all day and now he sat back doing nothing, and it decided to get all excited.

Both men looked into their tricorders to see what was going on. Schematics of flowing energy traced themselves quickly on their screens, and then some estimates of power levels and polarities and the pathways to this way and that, and up and down the length of the little facility.

"Well, maybe she's getting her orders from that big outpost," Scotty said, remembering the black ribcage, halfway across the star-cluster.

"This stuff barely corresponds to their machinery at all, though," O'Neil observed, without ever having heard the stories of the vanquished enemy, or the stolen technologies, and without ever having been to the Chilion rib-cage itself. But even the laws of overlapping and complementary technologies, and the inevitable gaps in parallel development (like mismatched holes in slices of Swiss cheese) couldn't account for all these hardware and software discrepancies.

How could they have a gravity weapon, without being able to warp the plasma discs on their own; and how could they have floating cities and power streams that flowed across light-years of distance and manipulate their own path across the stars, without ever coming up with their own faster-than-light mode of travel? (And, needless to say, how could the Federation have warp drive and no gravity beams?)

"That's a queer thing, isn't it?" And now Scotty understood, too, that he was dealing with the designs of two separate, alien cultures. For a minute, even as the instrumentation went blinking and blazing in his face, he just stopped to refresh his mind, and began sorting out everything he'd seen and thought into two different piles.

"It's a polyglot, that's for sure," the chief engineer sighed at last, resigned to the fact that he might never understand where everything came from, in this mission. Then, almost whimsically, he pushed several lighted buttons at once, but of course nothing seemed to happen. Now if Mr. Spock had done it, he wryly told himself, the whole outpost would have probably unfolded into a great papier mache Chinese dragon. But, in the hands of a mere mortal, the instruments blinked when they should have been dark, and were dark when they should have blinked. If only technology and engineering could always be straightforward and direct.

"Ye shall live in houses ye did'na build, in lands ye did'na fight for," he said at last, remembering a bit of scripture that seemed to apply to the whole "borrowed technology" problem. He drummed his fingers on his tricorder, as they floated there, squeezed into the crawl-space that blazed with alien lights all around.

And then the red alert klaxon in the shuttle overhead started whooping, and the two men climbed out of the works to have a look at the scanners up in their own craft.

"I think we'd better get a safe distance, laddy," the chief engineer said, even as O'Neil kicked the hatch shut in the floor behind him.

The same young men and women who'd been cheering Mr. Exmoor not twenty minutes earlier now hurried around the great steely control tower, up and down the exposed spiral staircase that stretched down twenty levels or more. Meanwhile, the aged actor and the Vulcan followed the station commander into a low-ceilinged control tower room, high above the great arching framework of the ribcage that spread out below, through thick windows. The last of a line of heavy battle cruisers was pulling out through what would have been the ribs' diaphragm area. The ships before her stretched out into a line, fierce engines as farewell.

Then, in what seemed like a silent salute, Lysander and Exmoor each raised heavy binoculars to their eyes to watch their warships that blasted out of sight. Men seated in front of them, in tidy white uniforms, recited telemetry in calm tones as muffled transmissions came through a speaker from the lead ships. Banks of red and blue and yellow lights glowed against the sleeves of their clean-room jumpsuits.

"Sir," Spock said, turning his attention back to the problem at hand, "is there a map showing the particular region of attack ahead?"

Lysander barely took the binoculars down from his eyes and waved his free hand toward a computer screen in the upper left of the vast, confusing console. As Spock had imagined, there was a triangle of lines highlighted, randomly seeming to connect three of the collapsed stars strewn across the Pocket. Finally, with the ships thoroughly out of sight, the commander and the old actor put down their binoculars and began looking over the shoulders of the control crew with folded arms.

"Commence firing," Lysander said flatly. From the great distance, there was nothing to see out the control tower windows. But judging from the activity on the instruments and screens below, pandemonium had instantly broken out.

"Sir: what, precisely, are you firing at?" The Vulcan could no longer restrain himself from asking.

"Suppressive fire against a possible enemy extrusion in the Pocket."

"Based on what data?"

"Our remote stations," Lysander said, appearing quite focused on the instrumentation spread out before them.

"Might I see a display of this information?"

"Korex," the commander murmured, to the operator before him. Mr. Korex glanced over his shoulder and then pressed a series of buttons, and a screen near Spock went from flashing various chopped phrases and acronyms to show (at first) a page of two columns of numbers, and then a series of three star-maps with flashing blue lines and harsh yellow numbers. Then the two columns of numbers came back up, and Spock realized he was looking at before-and-after telemetry readouts, or so it seemed. And then the maps came up again, showing what appeared to be some kind of gravitational disturbance in the region in question.

"Please pardon my uninformed observation, sir," Spock ventured, "but the remote outposts appear to be triggering these disturbances, themselves."

"That would be impossible, sir," Lysander sighed, though his eyes appeared to be checking each lighted instrument on the big panel, just in case.

Then, suddenly, Mr. Spock took in a sudden gasp of air, and his lips remained parted for a few seconds. Both Exmoor and Lysander turned to regard the antiseptic alien with some concern for his health.

"Commander, may I see a large schematic of the Pocket region, with approximate values assigned to gravitational and radiation outputs?" He had studied the region days ago, on the bridge of the Enterprise, but wanted to be absolutely sure before he spoke.

Lysander grunted in the affirmative, and the two operators in front of them worked as one, their arms overlapping now and then, to accommodate the request. One of the wide darkened windows became a viewscreen, showing the arrangement of collapsed stars, and then map-lines appeared along with more numbers, showing plunging gravity-well distortions. And two of the black holes had flashing green "poles" through them, like exaggerated "null" signs, emerging at different orientations across space.

"And may I see the attack region, please." It came up a few seconds later, a long narrow triangle. Now Spock's mind was racing, and his fingertips seemed to be typing against his thighs.

"Are you familiar, sir," the Vulcan said at last, as if he were looking across a great, fiery wasteland, from which there was no escape, "with the concept of black hole evaporation?"

At this, Lysander heaved a sigh that seemed at once relieved and derisive.

"That's just a myth," the commander said blandly, turning back to his instruments.

"Everything is a myth, sir, until it is proven."

Now, Exmoor was simultaneously disturbed and almost physically unbalanced. His hand reached out for support on one of the technicians' chair-backs, as though the weight of projected graphics and indecipherable numbers on the tower windows had become overwhelming. "What are you saying, Mr. Spock?"

"It would be impossible, under normal circumstances," the Vulcan admitted right away, "to alter the nature of a collapsed star, in any way, with our very minute resources."

There was a slight pause, when the only sounds were the buzzing of voices through speakers and the beeping of instruments. Almost as if the Chilions around him knew something they'd rather not admit.

"However," the science officer said, in a fog—as if he'd just emerged from some hallowed library and many hours of study, "by altering the smallest forces in a chain of black holes, as you are doing now, through this seemingly arbitrary bombardment," he paused to take in a small breath, "using your technology in combination with that of your long-vanished enemy, you now run a substantial risk of triggering a chain reaction, which you may be unable to stop."

"That's absurd," Lysander snorted.

"It would be, if there were fewer collapsed stars in the region, or if they were of a more uniform size and spatial distribution. As it is, in fact, they range in size from the relatively tiny, to the very large indeed. And they are, coincidentally, strewn across the region in such a way as to allow for the possibility of a mass harmonic manipulation. Your bygone enemy would have known this, sir. And those two, there and there, appear to be emitting unusually high levels of gamma radiation, suggesting some shared flaw in their event horizons. If that condition worsens, the radiation will become overwhelming, and your attack on the gravitational tangents will set them spinning like deadly pulsars. Ultimately, they could affect the entire region, including the Orion systems, possibly extending all the way to the Rigilian space-lanes, rendering them largely uninhabitable for the next ten thousand years."

Now, the two control-board operators were listening intently, their hands poised above the controls as if they were burners on a hot stove.

"And all our contradictions," Exmoor was mumbling, looking almost space-sick, staring out over the blackness, "come rushing together."

"Both of you are excused from the tower," Lysander said abruptly.

"You have to stop the attack," Exmoor said, urgently.

"Out of the question!"

"Stop the attack!" Exmoor ordered, purely (it seemed) on the strength of his own celebrity.

"Take these men in the brig at once!"

Chapter Twelve

On the bridge of the Enterprise, all eyes were turned toward the bombardment of black holes by the alien warships, nearly a light week's distant. Still, a filter on the viewscreen showed a fairly clear, computer-enhanced view of slashing gravity beams, leaping out of the noses of Chilion space-cruisers; and the occasional fusion blast that was minimized somewhat by a pop-up Filter. Not knowing of the danger of unbalancing the Pocket, Jim Kirk watched with a mixture of annoyance and concern.

"Any response to our hail, Uhura?"

"No sir. Mr. Scott is not answering."

"And no word from Spock."

"No sir." The chief of communications said with a kind of brisk certainty, stretching an arm across her console, checking the farthest signals.

Down on the rogue planet, his crewmen were still assembling emergency domes in the desert, below the floating towers. The moon was being fed with plasma rays from orbiting batteries, and seemed to be holding together as expected.

"Keptin," came the Russian helmsman's voice, from the science station.

"Report, Mr. Chekov," Kirk asked, not taking his eyes from the distant battle against great, invisible stars.

"Scans show something beneath the ocean beds, on the planet below."

Of course, this was completely unexpected as, seemingly, the whole planet was battening-down for a deep freeze as well as a hopelessly impoverished future. Jim Kirk leaned out of the command chair and climbed up to look over the Russian's shoulder.

"There, sir—we never checked, before the moon's collision. But here and here: under the ocean beds, some kind of propulsion system, sealed up till now." His tone betrayed his disbelief.

"Must have been used," Kirk pondered, "decades ago, to break out of orbit, when they first left their home system."

"I suppose," Chekov said, still looking startled, not to have found the hidden rockets before.

"They're full of… surprises," Kirk nodded, warily. Slowly, he turned to regard the rest of the stations around the bridge, and tugged at the hem of his long-sleeved gold tunic.

"Life sciences," he said, after a minute, walking around the front of the command deck, to the station at the "eleven o'clock" position in the sweeping ring of computer lights and screens.

"We're continuing to assemble emergency shelters, Captain," Lt. Tracy nodded, though he looked like he'd been given an impossible assignment.

"What is it, Tracy?"

"You know, sir, there are underground caverns, too. They could house… a million down there."

"I know," Kirk mumbled. He couldn't help but remember Allena's comment about seismic disruptions down there, when they'd first met. It seemed like a thousand years ago.

"I'll tag on to the Science Department computers and try to figure something out," Tracy nodded.

"That's fine." He walked back down to the captain's seat to watch the strange bombardment of empty space, like a brutish version of fireworks on the fourth of July.

"Shuttle craft approaching, requesting access to shuttle bay, sir," Uhura announced, with some satisfaction, over his left shoulder.

"Bring her in. Open a channel, Lieutenant."

"Channel open, sir."

"Mr. Scott," Kirk said, appraisingly, as if he were trying to put the older man on the spot, "you came back just when things were getting interesting out there!"

"Rough weather for this little boat, Captain," the chief engineer chuckled, through the intercom. He sounded as if he were genially refusing to be baited by the boy-engineer-made-good. You could hear the slow rumbling through the ship, to announce that the great curtain-like doors of the shuttle-bay were coming open below decks.

"Kirk out," the captain smiled.

"Captain," Sulu's voice came, carrying a warning.

"What is it?"

The navigator, seated just ahead and to Kirk's left, tried to focus the long-range sensors on the helm controls, and the viewscreen shimmered before zooming in on one of the tiny, deep space stations, like the one Mr. Scott and Mr. O'Neil had been tinkering with all day. The probe-like device was glowing fiercely, and seemed to be finding a new axis point, rotating this way and that, on the fringe of the great shelling exercise.

Kirk had to admire the fact that Sulu saw it at all, out there, in the midst of all those glorious explosions. Even the skin of the station seemed to be lit up, reflecting the fusion blasts.

"Diggin' their way to China, are they?" Scotty asked, after he stepped out of the turbolift behind the captain, to likewise watch the relentless barrage, burrowing deep into nowhere. The screen had just re-focused on the single outpost, but an occasional wash of light still crashed across the screen, from the upper and lower left.

"It doesn't seem like the usual training exercise," Kirk said, glancing back toward Mr. Scott.

"And will ye look at that," Scotty smiled cynically, fixing his squinting eyes on the distant, mysterious probe. "Now she wakes up, and does as she pleases." He was still shaking his head over a wasted day's effort, as he stepped over to the engineering station to relieve a young lieutenant.

"You know," Kirk said, "none of that was made by these people." In his mind, he was referring to the odd little station: maneuvering slightly, this way and that, like a dart in the hand of a very careful thrower.

"Aye, and don't I know it. Could'a been made by elves and leprechauns for all the sense inside."

There was a long pause while everyone simply watched, and double-checked their instruments.

"Shield status," Kirk wondered, aloud.

"Shields available at 100%, Keptin."

"Go to yellow alert." He almost felt foolish saying it, but it seemed a natural reaction to the brilliant barrage.

"Aye, Captain," Uhura said, behind him, with an equal measure of calm deliberation. "All decks: go to yellow alert."

"What's it aiming at?" Kirk said at last, leaning forward.

Sulu slid his fingertips over one touch-pad, and the long-range scan backed out, re-focusing toward the approximate direction of the object. Then, after some jiggling and juggling of touch-pads, the navigator brought up a nice image of the object, at the bottom right of the screen. And nothing but a deep expanse of stars (and the occasional fusion blast) stretched out beyond. One more adjustment, carefully, and Mr. Sulu appeared to be developing a headache from sheer concentration.

"Magnifying," he said. The object slipped out of view, to the lower right, and stars flew by, following an imaginary line from the cannon tip.

"Sensors show a black hole," Chekov explained, from the science station, though he sounded puzzled. "Werry unremarkable, Keptin."

Kirk just shook his head. Space was full of little diversions like this—though most of them didn't involve a huge, random military assault.

"They have the power," Kirk calculated out loud, "to manipulate, and focus, and maybe even… amplify gravity. Or, their old enemy does… did…" He shook his head. "And gravity, in our universe, is a million, billion, billion, billion… billion times weaker than electro-magnetism, and the 'weak force,' which governs radioactive decay, and the 'strong force,' which holds particles together."

The captain was becoming oddly emphatic, as he walked himself all the way through introductory physics again, for some perspective. "All of which make up our present reality. But all it takes to cancel-out the gravitational force of an entire planet— is one small magnet holding on to something as small as a coin." And all of that made him realize what a terrible weapon gravity could be, when fully visited, in equal measure, upon the other forces of the Universe.

Chekov touched a button on the helm, and the viewscreen picture washed away: from the deep regions of space, to show that odd, brightly-lit outpost again, that seemed to be at the center of their present concerns.

"There's also that old theory," Scotty tossed in, "that you could 'borrow' gravity from another universe: one where the forces are more in balance. Though it sounds insane, I grant ye."

"I know," Kirk said, very quietly. "But… why?"

"Why not borrow more electro-magnetism," Sulu wondered.

"Because," Kirk realized, with sudden clarity, "no one else in the galaxy has a gravity-based technology—or the means to fight it." It was a perfect solution for any battlefield stand-off, if it was as possible as it suddenly seemed.

"No one had it but the Mahlons—and they're long gone," Scotty replied, having examined their machinery close up.

"As far as we know," Kirk finally said. But the image on the screen, of the strange space outpost, so quiet, and yet glowing amidst all the explosions, still seemed foreign to the rest of the ships and to whatever strategy they… thought they were following.

"They told me," Kirk said, remembering Brazeltine's words, "they used these outposts to 'pluck the strings' between black holes, to determine the… supposed activity of the Mahlons. Is it possible they were exaggerating? That Chilion merely collected data from these little stations whenever they turned themselves on, that they were really automatic? Or," and now he had to use Scotty's 'ghost' analogy, "that the Mahlons are somehow running them from… beyond the Universe?" He offered a little smile at that, but somehow, by reflection, it was only pale on the chief engineer's face.

"I don't care what they say, I don't think the Chilions are capable of running that outpost, Captain," was Scotty's flat statement, as he turned to regard the viewscreen again. "If ye'll excuse a bit of my own vanity."

"Agreed," Kirk said.

"Keptin," Chekov said, with alarmed suspicion, "I think she may be preparing to fire."

"As long as she's not firing at us, Lieutenant," Kirk said. But what all of this was leading up to was still a mystery.

"Captain," Scotty said, leaning forward at the captain's left, with his elbows on his knees. "I know it dinna make sense, but… I can't help but feel like all this happened because we broke into that other gizmo in the first place."

This time, Kirk smiled at the chief engineer's capacity for guilt, over some utterly forgotten, alien weapon, out in the middle of nowhere.

"But at least ye might say," Scotty continued, with a quiet urgency, "all that firepower came after the damned thing came to life. But how could we have triggered it, me and Mr. O'Neil, in the shuttle?"

"Sensors show," Chekov said, at last, "a beam of—some kind—projecting out toward the targeted singularity, Keptin."

"Analysis?"

"It is almost a 'null space,' sir, coming out of the device," the helmsman said, looking in to a scanner hood up at the science station. "And if there's anything else, our own sensors are not equipped to recognize it, sir." Chekov's vowels had all the usual Russian accents.

"A 'null space,'" Kirk repeated, folding his arms over his chest in puzzlement. "For what? Something from… outside the Universe?" He felt like an idiot for saying it, but there it was.

Chekov could only raise his shoulders in mystification. He and Kirk were both wishing the science officer, Mr. Spock, were back aboard. And all the while, the Chilion warships continued their inexplicable barrage, sending flashes of light across the field of view, like a brutal thunderstorm.

"Readings on the singularity," Kirk said, at last. If they couldn't figure out what was happening with the alien contraption, maybe, at least, he could find what it was doing to its apparent target. There was a shocked sound from up at the science station.

"Ah!" Chekov said, as if he were suddenly a two-year old boy again, reaching out for something at Mr. Spock's console, as if he were a child trying to draw a parent's attention. Kirk looked up, and then hurried to Chekov's side. Both men, in their gold shirts, were staring down into the blue light of the computer hood. The whites of Kirk's eyes, and even the hazel irises reflected the blue light, till they shone like cold, stony springs: craggy limestone, stained bronze with minerals; like frigid blue water, that seemed to pour out of the depths.

"Well, what now?" It was the inevitable question, asked by Mr. Exmoor this time, as he sat with Spock in a sound-proofed jail cell in the military space station.

"We wait, sir. And they either follow my recommendation, or not."

"About destroying their own space outpost?" Exmoor sighed, where he sat, against one blank wall, and shook his head. "They won't do it."

"Indeed," Spock nodded, acknowledging a kind of futility in his approach, though he still hadn't figured out what set people against his reasoning so easily, and so powerfully. Logic should have had precisely the opposite effect, even on non-Vulcans.

"Have you ever thought of ingratiating yourself," Exmoor wondered, "or flattering people, before trying to tell them what to do?"

Both of Spock's dark eyebrows went up his forehead at this, as if pure rationality and clear, life-saving advice were suddenly outrageous things that might have to be sugar-coated before any competent commander could be forced to listen. If this particular Starfleet commander himself were capable of feeling offended right now…

"I'm not trying to offend you," Exmoor insisted suddenly, as if the Vulcan's look of surprise was all the indication the old actor required, to see straight into his mind.

Spock's eyebrows crept up once more: a single, impossible, millimeter higher.

"Oh, forget it," Exmoor sighed, rattling his hands out over the edge from his knees, where his wrists were propped up, as he sat against the wall, on the floor.

"No, please continue," Spock said, realizing he might collect some valuable insight.

"Forget it. I shouldn't give advice to middle-aged men," Exmoor sighed, being well-past his own middle-years himself.

"Indeed?" Spock looked off to the little glass window in the thick metal door, and out into the cell-block corridor beyond. Occasionally, he could see the top of a guard's head, as he passed by. But finally, Exmoor just couldn't bear the silence any longer.

"All you younger guys want to hear is, 'you're right, you're absolutely right—how can anyone dispute the absolute perfection of your righty-right-rightness?'" The old actor shook his head and stared down at his designer slacks and sporty, hand-made shoes.

"I believe you are suggesting," the Vulcan said, slowly piecing it together, "that Vulcans may seem guilty of pride, to some people, in their single-minded devotion to logic."

Exmoor had to look twice at Spock, after that remark, as it seemed utterly devoid of any intentional irony.

"I suppose that would be illogical," Exmoor sighed.

"Indeed."

A few minutes later, there was a little fluttering noise at the doorway, as if a key-card were being swiped through an electronic lock, and then a muffled "click" as the cell door was being opened. Out in the corridor stood the base commander, Mr. Lysander.

"I'm afraid there've been some rather unusual developments," he said, ruefully. "Won't you gentlemen join me?" Even as he spoke the last words, though, he was already on the move and marching down the hall.

"May I enquire," Spock said, adopting as deferential a tone as he could manage, "as to the nature of these developments?" Lysander and an adjutant were already waiting in an elevator capsule at the end of the little cellblock, as Spock and Exmoor hurried to catch up.

"Difficult to say. Seems the 'event horizons' around two of our singularities are, in fact, evaporating. Quite rapidly." Lysander straightened his back till his uniformed belly thrust forward like a rooster's chest.

Spock nodded, as it was in confirmation of his recent theory. And Lysander, who had been taking such pains to be diplomatic since he released them from their cell, already seemed annoyed by this Vulcan nodding, looking away and emitting an aggrieved little snort. Exmoor nudged Spock in the ribs.

"Shocking," Spock said, on a sudden inspiration, as convincingly as possible, as if to abolish his earlier sense of mastery of the problem. But when he glanced sidelong at the actor for confirmation, Exmoor only shook his head, and the three zoomed upward through the ribcage to the main control tower.

"Are there any increased readings of gamma radiation, sir?" Now, as he asked it, Spock ducked his chin slightly and folded his hands together over his crotch. The only way he could show more submissiveness, he supposed, would be to sink down to a fetal position at the commander's feet.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. From what I understand—" Right then, the capsule door whished open and Lysander arrived on the panic-filled tower deck, with its thick glass walls on all sides. He continued his sentence as he stepped out: "—the 'event horizon' is the only thing holding over 99% of the gamma rays inside. Usually, by the time they finally struggle outward, to escape the extreme gravity well, they're just harmless, to any neighboring system, anyway. As I'm sure you know."

"Yes sir, with an horizon of appropriate depth for its mass," Spock added, careful not to upstage the testy, or perhaps just worried, commander with too much hard knowledge. Two senior Chilion officers hurried up to the commander with the latest telemetry and analysis on glass pads held out in their hands.

Meanwhile, Spock's eyes were going from one computer station to the next, all around, and Exmoor was peering at a projection on one window, at a color-enhanced view of the two of the black holes in question. Or, more precisely, the projection of their event horizons: billowing like bubbles under a child's breath, with waves of blackness rippling across its spherical, computer-enhanced surface. As the horizons continued to shrink, polar tendrils became visible, flaring out from the apparent "north" and "south."

Spock began to feel like a dog being trained to wait silently, with a biscuit on its nose, as Lysander stood poring over one report after another, on glass pads held out by his junior officers. Occasionally a subordinate would point to one figure or equation or paragraph here or there, and the commander would exhale gruffly, as if he'd either been presented with unsatisfactory reports, or perhaps as if he was putting on a show of understanding.

"All right, Mr. Spock," Lysander said, at long last. "What do you make of all this?"

The Vulcan nodded deferentially, knowing he could be back in the brig if he appeared to be threatening Lysander again, with his dire warnings.

"It appears the Mahlon technology, which you adopted, has somehow reverted, or reconstituted itself, to its original programming, after many years. It further appears, sir, they may have found a means of converting a black hole into what our science calls a 'magnetar.' A most unexpected development," he added, to avoid sounding superior—though he'd been polishing his analysis for a good half an hour already.

"Most unexpected, indeed," Lysander grumbled, trying to get rid of all the computerized glass pads at once, thrusting them upon the nearest of his lieutenants.

Now, Spock almost whispered to the commander, not wishing to infuriate him with his next input.

"Would it be possible, sir, to disable the Mahlon devices?"

There was an unendurable, glowering silence as Lysander stewed over his own miserable fate. "No, I'm afraid not. They're impervious to our fusion bombs and, as you may know, our own gravity weaponry is of Mahlon design to begin with, so seems useless against the mother technology."

"Yes, of course," the Vulcan said quietly, as if the commander had just been forced to share some very bad medical news in a very public place. "And," Spock asked, as gently as he could, "am I correct in assuming your own gravity weapons are not powerful enough to counteract the deep-space Mahlon devices?"

"Of course not," Lysander hissed, his face growing red now, at having to state the obvious—that after all these years, the Mahlons appeared to have won, at last. And that all of Chilion's glory had evaporated in a hearts-beat.

"Then, sir," Spock ventured, wondering if he was about to be shoved back to the brig, "may I suggest the entire base be moved to some more shielded location?"

"That would take weeks, or even months!"

"Then I would respectfully suggest, sir, that the process begin at once." Spock's voice had become so faint as to be almost inaudible, even to the senior officer.

"Very well," Lysander blustered, trying to remain calm, though it seemed he was angry now at his own rising panic. "Prepare to move the installation," he said loudly, surveying the pallid green complexions of his officers, all around. "Recall the fleet. We're going 'round to Proxima One."

There was a very short moment of stunned silence, and then the order was repeated into little microphones mounted at each computer station. A new, higher-pitched warning bell began to sound, as technicians and ship-handlers began to shut down the outer functions of the ribcage for transit. Gantry arms swung slowly inward, toward the main frame of the alien Starbase, and smaller ships hovering outside began flying in, to tether to the giant black "ribs" during the transit.

Reflections of distant starlight stretched and twisted along each arc of the framework, as the great space station began to turn in the darkness, like a nearly invisible distortion against the edge of the galaxy. And all around, a myriad of secondary safety lights were going out across the mooring posts. When her own rockets began to fire, driving the base away from the warships' assault, she resembled some dark plague ship: shamed and banished. The three men standing each grabbed a railing for support.

Chapter Thirteen

The Enterprise had moved to an orbit over Chilion that would keep her just below the horizon, on the far side of those developing magnetars, to where the starship seemed to circle the hot moon, which had finally rolled free of the planet.

Chilion revolved beneath them: half in dust clouds, and half in desert. And the moon, over the northern hemisphere and just off to starboard, was slowly regaining altitude. Now, along with that obvious lunar obstacle, the starship also had to try to stay clear of the invisible battery beams from nearer the Pocket, that kept the moon as warm as a miniature sun: jumping over the moon, then swinging behind, as the remnants of the harvest energies fired from one distant exchange satellite, and then another. It was an awkward situation to follow on the viewscreen, as the moon and Chilion beyond it seemed to move one way, then the other, sometimes seeming to change position as the Enterprise altered its orbit, again and again, to avoid the last of the life-giving energy beams.

Mr. Hadley was at the helm and Lt. Rhada, the sphinxlike brunette, sat next to him at the navigator's station, with Lieutenant Sulu in the captain's chair for the overnight shift. None of them looked at ease. Lt. Palmer was at the communications console, and Mr. Tracy was at engineering. And off to Sulu's right, eternally vexed, Mr. Chekov had stayed on at the science station to watch the black holes, two of them now nearly stripped of their horizons.

"Bozhemoi," Chekov muttered, rubbing his eyes before looking back into the hooded science readout again. Sulu couldn't help but smile, behind him in the center seat.

"What's that? Did you say 'all clear'," Mr. Chekov?" the lead-navigator teased

The Russian only shook his head now, and the blue light from the internal workings of the computer console shone across his eyes.

"Sensors show additional artificial input into singularities," Chekov said wearily, as if he hadn't heard Sulu's remark.

"On screen please," Sulu said, and the smile vanished from his face, as he seated himself more upright in the captain's chair. For no conscious reason, his index finger and thumb reached out for the ship-wide address button on the armrest, as if he were about to alert his fellow crewmen.

"From the same sources?" Sulu asked, as the bridge crew watched a computer-enhanced line of energy hitting one of the singularities.

"Negative, from two more devices," Chekov said, and rattled off the coordinates. The view on the big screen wavered and dissolved, and a map came up showing the two black holes, and now four computer-enhanced rays, divided between the pair of singularities: each ray coming from a different outpost, and each Mahlon outpost, widely separated from the others.

"To what effect," Sulu wondered, trying to see what might be happening now, to the black holes.

Chekov heaved a great sigh, and shook his head again. "It appears the first two beams are damping-down the horizons, and the other two, I dunno!"

"Is it changing the gamma ray output?"

"Negative," Chekov said, with a kind of resigned weariness.

"Is it altering the mass?" Sulu asked, patiently walking through the logical alternatives, as unlikely as they seemed, of course.

"Negative." Now, Chekov seemed to be waking up a bit, drawn out by the "twenty questions" nature of Sulu's calm interrogation. Then Sulu was taken up by a sudden thought:

"Computer."

The flat, metallic-sounding voice of the ship's brain replied almost at once:

"Working."

"Analyze data from last twenty-four hours, regarding the manipulation of the two singularities. Is there an equation for altering the spin or axis of a black hole?"

"Working. Spin or axis thought experiments date back to Earth year 1980 Common Era and possibly before. Regarding analysis of present conditions, past equations do not apply."

"Why not?" Sulu began to look uneasy, and folded his hands in his lap.

"No experimental analog for particular extra-spatial gravity shunts, and no rules for differently balanced gravitational realities exist from which to draw equations. Parameters must be defined to determine relative balances."

Well, that's a big help, Sulu thought, heaving a sigh. And the parameters could be wildly different between different universes. He watched the graphic map on the screen, and the rays that appeared to be piercing into the two singularities far beyond the planet.

As navigator, of course, Sulu had dodged the Enterprise around gravity hazards all the time, and some of them were extremely dynamic or unstable. And he tried to imagine how gravity might seep from one set of physical properties, or universes, to another, in such a dramatic way.

So, he thought he knew what would happen next. But until it did, he didn't want to drag the captain back up top for what may have just been a pointless interruption in his own down-time. Even then, they'd already taken every reasonable precaution and, it seemed, they were powerless to do anything more. He sank back into the blockish command chair, wondering what a dead civilization might do for an encore.

It wouldn't have mattered if Lt. Sulu had alerted the captain, because the captain was still up and watching the same computer-generated images in his quarters. There was a knock at his cabin door and, when it opened, Dr. McCoy was standing there.

"You're looking very monastic," McCoy joked, as Kirk sat at the desk in the tidy little sitting area.

"Not by choice," Kirk said, looking down again, at the screen in front of him.

"Well," the chief medical officer sighed, taking the chair across the table, "with you spending all your nights alone in your cabin, it seems like Starfleet's worries are over!"

"I'm not alone," Kirk grumbled, though he wished he were. McCoy ignored the slight, and drew closer to the table and screen.

"That's a hell of a thing," McCoy said, peering confoundedly at the little view of the two singularities, and the simulation of the invisible "rays" that were beginning to pour out of them both with more and more intensity.

"Not from our… parameters," Kirk said, glad to change the subject, using the popular term, nowadays, for alternate universes.

"Well, they have to be coming from somewhere," the doctor protested.

"They are," Kirk nodded. "From Mahlon technology. But they're pushing forces in here, we think, from some other… universe."

"Well that's just ridiculous," McCoy said, shaking his head, and looking away, toward something he could more readily believe in: a small tropical plant in a corner, a few paintings, a pair of black boots just visible at the foot of Kirk's bunk, around a room-divider. "It's like some old Indian curse, on the pioneers!"

"Maybe. But it's making the rest of us look even more ridiculous, trying to figure it out." There was a long pause.

"So, you and the princess?"

"Makes me look ridiculous, too."

"And so you're hiding out in your lair," McCoy nodded.

"Precisely," Kirk muttered, pretending to devote his full attention to the little screen.

"You're looking at those two singularities like they were some precious part of your body," McCoy said, unable to resist a smile.

"You know, I really don't think about sex all the time," Kirk fumed.

"I know. You have to… wait, I'm trying to think of something that would stop you from thinking about sex." McCoy pursed his lips.

At this Kirk finally seemed to smile, just an angstrom's worth, on one side of his mouth. Both men sat watching the little screen, bent forward as if to see some microscopic sign of hope.

"If I can't find a way out of this mess," the captain sighed, "those two might as well be my…"

"Orions!"

"Well, I was going to say my discharge papers, but—"

"No, I mean, if something's unleashed on this side of the Pocket, won't it also affect life on the other side? On the Orion side?" The conversation of a moment ago was utterly forgotten, as McCoy's eyes blazed with sudden alarm.

"We don't know what's going to happen, Doctor," Kirk said, dismissively, as if perhaps the Mahlon beams might not even be intended to wreak havoc on the Chilions, specifically, as some kind of 'vengeance from beyond.'

"But if it does," McCoy said quietly, his blue eyes narrowing, "it goes from being a question of three hundred million lives, to something on the order of thirty billion." (Counting the usual Rigilian traffic.)

Now Jim Kirk began working his jaw back and forth, as if (like Sulu) he'd developed a sudden headache.

"Bones, if you came in here to cheer me up…" He reached over to his left, and touched the oval button next to the intercom grill on the room-divider. "Bridge."

"Palmer here, Captain," the communications officer replied, through the little speaker.

"Message to Starfleet Command: Advise Orion of possible gamma ray weapon, this sector. Will attempt to… disarm. Kirk out." Reluctantly, his eyes met McCoy's, and that dark look spoke volumes about his pessimism on the subject. "And advise the Chilion high counsel that all their people should be moved underground at once."

After another moment, summoning up the usual grim resolve, he tapped the little oval button again.

"Mr. Sulu."

"Yes, sir."

"Plot a course for those Mahlon devices, get us within phaser range. Best possible speed, when ready."

"Aye, sir," the navigator said, though you could hear the hopelessness in his voice, five decks away.

And less than ten seconds later they were breaking out of orbit and the warp drive engines came booming to life: from the lowest octaves, up to a mid-range roar.

"Jim," McCoy said, as both men got up, "if Scotty couldn't figure those things out yesterday, what makes you think—"

"We're not trying to 'figure them out' anymore, Doctor," Kirk snarled, as they stepped into the usual foot-traffic in the sweeping corridor of deck five. A sort of natural path opened up around them, as McCoy tried to keep up on the way to the lift.

By the time the two senior officers emerged on the bridge, Jim Kirk had regained his temper, a bit, knowing that all starship captains have to roar like a lion, now and then—and acknowledging to himself the Mahlon devices would probably not simply burn up the moment they were hit, even by full phasers. He slipped into the center seat as Sulu was stepping forward to relieve Lt. Rhada at the helm.

"ETA, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, tugging his tunic down around his waist and settling into his chair.

"Three more minutes at warp three, Captain."

"Phasers and photon torpedoes at the ready, Mr. Hadley," Kirk said, even before Sulu had finished answering.

"Aye, sir."

"Analysis, Mr. Chekov?" The Russian turned away from the science console, to face him.

"The ewent horizons of two of the collapsed stars have virtually vanished, sir," the lieutenant said, though it came out more like "weertually wanished," as was often the case under stress.

"As you know, the size of each horizon is a function of the mass of the black hole itself. And this leads me to believe the devices are somehow changing the effective mass of the singularities inside, or shifting the outer horizons away, into different parameters in a way we do not understand, borrowing some low-gravity parameter. And all this allows for the escape of deadly levels of gamma radiation from the polar regions."

Now, Chekov sat down at the science console, and just stared at the blinking computer lights for a second. "Or," he said, with a curious expression on his face, "perhaps the Mahlon devices could even be expanding the horizons, themselves—essentially out to universal-maximum, by opening a door to another set of parameters inside, or on the edge, of each hole. This could also explain the increasing polar wobbling."

"Then why aren't we being sucked in," Kirk wondered. Still, he had to smile at the sheer audacity of the idea: an event horizon as large as the universe. It reminded him of the old concept that that everything he knew might only be the remnant of reality, already racing down the drain.

Then he remembered Allena's philosophical remark, about fleeing to religion as an escape from the modern science. And in spite of his impatient remarks before they parted, he missed her terribly all over again. What must this all mean to her, and to her world?

"It may be," Chekov said, interrupting Kirk's reverie, "the devices are triggering the expansion of the horizons, in such a way that they become less and less powerful, over distance. In any case, the gamma energy from natural evaporation inside the horizons will soon be free to lash out, unencumbered by the limiting factor of the horizons, themselves."

"This is all my fault," the doctor grumbled, standing next to the captain. "I should never have brought that derma-scanner up to begin with."

"Lesson learned, Bones," Kirk smiled, in spite of himself.

"Captain," Sulu called out.

"On screen."

"It's a chain reaction. They're beginning to tumble, sir," the navigator warned, touching a few lighted pads on the wide helm control board. The picture of one of the Mahlon devices dissolved away to show a graphic chart of one of the targeted black holes (which, in reality, was quite invisible), and the computer-enhanced view of gamma rays pouring out of its north and south poles across the region: wobbling, invisible beams, enhanced to a bright green, going around in wider and wider circles like the a child's spinning top, about to topple over. Like three great systems all around: Chilion, Orion, and Rigel too.

"Go to red alert," Kirk said, calmly. The red-lit panels flared on and off, to fore and aft on the bridge. About a minute later, the accompanying klaxon silenced itself; though the red lights kept flashing.

"We may be too late," the captain said, to no one in particular.

"Drop to sub-light; keep clear of those beams," he added, a few moments later. "Target remote devices, fire when ready."

Now, Sulu switched the main viewscreen back to the nearest Mahlon outpost, and the sound of the warp drive hummed down like a monstrous dynamo, till it faded away. The blue fire of the phasers leapt out from beneath the main saucer section for several seconds, with no visible effect on the alien artifact.

"Fire again."

Another blazing stream of nearly white light shot out into the depths, but on the screen the device seemed untouched behind the blast wave that crashed against its surface.

Kirk tilted his head in grudging admiration. "Fire photon torpedoes when ready."

"Fire torpedoes," Hadley confirmed, at Sulu's side. Two pair of green blobs shot out, in the same direction as the phasers had gone. With each pair of blobs, there came a sound like the cables of an immense suspension bridge being struck by God's hammer. But the blobs of light flew off into the darkness with equally little effect.

Well, Kirk thought, at least they're not firing back.

Then, of course, the next thing he knew was that he was picking himself up off the deck, as McCoy rolled off the captain's stomach. He thought he remembered a sound like a huge ocean wave crashing down on him, but couldn't be sure.

"Gamma ray, Keptin," Chekov said, pulling himself up, and shaking his head, before peering down into the science station's hooded readouts.

"Shields holding," Scotty announced, over Kirk's shoulder, as he climbed into his seat again. "No injuries to report."

"Well," McCoy said, shaking off the effects of the blast, "I'd better get down to sickbay." He loped up into the turbolift and the red doors snapped shut behind him.

Another eerily deafening blow struck the Enterprise, almost too loud to register on the human ear.

"Plot a course around those rays, Mr. Sulu," Kirk insisted.

"Sorry, Captain," the navigator said, seeming incapable of annoyance. "Those last few caught me by surprise."

"Understood," Kirk said. "Viewscreen minus 100," he added.

The view ahead widened-out until both computer-enhanced black holes had come into view, and their sickly polar rays whipped around in every direction, bending hypnotically whenever they flashed too close to the other singularities in the Pocket. The overall impression was of a pair of invisible, dancing swordsmen, with an impossibly long green scimitar in each arm. As the Enterprise wove around the reckless rays, Sulu kept her within phaser range of the Mahlon outposts. The whole ship dove and wheeled, like a ship in a storm.

"This is pointless," Kirk sighed, at last. "Get us back to Chilion, best speed."

"Aye, sir," the navigator nodded, sighing with relief. "It may be impulse-power all the way, for tighter control."

A moment later, they changed heading and the view of the wild, knuckleball-singularities and their chaotic rays was swept behind them. Still, the stars swam this way and that, as the Enterprise skirted the beams that flared out from the Pocket in every direction.

"Aft-view," Kirk said, wanting to at least try to understand what Sulu was attempting. But as soon as the stars ahead wavered and dissolved, he wished he hadn't. The sickening green beams danced and flashed out of the tiny black holes, and the ship rose or tilted or fell and bobbed as they ran like fugitives from flashlights.

On a normal flight across any given sector, Sulu might execute a few of these wild maneuvers, but here it was a constant thing, as the starship hurried and then slowed, and dove and ricocheted from one empty space between the computer-enhanced green beams, to the next little hollow of momentary stillness in space. Kirk rose from his seat, trying not to balance himself by what he saw on the screen, and leaned over Sulu's shoulder. Every ship in the region would have to do the same, to survive—but only one had a navigator of this level of training.

"Do you want someone to help back you up?"

"I'm fine, sir," Sulu said.

"I just want to have one up here, on the side-lines, just in case," Kirk said quietly.

"Mmm," Sulu said, after a moment, as if he was only vaguely aware. His fingers were going back and forth over the navigation console, as if he were playing a Bach concerto.

"Lieutenant Rhada to the bridge," Kirk said, as nonchalantly as possible, into the intercom on the armrest of his seat. He pulled himself into the chair again, not wanting to land on the floor when the next gamma ray swatted them again, worse than a prize-fighter's right hook.

A minute later, Lt. Rhada re-emerged on the bridge. She froze dead in her tracks, watching the stars go flying one direction, and then another, and another as one or two green beams flashed menacingly around them. It was as if angry giants were spraying bug-killer around a darkened room, with both hands. And the Enterprise was the bug.

Finally, she took a seat between engineering and the environmental station, to avoid distracting Sulu.

Jim Kirk wondered about communicating with the Mahlons, but that just seemed hopeless on the face of it, after all these years. What would he say? And wouldn't he just be talking to a handful of inscrutable robot ships, and nothing more, at this point?

Then, another green beam shot from behind and, as if it were nothing at all, it somehow stayed beneath them, even though every star and every galaxy in the sky spun around both them and the gamma ray tendril, even to the farthest reaches of space. Was Sulu showing off, riding the Enterprise around in a spiral course along the polar flare, now that there was another navigator waiting to take over? His expression gave nothing away, even as Mr. Hadley turned to stare at him in amazement, at this audacious maneuver.

"I think I may have called you up here by mistake, Miss Rhada," the captain said, hoping to sound perfectly apologetic, in the face of some kind of invisible contest.

"I understand, sir," she said, getting up to go. But before she had fully smoothed-out her gold mini-skirt, she seemed to give a little head-bow to Mr. Sulu, whose eyes remained entirely fixed on the screen and helm controls. And then Rhada marched smartly across the bridge and was gone in the lift. But she was able to laugh about it by the time she got to the crew lounge. And, before long, everyone on board had heard how Mr. Sulu had drawn a "candy cane" line around the arcing, deadly beam, to show it who was boss.

The great, lumbering ribcage had not fared so well as the Enterprise.

They were operating on back-up computers now, after two deadly strikes had pounded the black, flaring moors that arched overhead. And though communications had become nearly impossible, Spock could tell the flotilla of Chilion warships had been hurt even worse by the rays' gyrations.

They had also lost their window projections, along with the main computers in the control tower, and nearly everyone from Lysander on down wore heavy dark goggles to watch the chaos out there in the dark: two new magnetars, spinning head over tail through space, creating four flashing beams of destruction.

"These windows appear to be quite sturdy," the Vulcan said, next to Lysander, contemplating the next whipping ray from one of the Mahlon magnetars.

"Yes," the commander said, watching the gamma rays through his filtered head-gear. "Carved from the hearts of our old moons, after the bauxite crystallizes. Turns to sapphire in the long heating process. Too precious to throw away, really."

"Just so," Spock agreed, with a little dash of admiration thrown in for local consumption.

"I dare say we're going to need quite a few more moons around Chilion in the very near future," Lysander sighed, almost as casually as if he were predicting rain by morning. But he seemed to be mapping out a strategy to survive something much worse, and a solution that involved some sort of loose barrier of great natural satellites to shield them, and keep their atmosphere from blowing-off like the flame from a candle.

"Eminently logical," Spock was quick to agree.

"Trouble is, it takes a good year or so just to haul one into orbit," he mumbled, conversationally.

"Of course, you could do it all on your own," Spock said. "But I'm quite sure the Federation of Planets would be eager to help in any way."

"Yes," Lysander said, almost suspiciously. "You know, you don't have to be so bloody obsequious, all the time," he added.

"Then I misunderstood," the Vulcan shrugged.

"Quite all right," the dark-green-skinned Chilion general sighed, as if some awkward braces had finally been removed from their relationship.

Then, unexpectedly, Spock felt a little pinch on his forearm. It was Exmoor, standing silently through all of this, in his own huge pair of goggles. When the science officer turned toward him, the old actor seemed to shake his head in a very small warning gesture. Perhaps Lysander wasn't as congenial as he, himself, seemed to think.

It gave Spock a sense of cool nostalgia, though: remembering, as a child, his father's extreme remoteness, which always surprised the human child within him; and then being equally surprised, perhaps in his Vulcan half, when Sarak would seem to "beam" feelings of reassurance into his own mind, in an unexpected gesture, or even a rare, admiring, fatherly nod.

"May I ask a question about the royal counsel of advisors?" Spock ventured. It seemed to him to be the central problem; at least until this double-barreled Mahlon contrivance had blossomed across the skies.

"Oh, good gods of power! Those imbeciles?" Lysander was suddenly furious again, arms quaking in rage, just that fast. If Spock could laugh, he would have, just then, in surprise.

"Precisely," the Vulcan said, as if they were only chatting about the weather again.

Lysander seemed to be going through some convulsion that started writhing in his dark neck, and went down into his shoulders, and crept downward to raise his belly in an agonized sigh, and then finally his boots seemed to begin kicking around, against the deck in the shadows. His face, around the goggles, turned nearly purple.

"What have they done now?" he demanded, quietly, recovering himself.

"We wanted to offer them technology to ensure their survival, but felt we simply could not trust them."

"You're damned right you can't trust them," Lysander shouted again, and the sapphire windows would have shaken in their frames, if they could. Nobody in the control room dared move.

"Things might proceed to a satisfactory conclusion, much more quickly, if…"

"If they were 'out of the picture,'" Lysander growled, finishing the dangling idea.

"Battle fleet preparing to enter the station, Commander," one of the technicians announced. A faraway swarm of lights had appeared in the distance, from the deep shadows.

"Bring them in, medics at the ready," Lysander said, plain and clear.

After a few minutes, the first ships in the armada began floating in: fearsome rounded blocks and tiny pointed scout ships; long slender bombers and strange rigs that seemed more like old-world masts and grappling hooks and rudders than actual whole ships. A new siren called through the control tower, and red flashing lights beckoned the wounded ships to different portals along the cage of gantries.

"Gentlemen, would you care to join me down below?" And the commander, once again serene and almost musical in his tone, marched back to the elevator with Spock and Exmoor in tow. As they passed the last counter-top among the bleating, off-line computers, each man laid his heavy goggles down, before disappearing into the lift.

"Might cheer the men up," Lysander said quietly, as they landed a few dozen floors below the control tower overlook, "seeing the great Mr. Exmoor. Don't be alarmed by the burns, if you can help it," he added, as the stepped out into a frantic whirlwind of triage and surgery already well underway on the assembly deck.

Spock turned to glance at Exmoor, and noticed that all the dark had drained out of the actor's face, leaving him only Atlantic green now, silvery almost. And they hadn't even set eyes on a single wounded cadet. Lysander gently wound his way through the nurses and doctors and medics and gurneys in the bright, noisy expanse around of the echoing bay below decks. Whenever he could, he put a fatherly hand on a young man or woman's shoulder, and whispered a few words along the side of their heads, seeming to make more of a point of a kind of pantomime nuzzling with each victim of the Mahlon rays, than actually verbalizing anything of importance.

Meantime, the reaction of the wounded to the sight of the old actor was startling, even to the Vulcan. Half the cadets and officers literally tried to get up off their gurneys, or up off the floors, though they were swaddled in sheets and blankets, as the feelie "war hero" knelt over them. Spock stayed in the background, but he might as well have been invisible for all the attention that Exmoor was getting all over again. Finally one of the doctors had to come and ask the great celebrity to withdraw, until the men and women had been sorted out by degree of injury and given their first rounds of painkillers.

Spock gradually made his way to tag along with the commander, as he went up one informal aisle of the wounded, and then down the next. The old general showed no sign of weariness or shock, no matter how badly his troops were scorched, even as they tried to steel themselves in their pain.

"If only," Spock thought, watching Exmoor and Lysander reassure the troops, "one could merge these two men's personalities."

Chapter Fourteen

The Enterprise' landing party beamed down inside one of the underground rocket silos beneath the surface of Chilion: halfway down amidst the railings and pipes, far below, where the gleaming tanks of old-fashioned propellants seemed to have neither top nor bottom. Jim Kirk and Dr. McCoy craned their necks up and down from the edge of one of the grated decks, while drifting trails of white steam spread up and out of sight.

"I just hope we're not under one of those oceans," McCoy mused, looking up into the great heights, where everything became a tangle of metallic confusion overhead. At his side, Nurse Chapel smiled, and began circling the great vertical engine, looking into the adjacent tunnels.

"We're a lot safer under that much water, Doctor," Scotty said, warning about the gamma rays. At the same time, he seemed to trying to assess the power of one of these tremendous old rockets to help nudge a planet out of solar orbit, and off to where their owners' willed. His tricorder pointed upwards, and far down the open circular chasm.

Behind them the geologist, Lt. Carstairs, had her tricorder whirring: showing more interest in the layers of strata around the heavy metallic framework, shoved into the rock and insulated with great rubber-looking pads. And Jim Kirk went searching for Allena.

It sounded like a kindergarten playground as he approached one of the tunnels, and found her in a swarm of children: every one of them seeming to talk and shout and point and jump all at once, as she knelt in their midst. Her smile faded to a sort of detached tenderness when she looked up and saw him, ten meters away in the open blast doors. Were these all the children they would never have? Starfleet, at least, would be pleased. But her expression, upon the sight of him, seemed to suggest they might just be tiny hallucinations that crowded around her, in her dreams.

One of the little boys had unexpectedly grabbed her fingers as she stood up, and once again she was laughing and smiling and trying to extricate herself from the 1/3rd scale mob. Gamely, she swept the boy up in her arms and made her way to greet the captain.

"I'm sorry, it's not very much like a floating palace," she said, with an elegant little laugh.

"It's much better," Kirk exclaimed, comically, gesturing at the tunnel behind him. "You've got rockets and tubes and wires and… well, highly explosive chemicals!"

"Ah, now I see what it takes to hang on to the great Captain Kirk," she smiled, telling the secret to the little boy in her arms: "Great, forgotten power, buried far beneath the surface, that only he can bring to life." She gently set him down again and let him go. Her voice was soft and musical, and only the meanings of the words seemed bitter.

He noticed she was wearing a kind of black and white, almost zebra-like print skirt and blouse, and wondered if it were some kind of ceremonial design, being so like what Mr. Brazeltine had worn in the cathedral a few days earlier.

"Have you just come from church?" he wondered.

"As a matter of fact, I have. Well, chapel, really. I'd never wear this to the grand cathedral!" She thought for a second, rubbed her neck as if chafing at her responsibilities, and said, "we'll have to find a cavern big enough for regular service next week."

If there is a next week, Kirk thought, though he immediately regretted it. It seemed to him that all their power, on Chilion, was in a big, showy way: all designed to impress and marshal forces and frighten off a long-gone enemy. They'd do well, he told himself, to think a bit more about the power beneath the surface. But you can't just throw that in someone's face in a dire emergency.

"You haven't heard anything from your military men, have you?" Kirk asked.

"Well, there's been a terrible report out of our central command, that we suffered many burn-wounds. Of course, they're all being treated now, after getting farther away from those rays. It's ghastly, isn't it?" she added, very quietly.

"I haven't heard from my first officer, and I think he was off in that general direction… with Mr. Exmoor."

"Oh, well, if he's with old Exmoor, he's sure to be having a marvelous time. The boys and girls in the Patrol are all mad about him," she smiled, though she suddenly looked rather drawn. In her regal nature, she too was dealing on a very superficial level but, at least this time, even she seemed to be aware of it at last. There was an awkward pause.

"Would you like me to see about contacting your officer?" She suddenly seemed surprised that she had to ask, herself. But from the brooding, worried look Jim Kirk was giving off, she had no choice but to ask outright.

"Yes."

She explained the situation to a guard in the cave doorway. He nodded gravely, and hurried out to the gantry tower, boots clanging all the way. A minute later, another guard appeared at the doors to take his place, gradually settling back against the rocky wall, like a chameleon trying to blend in to the trees.

Now the two walked deeper into the tunnel, leaving the children behind. At last, their fingers closed together and, like a pair of dancers', their pace slowing to almost a stop when they were alone, deep in the twisted, rocky trace.

The light was not quite shadowy, and not quite plain, but reflected the umbers and rusty crags around them. And their faces seemed impossibly youthful in that moment, surrounded by ancient rock.

"I suppose I should thank the Mahlons," she whispered, "for keeping you here this long."

"They can't have been all-bad, can they?" Kirk attempted a smile, though it had become all too serious to him.

"Oh, don't ask me," Allena said, looking down, embarrassed. "To me, they're just a parody, now, of an adventure. Of a dream in someone's head. Long ago." She glanced away, down the twisting tunnel's length, as if the truth were at some irretrievable point down in the subterranean darkness.

"What's the matter," she asked, turning back to him, after a minute or so.

"Nothing," he said, gently inhaling her words before he whispered back.

"You keep looking that way," she said, unwilling to let him go, but growing more and more curious.

"I don't know. I just keep expecting Dr. McCoy to come bursting in on us."

"Are you feeling… unwell?"

"Never better," he smiled, kissing his way up her cheek, till she tilted her chin up, to keep from blinking away his lips. Her slender neck stretched like a swan's.

"You seem perfectly healthy," she said, looking surprised at his affection, and taking a quick physical inventory. "Almost too healthy, if you ask me!"

Then, as if he were an actor rushing on stage a moment too late, one of the royal guards hurried down the twisting path. Kirk and Allena extricated themselves from each other's arms.

"Your royal highness," the guard said, bowing his head, barely able to look up.

"Yes?"

"The captain's first officer is unharmed, though there were many injuries from the Mahlon rays. General Lysander sends his regards."

"Oh. Please inform the general we… long for the safe return of all our brave men and women," she said, as if clumsily remembering the proper words. "Thank you, that's all," she added, offering a grateful look, and the guard hurried away again. But, of course, the mood was broken now.

"Burns are the worst," Kirk mused, knowing what must have become of the battleship crews.

"There are some things about being a figurehead," Allena said, very quietly, "that I'd been taking for granted, till now."

"Sort of a shame that vengeance has to skip a generation," Kirk agreed, as they walked farther down the rough, underground tunnel.

"Oh, I don't know. It's probably for the best," she said, her voice echoing slightly. "It would have driven my father mad, having to face this now. Malcolm, my brother, would have gone absolutely wild. Gods only know what Uncle Brax will have to say about it."

"I'm guessing," Kirk said, holding her hand now, "that if he and the counsel can find a way to change gamma ray power into political power, they'll be just fine." And, in spite of herself, Allena had to smile at that.

"I suppose they'll need you and your ship more than ever," she said, as they walked along, on the polished stone floor, under the bright little bulbs in the rocks overhead.

His communicator bleeped, and he pulled it off his belt.

"Kirk here," he said, after flipping his wrist and letting the gold mesh cover pop up.

"Captain," came Uhura's voice from the Enterprise, "we're getting signals from Starfleet. The Orions are very… upset, I suppose, is the word. About the interference from those magnetars."

"I don't blame them," he commiserated, though he couldn't help sounding ironic.

"They're talking about mounting a fleet to put down a hostile attack," she added, by way of clarification.

"…I see," Kirk lied. "Tell… Starfleet to keep them at bay for as long as possible. Kirk out." He tried not to scowl at the Orions' ability to turn everything into a conspiracy against them personally, and tucked the communicator back under his tunic.

"We've sent out scouts, into Orion," Allena said, folding her slender arms. "They have those very fast ships, too," looking a bit spooked.

"Yes," Kirk said, knowing she was talking about warp drive. Privately, he wondered if any other Orion vessels had already been hijacked and finally thrown away in the maelstrom, like the Amphora, with all aboard. For Chilion's sake, he hoped not.

"Well," he added, "if it's any consolation, our best navigator barely got us through the gamma rays himself. And we know what's become of your own people, when their battleships got too close. So, if they want to be safe, the Orions will just have to go the long-way around that… cosmic threshing machine… to get here. And that would take…"

"That would take how long?" Allena asked, polite but insistent.

"Well, let's… hope it doesn't come to that," he said, managing to smile. "That's what we have diplomats for, isn't it? Making time stand still?" There was a silent, pensive moment as the curving rocks seemed to lean in to listen.

"Then perhaps I shall have to use all of my diplomatic efforts on you," she whispered, taking his hand again, with a great show of confidence.

"All your diplomatic efforts? I may never leave!"

"Well, I suppose being a young woman must have some advantages. And being surrounded, all my life, by head-strong men: my father, my brother, the counsel, you can't imagine! It gave diplomacy a whole new meaning. I had to learn to cry for all the wrong reasons," she said, as if she suddenly wondered, without rancor, how she got through it all.

"And to be perfectly pleasant when I'd have liked to wail like a baby." Her fingertips tapped against the pitted, rocky wall here and there, as they walked: as if it were thousands of little red hot volcanoes; or as if she might magically touch some hidden buttons, to reveal a secret passageway out of this mess.

They walked down through the silent tunnels, far beneath the surface of the planet, bittersweet at first, knowing that: of course, he'd have to leave eventually; and that every moment he stayed would make that last day even worse. Maybe (Kirk thought) they could leave one another after another great fight, and then they'd remember each other as bold and brave and full of conviction, and draw some kind of strength from that, years later.

"My father brought me down here once—I mean, with a whole entourage of people, of course. It seemed much bigger, back then."

"Why would you bring a little girl down here?" he asked.

"Well, it was sort of the promise of tomorrow," she said, trying to remember. "They'd drained and cleaned all the old rockets, beneath the world, and had some sort of plan to—what's the word? Weaponize them?"

"Good grief," Kirk laughed at the thought.

"Well, they never went through with it. But it all sounded rather spectacular, you have to admit: as a sort of last-ditch effort. Can you imagine? The Mahlons would come swooping down on us in their ships, and some terrible flames would come roaring straight up, out of the great blue oceans? It would certainly be enough to scare me off! There'd be great circles of steam, from the oceans, and golden flames, and—"

"You certainly… put a lot of style and romance into everything," the captain said, wracking his brains for something complimentary to say.

"Well, unfortunately, I'd say the Mahlons have just taken the prize for that," she had to admit, more downcast: thinking of the twin magnetars. "If they were still around."

"It probably shouldn't be so glamorous," Kirk nodded.

"No, you're right. It's amazing what you can do," she said, sounding perfectly innocent, by nature or witty calculation (for it was impossible to tell which), "just by converting mass into energy. Just push a button and 'poof!' ten million people could just disappear in a bubble of light." She seemed faintly dazzled by the prospect.

"Touché," he mumbled, remembering his own planet's troubled past.

"Well, you're right," she hastened to add, "we shouldn't raise it to an art form, or a religion, either. But, when you're in some intractable conflict, all the time, with the Mahlons or whomever, it gets quite, well…"

"Baroque?"

"I don't know what that means," she laughed.

"Highly embellished or fanciful," he said, trying to remember, "as in architecture or art."

"Or like the way you feel about me," she said, helpfully, but with the supreme confidence of youth.

Now he could only draw her forward, against him, as he leaned against the rough wall, and kissed her cheek and ear and neck as tenderly as a man who knows it's all just temporary and, in a way that's too terrible to admit, so terribly sad and pointless. She pulled away a minute later, seeming to realize his heart was already saying goodbye, down in the depths where no one else would see.

"Oh, I see," she whispered, not looking up at his face.

"It's not… just… a game, Allena," he said, with quiet deliberation.

She paused, trying to find her voice. "Are you talking about the Mahlons, or about you and me?"

"Everything." He stroked her back, even as she turned away, to make the long, lonely climb back to children and a giant, underground rocket, all shiny and enmeshed in pipes and hoses. In a moment, he could hear her running, but he just waited, to let her have her dignity. When he saw her next, she'd probably be wearing one of those high-necked dressing gowns, her girlishness hidden in elegant satin and tailored formality.

And now he understood, in his own way, why Starfleet wanted him to be more professional, or bureaucratic, or what-have-you, about all the young space-princesses. And he had to agree, he'd had a choice all along: to get involved, to "interfere," or not. And it hadn't seemed to make any difference at all in the end. Except for the amount of joy, or pain, to be endured.

He didn't want to just shift the blame off to Allena, who was thrust into this great leadership position overnight. But, since they met, had they really talked of anything else besides his eventual leave-taking? They'd joked about it, and sighed about it a dozen times. And, now, when it was time to really start thinking about the inevitable separation, it was suddenly a crisis. Did she feel used? Did he feel his youth slipping through his fingertips? He could only say, now, that he felt ridiculous.

Nothing makes you feel as young as love, he realized, looking at the rough and pitted tunnel around him. And nothing else makes you feel as old, when it's snatched out of your hands. He was momentarily envious of Mr. Spock.

His communicator went off again.

"Kirk here."

"It's Sulu, sir. Better get back up here, Captain. Orions."

That was fast, he thought.

"Energize."

He was just closing his communicator and stepping off the pad when the rest of the landing party materialized behind him, suddenly back up from under the hexagonal ocean.

The red alert was still whooping around every turn of the wide, round deck, and they all parted ways at the lift, hardly speaking a word: Kirk going up, McCoy and Chapel passing to get to sickbay, and Scotty going down below to engineering. Emily Carstairs, the geologist, watched them all scatter and went back to her cabin to write up her report on the seismic plates: which would complicate the relocation of hundreds of millions of refugees.

"Report," Kirk said, taking the center seat from the navigator.

"They came right in, through the hazard, sir. It looks like they lost about ten ships to the rays, so far."

The viewscreen already showed a distant enlargement of the magnetars, and faraway dots representing the Orions, emerging from between the pairs of spinning rays.

"Explains how they got here so fast," Kirk sighed, crossing one leg over the other, as a yeoman handed him another report to sign.

"Shields?" he asked, after glancing at the helm, over Hadley's shoulder.

"80 percent, Captain."

He tried to guess how many Orion warships would ever actually get to within firing range, as they poured out from the Pocket. The Enterprise was still hovering behind Chilion, though the moon had passed around them to the exposed side, a little higher every hour.

And by the time they got all the way over to Chilion, wouldn't they be maddened beyond all talking to, the Orions who survived the transit? And how would it look when his own shipfinally appeared, like a mighty warrior herself, arms upraised for the fight?

Maybe they'd be right to blame the whole thing on the Enterprise, he mused. Maybe those Mahlon devices were just triggered by her shuttle's little warp engines, to make it impossible for the victorious Chilions to ever escape the region, if they ever managed to come up with a faster-than-light drive of their own. After all, how would the Mahlon devices know the difference between Scotty's shuttle visit, and some imaginary Chilion engineering breakthrough, thirty years later? Maybe that was the Mahlons' intention: to keep their conquerors hemmed-in forever; or destroy them on the dawn of their own bold journey into the galaxy, without their protective world around them.

He found two little statistical questions in the report in his lap, circled them, and gave them back to the yeoman, who nodded and hurried off the bridge again. Maybe he'd have good luck, from giving some lieutenant below-decks a second chance to make things right.

"Open hailing frequency," he said, patting his hands on his thighs impatiently.

"Hailing frequency open, sir," Uhura said, softly but clearly, from over his shoulder.

"This is Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise," he said, trying not to sound too automatic. And it occurred to him that he didn't want to offer them medical assistance right away, in case it should sound sarcastic or condescending to proud Orion ears.

There was a pause, during which he listened to the random computer noise around him, and the ever-present din of starship life, and the occasional static roar of the magnetars' rays cutting across space.

"No reply, Captain," Uhura said, adjusting her gain.

"Transmitting log entries and telemetry back to Starfleet?" he asked, rubbing his left eyebrow.

"Yes sir," Uhura said firmly, though some doubt had entered her expression, when she looked at the big screen.

"Analysis," he said, glancing over his shoulder at her. There was a little pause.

"They've lost their computers, sir." She said it quietly, almost consolingly, as if she'd actually said, 'their hearts have stopped beating.'

He nodded in understanding, and cleared his throat. In an hour or so, those ships, or whatever was left of them, would sail by Chilion, out of control. Or burn up in the atmosphere. As for now, the flotilla seemed to come flying out from between the magnetars, still in smart formation. They seemed bold, even in death.

"Can we grab them, Mr. Hadley?"

"The first ships will be in range in almost an hour, at their current pace, sir. But we'd have to leave the shadow to catch up."

Kirk nodded. He wasn't about to take his ship out there if he could avoid it.

"Plot a course within the shadow. We'll see if we can… rescue… at least one of them."

Mr. Hadley, at the helm, didn't seem to have the luxury of self-expression, and merely clamped his lips together as he made the calculations to warp out of orbit as briefly as possible, once the dying ships went blurring past.

"They must have thought they could just race through, ahead of the beams," Sulu said, still looking puzzled.

Another yeoman appeared at the captain's elbow, with another report to sign.

"And took a direct hit," Kirk sighed, looking over the yeoman's wedge-pad. "Well, at least we might get some survivors, and they can make an accounting to their own people. Prevent any more… hard feelings." A minute or two later he signed the report, and the beautiful young lady nodded, and marched smartly back to the turbolift.

The next hour passed in relative silence as they watched the Orion ships come racing toward them. The nearest one would pass within fifty thousand kilometers of Chilion. Spitting distance, practically.

"Stand by to overtake," Kirk said, as he got the distance readings he was waiting for from the helm. In his mind, he began a countdown, as the Orion ships spread farther and farther apart, and the rodeo was about to begin. Four of them had disappeared around the other side of the planet, and five more were about to go arcing overhead.

"Turn and go to warp six," he nodded, when he could feel a little finger-snap in the back of his mind. He thought he could see Sulu nod slightly, too, in agreement on the timing.

The planet and its moon went whipping off to the lower left on the viewscreen, and the ship's big engines roared to life as the nearest Orion vessel flew off to nowhere, disappearing in the space between galaxies. Then, gradually, it came into view again, as the Enterprise caught up.

"Aft shields?" he asked.

"Doing well, sir," Hadley said, glancing at the lights on the helm controls.

"We'll be exposed to the beams in two minutes, sir," Sulu said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

"Thank you. Distance to tractor range?"

"Two million, sir, and closing rapidly."

"When ready, Mr. Hadley," Kirk said, as the warp engines continued to rumble. A short time later, the tractor beams reached out, invisibly.

Then there was a sound like a heavy electrical current passing through the ship, and a whiplash jerked the Enterprise, as the cattle-roping began in earnest. Everyone grabbed the nearest hard surface for support, as the tractors locked on to the runaway vessel and the hum twisted in their ears like a fishhook, falling in pitch, to a reckless dynamo's moan. The Orion ship was suddenly visible ahead of them, and began to veer sideways and then straight again, as the Enterprise tried to reel her in.

"Slow her down, Mr. Sulu," Kirk called, though his heart was rising in his throat.

The navigator held down three different key-pads, and the ship made a very loud roar of protest as the warp engines cycled downward through the exponential factors of faster-than-light-speed. There was a very unfortunate, loud "crash!" below decks.

Then, as if to signal the Mahlons' long-gone, spectral disapproval, a magnetar beam smashed into their ship from behind, in the midst of this humanitarian display. Still, Sulu kept his hands on the controls and Hadley glanced upward to re-focus the aft shields. They were getting it from both ends, now, pulling and pounding.

Mr. Tracy, who had returned to the seat at the environmental console, reached down to pick up a shiny yellow memory plaque that clattered to the deck when the gamma ray hit, and Sulu was reciting distance readings as they arduously pulled the Orion ship back from sailing off to its eternal path. The dynamo-roar of the tractor beams revved again, sending a shiver through the Enterprise, and the alien craft drew closer and closer, a little at a time.

In the captain's chair, Jim Kirk was wondering how fast they could return to the safety of Chilion's shadow, but he guessed it would be at least another half-hour, towing the Orion ship.

"Lieutenant Uhura," he said, half-turning toward her, "set up a meeting in the briefing room, all department heads, as soon as we're back in orbit."

"Aye, sir." She began contacting the different commanders, throughout the ship, even as damage reports were flooding into her board.

Another blast from the magnetars smashed against the Enterprise, seeming totally unnecessary in the midst of the rescue. And this time the lights all around the bridge dimmed to near total darkness, and the computers all around the big control ring went haywire for just a fraction of a second. Likewise, the image of the Orion vessel on the screen was replaced by a re-boot signal (the light blue background and white insignia of laurel leaves, with stars), then a weirdly fragmented view of the ship in tow, before the computers re-processed the image and they could see the cold exterior of the dark object: a little bigger than before.

"Not much we can do about it, sir," Sulu said, looking disheveled as he peered into the tactical display that had risen up from the helm on scissor-hinges, from the left edge. "Those rays just keep flying every which-way," he added, as the hum of the tractor beams rumbled from deep in the starship.

"While we're dragging a corpse from the field of honor," Scotty added, bitterly.

Kirk: "No life readings at all?"

"None, sir," Chekov said, having checked already. They got the wrong ship, to boot.

Well, that blows that plan, Kirk thought, crossing his legs again. Without a live Orion to tell the tale, his own green-skinned commanders might still choose to believe the Enterprise had something to do with all of this. And, in a roundabout way, they might be right.

"I want a team sent over there to get a report together, before we get the… remains back to their people," Kirk said. "Try not to dig around in their computers, too much," he added, wary of any future conspiracy theories. Orions were no better than humans, that way.

"Aye, sir," Chekov nodded, getting up to leave. The captain noticed an excited gleam in his eye, at the prospect of boarding an Orion ship, even a doomed one. Adventure comes easily to the curious heart.

"Matching speed," Hadley reported, glancing down at the helm controls: the other ship in tow, less than fifty kilometers distant. Gradually, the sound of protesting engines faded into the background, from there on out, to be replaced by a rumbling, towing noise within the Enterprise.

Already, Jim Kirk was piecing together his remarks for the briefing room, as the ship dodged this way and that, on their way back to Chilion's shadow. More than anyone else, he held himself to blame for the intractable standoff with that world, whose rulers would go to any extreme to satisfy their appetites for plasma from the coils, to maintain their own personal sway.

He still hoped Allena could rise up, all of a sudden, to take the reins after her brother's death, but that seemed premature at best; just like his hope that the increasingly desperate straits of her people might force their hand, and soften their monstrous pride.

And, again and again, he kept thinking, "if only Spock could get a look at those Mahlon devices." He supposed they could transmit Scotty's report through Chilion, to wherever the first officer had found refuge, and hope he'd have enough information to shut the damned things down, and perhaps even the magnetars by extension. Before any more Orions came flying through the beams, to be done in by their own bravado. And before some outrageous new war broke out, to decide who was boldest and most brave.

Gradually, he came to understand what he had to do next. But first he would go lie down in his cabin for twenty or thirty minutes, just to clear his brain.

But when he marched into the briefing room, an hour later, he was aware that people were spending more time looking down at their folded hands, than engaged in some kind of dynamic chatter. The long hexagonal table had the standard, beautiful yeoman at the far end, with a computer in front of her, and a tri-screen as a centerpiece on the table. And there, on those three screens, identical images showed live images of the science party, in their great, galumphing radiation gear: looking like heavy, ridiculous monsters from a child's own dream, aboard the Orion battle ship. And not entirely unlike the Chilion crews that had hijacked the Enterprise just a few days before.

"How'd they get over there," Kirk wondered, taking the seat at the head of the table.

"We just brought the dead ship into our shadow and Chekov jumped right in, from a cargo door," Scotty said, watching too.

"Turn it off," Kirk said, not wanting, or needing, to see the scorched green bodies, or those who'd been suffocated at their posts, or frozen to death, if they hadn't been killed by the concussions outright. The tri-screen went blank and all eyes turned quietly to the captain.

"We're going to the Mahlons' home planet, and see if we can piece together some… understanding of what makes those things tick," Kirk said, referring to the deep space probes.

"I feel I owe you all an apology," he said, his shoulders coming up, expressively. "I thought I could… 'romance' a solution to this problem. But it didn't happen."

"It's worked before," Scotty remembered, helpfully. "Lots of times," he added, in an attempt at being helpful. Though, after a moment, the engineer wished he hadn't said it, as Doctor McCoy was giving him the strangest glare.

"We'll have to cross on impulse, Captain, for maneuverability," Sulu said, staring into the slanting bulkhead across from him, "and I don't know if we can get back to the original system in less than a month."

Kirk sighed, as if he'd played his last cards.

"We have to shut down those mechanisms, gentlemen," he said, seeming to grow angry. He took a deep breath. "Can…" he said, twisting his hands into claws, and nearly into fists before him, "we put shielding on a shuttlecraft to get back to those remote buoys, and just plant charges inside? Or move them farther away from the Pocket?"

"Might just be too late for that, Captain," Scotty said, as kindly as he could.

Just then, another gamma ray thundered against the shields, outside, as if to reprimand the captain for a disobedient thought. Dr. McCoy unconsciously put his fingertips on the edge of the table for support.

"The closer we get, the more of that we'll take, Captain," Sulu said. "I doubt a shuttle craft could take it."

"We need to find a flaw in the Mahlons' plan. And the Orions' pride," Kirk added, an angry tone coming into his voice. "We're overdue for our moment of brilliant insight, gentlemen. Or we had a chance, and it's come and gone. Somewhere, somehow, we let it slip through our fingers."

"Signal from the bridge, Captain," the yeoman said, interrupting an accusing silence. Kirk nodded.

"Go ahead, bridge," she said, her finger on the comm panel.

"This is Hadley, sir," came the voice of the helmsman. "Something on our long-range sensors."

"Cross-link to our video," Kirk said, impatiently, feeling as much the fool as every other man in the room.

There, on the little tri-screens, came the image of what appeared to be a huge meteor shower, with some glinting metallic flakes showing here and there. Everyone peered forward, toward the center of the table.

"It looks like asteroid shepherds," Sulu said, in disbelief, thinking of the daring pilots who went out after raw space glaciers, plunging them into planets for meager profit.

"Yer getting' prospecting on the brain, Mr. Sulu," Scotty smiled, remembering how the navigator had guessed right about the gravity flume and the plasma harvest, days ago.

"Out in the middle of nowhere?" McCoy asked, full of wonder, squinting at the small screen.

"Let's go up top and get a better look, Kirk said. In a few moments, half the commanders were crowded into the turbolift, up to the bridge, and the next half waited a respectable minute before putting themselves in the same little tube, under such strange circumstances.

And there they stood, a crowd of seven men around the captain, just watching the image on the big screen. Hadley and Rhada were at the helm. Every officer on the bridge could see the glint of metal hulls now, flying inside an avalanche.

"Is that what I think it is?" McCoy asked, incredulous.

"It looks like they're shielding themselves with raw asteroids, to go after the Mahlon devices again, Captain," Hadley said, with his usual stoic expression.

"Pushing them with their battleships?" Kirk wondered, knowing they wouldn't have much battle left in them, after a trip like this. Then:

"Status report on the boarding party?"

A tall, dark haired lieutenant glanced over his shoulder, from the hooded science read-out.

"Boarding party reports no survivors, Captain."

"Give me an on-screen," Kirk sighed at the latest failure. It would have been very handy to have some kind of first-hand testimony if the Orions were true to form, and looking for a fight.

The odd picture of a caravan of great space-boulders tumbling and grinding against a fleet of bulbous Chilion warships dissolved, replaced by the closed-in bulkheads inside the Orion ship, as seen over the shoulders of two heavily padded Enterprise crewmen. It was impossible to tell if they were men or women under the big steel-mill type helmets and pads and hoses protecting them against the next pounding from the gamma rays.

"Look at that," Scotty said, pointing at what everyone could clearly see.

The other members of the boarding party moved out of the way, on the viewscreen, and now the bridge crew stared as the crewman with the video-link stepped over a body, with his great thick Starfleet boots.

She was strangely beautiful, with the familiar green skin and long tendrils of black hair, and utterly naked: posed provocatively on the forward bulkhead of the narrow bridge, almost like a wooden damsel on the prow of a spinnaker, but facing inward toward the crew, breasts and hips and all.

"That's their computer," Rhada said, glancing up, armed with some unexpected knowledge of the Orion military.

"Wow," McCoy said, not sure if he should look, or look away.

"Hologram," Scotty said.

"It's to make sure they follow instructions from their high command," Rhada said, as though it wasn't entirely obvious, the power this three-dimensional image would have over an Orion soldier.

"And" McCoy nodded, "to make sure they pay attention to analysis from a lowly machine."

"I thought their computers were out," Kirk said, shaking himself back to reality.

"Sensors indicate they've revived into some kind of a standby-diagnostic, sir," Uhura explained, as the green-skinned sex slave preened and posed, over and over, before Chekov and the boarding party.

"She couldn't stop them from running those rays," Kirk said, after a moment. "Let's see those asteroids and battleships again, please."

As if she were almost sorry to bid them farewell, the projection of a slave girl heaved a little sigh, sending her perfect holographic breasts up and down in a sort of double-salute, before the whole Orion ship washed away from the viewscreen. The strange wagon train in the stars re-appeared, with an occasional green gamma ray flashing around them, harmless against those enormous boulders.

"They're going to have a hard time stopping, with those things on their backs," Scotty said, trying to estimate the load on the Chilion engines.

"Maybe they won't have to," Kirk said, his chin in the heel of his hand, lifting his fingertips from his lips. The red alert lights blinked silently in rhythm, while the computer lights around them, and the graphic displays, changed in their usual off-beat ways. "They could just crash right into one of those probes."

Another gamma ray thrashed against the starship's shields, like a depth charge alongside a submarine, and Kirk's comment was forgotten. Rhada, and Sulu behind her, each seemed resigned to their fate.

"I may be able to open a channel to the battleships now, Captain," Uhura said, on a sudden inspiration. But first, she had to find a way to communicate at all, considering the Chilions' long-distance signaling seemed to be done with rays of light.

"Captain," Hadley said.

"On screen," Kirk said, assuming the worst.

The image of Chilion, still a few hours away, came up to replace the line of asteroids and the green flashing rays. The planet seemed to leap forward at them, as the magnification increased. And, just as Allena had described it, great golden rays of fire were shooting out of several of the planet's hexagonal oceans.

"Oh, my lord," Kirk sighed.

"What is it, Jim?" McCoy, who was standing at Kirk's right hand, leaned forward and squinted.

"They're changing course," Kirk nodded, gravely, toward the screen. "They're heading into the rays."

"But that's insane," McCoy argued.

"Confirmed," Rhada said, at the helm. "Trajectory indicates course toward magnetars."

"The royal counsel," Kirk mused, "has decided it's their next best source of energy."

"And that's why they're moving the asteroids?" Scotty asked, unable to keep a scoffing tone from his voice. "Out of some half-mad notion to collect the gamma rays?"

"I don't know," Kirk said. He had not yet learned of General Lysander's hatred of the royal counsel, but it certainly seemed like the old men of Chilion were simply taking advantage of what had everyone had just seen of the rocky armada itself.

"Contact with Mr. Spock," Uhura announced, with great relief and satisfaction.

"How'd ye do that, Lieutenant?" Scotty wondered.

"Laser bundling," she said, with a hint of pride. Scotty, and Kirk, nodded respectfully. "I was hoping Mr. Spock could modify the Chilion technology from his end, to receive, and I guess he did!"

"Mr. Spock, come in. You're overdue," Kirk said, needling his punctilious friend.

"A most regrettable delay, Captain," came the slightly fuzzy voice of the Vulcan science officer, after a moment.

"Report."

"The Chilion general has mounted an effort to deliver me to one of the Mahlon devices, for an attempt to return it to its dormant state. He will endeavor to place an asteroid between the probe and the magnetars. I trust the Enterprise has not been damaged."

"Only by your absence, Mr. Spock," Kirk nodded.

"And what is the condition of the Orion attack force," Spock inquired. There was a dark little pause, which made both of the next words seem inevitable.

"All dead," Kirk said, quietly. And there was another little silence, out of respect.

"Of course," Spock acknowledged.

"We had hoped to maneuver our way back to the Chilions' home system, for a look at their enemy's old world," Kirk said, with a further trace of regret in his voice.

"That should be quite feasible now, Captain," Spock said, from the Chilion flagship, alongside the largest asteroid, out there in the midst of the stars and the Pocket. "We should be able to complete a temporary barrier within approximately 36 hours, using local debris and interstellar mass."

"Good luck," Kirk couldn't resist saying.

"Good logic, Captain," Spock said, politely correcting his commanding officer. Or, perhaps, wishing him well in his own way.

"And regards to the Chilion commander," Kirk added, ending the conversation as the knot of department heads around him seemed to drift away, back to the lift, their problems solved, for the moment.

"Good work, Uhura," he sighed, glad to hear from his first officer at last. "See if you can't get Mr. Scott's expeditionary readings on those devices transmitted across to Spock, as a sort of… preview, of what he's up against."

"Aye, sir." She made it seem like nothing at all, once she'd figured out the first steps, at least.

"Plot a course to the Mahlon home planet, navigator," he nodded, feeling renewed and invigorated at last. "As soon as those asteroids are… more or less… in place, let's go."

"Aye, sir, estimating course change in four hours," Rhada said, though she seemed distracted, preparing her own mind for the mechanics of the journey ahead, and pressing different pads on the helm in careful succession. Ahead, on the lower left horizon, Chilion's great oceans seemed to take turns pouring fountains of fire up through the atmosphere, and into black space, geysers of golden fire, moving them closer to those space hazards. Soon, the captain surmised, they'd be shuffling the weight of their oceans, too, from bed to bed: to get the right spin across the constellation.

"Boarding party on viewscreen," Kirk said, after a moment, though he doubted there'd be any other naked green avatar lingering on the countertops. But, in spite of himself, hope sprung eternal…

As the images on the screen shifted, he tried to imagine using his own ship to shovel great rocks around in space, but couldn't even force himself to picture it, or the damage it would cause: grinding away at the hull, unbalancing the engines, and the computers that marshaled them into action. But, it wasn't his sector to worry about; nor his fortune, nor family, or future.

And that just reminded him of Allena, and whatever future they'd never have. At least she'd find a man with common ties or, failing that, she'd preside over a race of underground Chilions who lived harmlessly off the power of the magnetars (which seemed infinitely preferable to what they'd done before, at least on a moral plane). Flying right into the magnetars, he marveled. Could there be anything madder than that?

But that was what Mr. Spock was doing right now, too, though for nobler reasons. And this was still the highest definition of morality, even in the 23rd Century: that any being would lay down his life for another. Nevertheless, Jim Kirk hoped they had some very big asteroids in place, when his Vulcan friend crept inside one of those remote stations at last.

The Enterprise away-team seemed to be heading down a corridor, gray radiation suits bumbling down a gray Orion gangway, on the screen.

"Estimate transit time, for Chilion to arrive in orbit at the magnetars," Kirk said, to no one in particular.

"I'd say, not less than ten years, Captain," Hadley said. "Chilion swings in a variable orbit with its current moon, and juggles the surface weight and shape of their world with those oceans. And those rockets!" he exclaimed, shaking his head at the scientific excess. "And they may have other tricks up their sleeves. But ten years, minimum."

"Let's park the dead ship out here," he said, hoping the Chilions wouldn't notice it out in dark orbit, or tamper with it in the absence of the Enterprise.

"Aye, sir, boarding party coming back now."

"Bring them on."

There was another spine-rattling crash, as the magnetars lashed out again, with the Enterprise lumbering along with the Orion craft. But Kirk was fairly certain that his big ship would protect his own crewmen as they stepped from one vessel to the next.

Three hours and fifty-five minutes to Chilion's shadow, to ditch the other ship, and then they should be able to use warp-drive to Mahlon, he told himself, trying to appear hopeful.

But it had all been frustration and failure, as far as he was concerned, since the mission began. The Aurora was gone, the royal counsel was still calling the shots on Chilion, and the Mahlons appeared to be having the last laugh after all. And the Orions would be out of their minds with accusations. But, in four hours (he fully expected), Mr. Spock would perform one of his standard miracles, pressing a few seemingly random buttons on some totally alien machinery, and all their problems would be solved. Shouldn't that be enough?

But he wanted more. A lot more. He wanted to spend five or ten years with Allena (in spite of the impossibility of that idea), he also wanted to find out what happened to the Mahlons, and he wanted Allena to rule peacefully over a glorious little empire all her own, when their time was finally up.

The only problem was that everything he didn't want seemed utterly unavoidable; and everything he did want was completely out of the question.

He got up slowly from the captain's chair and Mr. Scott, who'd been hovering near the engineering console, took his place. A few minutes later, in his cabin, Jim Kirk contacted Allena, on Chilion, one more time.

"I… need a favor," he said, as apologetically as he could.

Chapter Fifteen

"And, I'm afraid, that's all I know about them," Allena said, a little embarrassed at her own tenuous grasp of history, and the Mahlon war. She sat prettily, in a pink flouncy skirt, on a padded bench in the "Earth Room:" an elaborate greenhouse a few decks above the impulse engines of the Starship Enterprise.

"A mining dispute," the captain said, leaning back and trying to sum it all up. "And a lot of territorial issues."

"As far as I can remember," she said, as mystified as he was.

"But mining disputes… and territorial issues… don't usually end up with one entire race, just disappearing, completely."

"I'm afraid I wouldn't know," she said, downcast.

"Well," Jim Kirk said, his eyes wandering across the beds of exotic flowers and variegated plant leaves all around, "I guess we'll both be in for an education, very soon."

Chilion was already far behind them, as they warped toward the planet's original system, protected from the gamma rays at last. He felt refreshed after a long nap, and she was pert and gamine in her dress and matching gloves, with a ridiculous bow in her hair that seemed like a decoratively-folded napkin. Against her soft green skin, she seemed like she was a walking garden party. Not exactly what he'd expected, for a return to a war zone.

"Do you like it?" she asked, noticing as his eyes. "It's pink! That's what we wear to funerals, and sometimes when people's legs fall off."

"Very becoming," he said, unable to suppress a smile at the absurdity of it all. "And if a judge is sentencing a man to death, do they wear the same?"

"Don't be silly," she said, looking prim. "Men wear pants!"

"Pink pants?" He asked it very straight, like a court reporter.

"Of course, it's a very serious thing!" But they both laughed.

The boatswain's whistle sounded, and he got up and touched the comm panel by the greenhouse door.

"Kirk here."

"We'll be entering Mahlon orbit in about ten minutes, sir," Scotty said, through the little speaker.

"I'm on my way." He reached back toward her and took her gloved hand, and escorted from where she'd paused, amongst a bower of white and red roses, in separate beds.

"Are you surprised I agreed to come along with you?" she asked, as they stepped into the privacy of the turbolift.

"Well, I guess I am!"

"I'm giving you another chance!" she smiled, extending one arm grandly, as if it were a lavish, surprise gift. Then, her voice became quieter, more somber: "Not to mention the fact that… I'm beginning to think we're living under some kind of curse or other."

"A curse!"

The turbolift, which had been moving inward across the great saucer section paused, and began rising up through the core to the bridge.

"Well, first the buildings were coming down, and then the whole moon itself. And those terrible cosmic rays. I'm not sure what I did to bring all of this on!"

"I see what you mean. But I'm sure it's nothing to do with you. It's probably just… the end times."

When they appeared on the command deck, all the officers stole glances as she emerged from the lift like a ballerina. Out of habit, accustomed to being noticed, she seemed to half-smile and nod and she tried to meet every look, before glancing down and following the captain to the center seat. Her gloved hands were folded, prim and polite, across her waist as she waited silently by his side.

Mahlon emerged, first as a glimmer, and then swam below as they rolled into orbit. As far as Kirk could tell, it was just another Class "M" planet: continents ribbed tightly, north and south, like a cantaloupe: with thousands of long lakes, likewise all oriented north and south, glinting in the blue light of an old white dwarf.

"Life readings?" Kirk asked. Mr. Chekov, back on duty at the science station, shook his head.

"Scanners show no humanoid life-forms, Keptin."

Kirk was interested to notice Allena had folded her arms, as if she felt a sudden chill, pondering the fate of her father's great enemies.

"Find coordinates for the largest city, and transmit to Lieutenant Kyle in the transporter room," Kirk said. "Mr. Chekov, I need four people for a landing party."

"Aye, sir," the Russian nodded, tapping a few lighted panels as Kirk offered an arm to escort the princess back to the lift. She seemed strangely guarded and alert now, with no trace of playfulness: touching her temple, and then her hearts, with a gloved hand.

Like six swarms of lightening bugs, the landing party gradually took shape on a wide, clean skywalk, overlooking a towering white city, and a blue river that flowed to a nearby sea. All the buildings were sensibly anchored to the ground, though. And as usual, the science officer and anthropologist began snapping open their tricorders, and slowly turning around as they read their screens. The two security men were moving out ahead of Kirk, trying to take it all in with their eyes.

"Is it what you expected?" Kirk asked, as he and Allena stood together, in the widening circle of crewmen, making their way down either side of the skywalk.

"I don't know," she said, barely able to look up at the white marble spires on every side. "It's nothing like the feelies, if that's what you mean. But I suppose it never is," she added quietly, with a newfound distrust of her long-held illusions.

"Captain," Tracy called, from down the walkway. The starship commander and the princess descended hand in hand, her little-girl dress kicking out ahead of her like a small hoopskirt. That pink dress suddenly seemed perfectly appropriate in this elegant, glistening metropolis, and not like mourning attire at all. She could have been on a sightseeing tour in some grand ocean-side resort city, from all the appearances. Still her face seemed dark and haunted, as she held a gloved hand up to shield her eyes from the unaccustomed brightness of her father's home star.

"Makes you wonder why you ever left," Kirk said, smelling the fresh sea air coming in with the soft sound of the waves.

"I suppose," she said, still wary and withdrawn. A breeze tousled her dark hair, and he wondered when she'd ever break free of this enforced sense of doom.

"Captain, there's a…museum of some kind, over that way," Tracy said as they approached.

"We'll have a look, Lieutenant. You… see what's a little more up to date."

"Aye, sir," Tracy said, ducking his head over his tricorder, and slowly turning around in circles as the little machine whirred.

"You have a very strong grip," Kirk said, with a smile. She was holding his arm with all her might.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," she said, and then almost seemed to say it again, "terribly sorry," with a just a sigh in the exact same verbal melody, as though she were finally meeting face to face with the victims of her father's war.

"I'm surprised no one's moved in, it's all so beautiful," he said, as they turned another corner, down another sweeping white avenue.

"I shouldn't have come," she said, very quietly, after another few steps.

"I'll protect you."

"I probably don't deserve it," she said, seeming to shiver.

"It was all before you were born!"

"It's all the same," she said, nearly in tears, for no apparent reason. He wondered if it could be a fear of open spaces, after living her whole life in a floating palace. But then she spoke, in choked words: "I'm my father's daughter. I carry responsibility for all of this! I always will," she said, though it made no sense to him, and her words echoed softly against the white, empty buildings. Of course, when she was wearing that ridiculous dress, he couldn't help but sweep her up in his arms for a long quiet minute, in the empty street.

"I'm all right," she said at last, and he let her free. She straightened her skirt and they walked to the huge columned facade at the end of the block, his boots and her little heels making vague scratching noises on the pavement. Occasionally he glanced upward: wondering if someone far up in one of the marble skyscrapers might be looking down on them, too—in spite of the seeming absence of life-form readings.

He began to worry that she would, inevitably, be shocked by the museum: to find the Mahlons were a people more or less like herself, shown in the usual tableaux with historical artifacts of bravery and beauty, just like every museum on every other planet. But then again she might say, or see, something that opened a door of understanding in the process.

He wasn't too surprised to find the big doors were locked, and flashed his small phaser between the castle-like planks, melting a hasp inside with a little flat metallic "twang." He pushed his way through the heavy doors, and Allena followed.

They heard their own footsteps echo as they stepped inside, but what really overwhelmed their senses was a great skylight overhead, through which a majestic beam of light shone down through dusty air. Below that, tropical-looking bushes and vines and trees overflowed from their planters, to the point where they covered most of the floor in the center of the grand hall, reaching in toward a quiet, bubbling fountain in the center, like green men across a cool, elegant desert.

Odd light-sculptures quietly built and demolished themselves in alcoves and corners; and crystalline, spider-like creatures seemed to dance upside-down on the vaulted ceiling, swinging endlessly, one-over-another, like acrobats: sometimes like stars with radiant light for spindly legs; and then those legs became like curling eyelashes, blinking here and there over their spherical, rainbow bodies. Reflected light from the ocean seemed to dapple down on the walls, but there was no view of the ocean in sight.

"It's like some kind of… carnival," she said, hushed. "Or a drug-fiend's hallucination."

She stepped forward: seeming to wonder if the spiders overhead might drop down on her suddenly, or if the tropical plants would rise up and grab her—but still she moved forward, her arms out from her body, uneasily.

He joined her and they walked from wing to wing, and gradually determining that the Mahlons were definitely humanoid—but textured like trees or smooth like striped gazelles, and strangely sexless, going by all the paintings and statues of them in the wild, amidst the woodland animals. If there was some analog to male and female, let alone a third or fourth gender, the captain and the princess seemed to be missing out on the difference.

"Wait," Allena said, stopping in another dusty, cavernous room, and looking around suddenly. Jim Kirk silently thanked his lucky stars that she had finally remembered something.

"There was something about making babies," she said, sounding perfectly serious, in her little-girl dress.

He didn't want to break her train of thought, so he merely nodded, and waited.

"Malcolm used to get so angry," she said, quietly, though her voice still echoed in the huge gallery.

She seemed to be reliving a long-ago, childhood experience, and looking up, as if to see her older brother from many years ago, or perhaps only a few days ago.

"It was something to do with the way… they thought… we were dirty! For having babies the 'old fashioned way.' They had become sort of mono-sexual, somehow, over the many thousands of generations, and strictly used laboratories to create each new generation, according to some terribly elaborate plan. So, our way was somehow disgusting and animalistic; or base and crude…"

"Maybe they were just very repressed," he said.

"But that was part of the raging under-current, don't you see?" she added. "It was just the thing that made it all so… personal: far more than just a mining dispute. It became a matter of personal, racial pride, without anybody thinking twice about it. Of course, I was too young to understand it, why it was all so inflammatory, the sheer hatefulness of their depiction of us, and our male-and-female ways."

"I suppose there's always some new form of moral one-ups-man-ship, when it comes to that. Somebody's always got to look worse," Kirk added, taking her hand and leading her to the next room.

"But don't you see? They must have been right! That's why they were able to ascend to some higher plane, and we're stuck here, to destroy ourselves!"

"You don't think the war just killed them off?"

She wiped her brow, as if removing a mask of hopelessness, and sighed.

"Well, you could be right, I suppose. But still, never underestimate the power of sexual humiliation," she shuddered, lifting her shoulders, as if a sudden cold blast of air had swept through. "But look at this place," she insisted, holding her arms out and slowly turning around before him. "Does it look like some sort of annihilation?"

He had to concede the point. It actually looked more like the Mahlons had simply left for the weekend.

"Then," he asked, "where did they go?"

"Nobody knows," she said, gradually regaining a worried quietude. "Some magical parallel universe, that's what everyone says. But, without any evidence of that, it looks just enough like some kind of genocide, to poison our own future, too. Whole worlds are built and ruined on such things, you know."

The urgency of it all still made her cheeks dark with blushing. And, perhaps if she hadn't been wearing that absurd dress, he might have given it some serious thought. Now, instead, they were in the next chamber looking up and around. But the guilt followed in from the last room.

"And that's another set of contradictions, colliding together!"

"What's that," he asked.

"Well, first of all, here I am, on Mahlon, that's two contradictions coming to meet. Then there's the steady devastation of victorious Chilion, that's in the book. And Mahlon, which was crushed, is somehow glorious in defeat. And our space-fleet is devastated by them, decades after it was all over. And you and me."

"How do you mean," he asked.

"Well, we're living on this sort of borrowed time: sooner or later you'll go on to your next port of call, and gods only know what's going to happen to me. And yet, even though it's absolutely doomed, we're still so happy together. Or, at least, I'm so happy," she added, not looking happy at all. "Maybe we're only happy because it's so doomed! There's absolutely no pressure to plan for the future or change myself, or change you, in any way. Loving without care or conscience. It's all a terrible contradiction!"

"I'm… very happy," he said, taking her hand, looking firmly into her dark eyes, and the swirling white around the mysterious pupils. Then he took her elbow, and then their chins touched, and then their lips, amidst all the alien artwork, on all sides, and the twenty-meter ceilings and the skylights above.

But nevertheless Allena pulled away. He didn't know why. It just didn't add up properly. And now she looked slighted, in spite of her softness.

"You know, I could just marry Mr. Exmoor, and then he'd probably only live another five or ten years, and then who knows? You might be tired of plying the space-lanes and come back for me!"

He glanced up over her shoulder, amused, but far from laughing. For one thing, there were no "space-lanes" out where he travelled, out on the fringe. But that wasn't really the point. The point was that when someone like her married someone like Exmoor, the old man always seemed to live a lot longer than expected. But Jim Kirk assumed she was only taunting him with the concept.

"Of course, who knows, with the love of a good woman, he could live on much longer," she sighed, languidly, clearly following the same line of reasoning. Now, she wandered off into the next huge gallery, as if she had finished studying him, and was blithely prepared to write off James T. Kirk entirely.

"Even though Chilion is flying straight into its own doom," he said, standing alone in the middle of the gallery room. His words were so quiet that she strained to hear the meaning in his strange single heart, even as she walked away from him.

Then she stopped, in the next chamber, as if admiring another enigmatic work of art derived from the crackling of inspiration in the gulf between totally alien brain cells. He wandered along behind her, leaving the old room behind.

"Do you think we could ever have a future together, if you stay on that course?" he asked, standing a foot or two behind her, pressing the point about Chilion's eventual rendezvous with those magnetars. "You'd be completely isolated, and no other ship would dare come near."

"I don't know," she said, with an air of quiet defiance, her eyes studying the bottom edge of a fancy picture frame before her, as if she preferred not to examine the actual subject matter itself.

"There are a million ways to make energy, in this universe," he said.

"We had a perfectly good way, until you came along," she said, with a great pretense of diplomacy.

"You were destroying innocent lives," he said, also trying not to lose his quiet tone.

"Uncle Brax says it's sort of a miracle when innocent lives don't get destroyed," she said, without thinking, moving to the next huge wall-mounted hologram. He says the innocent are always the first to go, almost by definition." But the color had drained out of her face, leaving her that greenish silvery color, as if she had lost something of her own life, just from repeating those awful words.

"He must have a very… sophisticated… view of things," Kirk said, barely masking his distaste for "Uncle Brax." Meantime, she seemed to be growing more and more panicked again, as if confounded by the wildly different nature of the men dominating her life. Her fingers rubbed the back of her neck, as if she knew she was being watched, somehow.

"Those things you call 'magnestars,' or what-have-you," she said, with an unpracticed attempt at haughtiness, " they've supplied our world with life for many years, up till now. And, yes, they've suddenly become this terrible contradiction, themselves, bringing death and destruction. But they're still potentially a very great source of power," she said, her breath becoming uneven, as she tried to focus on some incomprehensible meaning in the artwork before her.

But, from her breathing, it seemed she might burst into tears again at any moment, from repeating the royal counsels' viewpoints to an unsympathetic audience, and wanting to cry as if all her own world's plotting had finally become too difficult to bear. "Can't you see? It's our destiny," she added, her voice choked with a horrible inherited truth.

"No," Kirk said, coming around and standing right in front of her. "It may possibly be your fate. But it's not your destiny. That's something you can choose for yourself."

"You'll have to forgive me," she said, wiping a gloved hand against her cheek and looking slightly wild. "I'm afraid everyone's a little more sophisticated than I am, today." With that, she turned and ran back the way they'd come, out into the great entry-hall of the museum. And by the time Kirk got to the grand entrance, she was gone. Only the busy, glassy spiders seemed to remain, overhead, weaving their own private plans against the sky.

When he got back to the beam-down coordinates, he could see up and down several major boulevards, but still no sign of Allena. He imagined she was walking the empty streets, passing the tall white buildings as one might review a silent cemetery years after the bloodshed.

It was strange, all of a sudden, for her to be out alone. Before Malcolm died, there was usually at least a driver, who doubled as a bodyguard. Or Hulda, clucking along behind her, spinning some old lady monolog as they walked through a secluded forest or along some pastoral lake. Now it was just her, walking down an empty city street. She kept trying to stop looking regally serene and presentable, as she imagined walking in the footsteps of the regular people that must have filled these streets when she was just a girl.

She didn't know how she felt about having great buildings springing directly up from the ground like chalky cliffs on all sides, artfully sculpted, so they didn't quite so obviously resemble ravenous teeth. She tried to imagine how nice they'd seem, floating hundreds of feet up in the air, and even held up one gloved hand to try to hide the earth-bound foundations of the structures before her. Then, she focused her eyes only on the tops of the skyline, but that didn't quite work either, as everything was still organized into oh-so-practical blocks and grids along the shoreline. What would the people in all those buildings have done in the rainy season, trapped below the weather? Get wet, she supposed.

She rather wished it would rain right now, but that was not about to happen. She could feel some kind of chilly, nerve-induced downpour down her back, and the anxious crackle of lightening around her head, like static-electric charges in her hair. But she supposed that was just the way world leaders were supposed to feel, regardless of the actual state of things.

Where did they all go? Swept up into some kind of inaccessible paradise? Only the mono-sexuals are allowed, only the born-in-a-laboratory-pure. She wanted to tap on the doors of the thick glass entryways, as if the doorman might have temporarily stepped away, and perhaps she'd be admitted too. But the whole city seemed locked up and shut down, and there was none to welcome her with the usual little bows or curtsies.

She could just barely see own reflection out of the corner of her eyes, on either side of the street, in the empty plate glass windows, repeated endlessly, left and right. Thousands of pink dresses bounced up with every step, and she pretended there was actually a whole phalanx of similarly unprepared royal girls walking quietly along the street, in an infinitely long line, stretching off on either side, all wondering what was to become of them, in their sheltered ignorance. The idea comforted her for a while, that everywhere there might be special people of no particular talent. She waved a little this way, with one hand, and then the other way, as she'd do in an actual outdoor procession, and all the reflections waved too. But there were no cheers, and no bands playing the family marching song. Just the faint hiss of the waves on the water, several blocks over… that way?

If this was freedom, it felt a little chilly and entirely too quiet. Click, click, click, went her heels on the sidewalk. And when the sun, the real, actual, warm bright sun went down, how cold would it be then? She supposed she'd have to go back up to the captain's ship and back to her world. And none the wiser.

But she'd seen Mahlon, now, and that was something practically none of her fellow Chilions could say. The very idea intrigued her: that she was now, suddenly, an explorer of sorts, surveying the spoils of her father's victory. However strange and hollow that victory had now proved to be.

And yet they were so clever, the Mahlons, how could they simply vanish like that and not be interested in how the war came out? They could have won the war, perhaps, if they hadn't simply decided to disappear in some hole in the Pocket. Perhaps they were somewhere in some sideways version of reality, watching her right now and having a good chuckle over the mystery, and over those magnetars, too.

What message could she bring back, in her state of utter isolation? She could hear Uncle Brax, "we must all move over there at once, for safety and to make our victory complete!" As if he would build a children's playground in a cemetery. She couldn't hate the man, whom she'd known all her life, who'd brought her presents as a little girl and treated her like a grown-up when everyone else wanted her to stay a child. He always knew just how to handle people, she thought. But as soon as those last words formed themselves in her inner ear, they became tinged with frost.

A lot of things had become tinged with frost, in the last week or so. For every new bit of regal trappings she felt being draped upon her shoulders, she was equally aware that people were treating her differently: in a calculated way, as though they were suddenly extremely conscious of what might come back to them, in exchange. As if a crown were just a tool of corruption, imposed by the people on an unsuspecting heir: like a coin dropped in a vending machine, allowing them all sorts of forbearance.

She suddenly wished there was something the captain wanted from her that might make him a little more conscious of their relationship. But she still felt as though she was cocooned, or that her limbs were numb, from royal trappings, from youthful inexperience. And not having anything really available to impress him made him strangely unattainable, and that much more desirable, and showed the maddening limits of her own power.

But she had some power, she insisted to herself. She supposed she could order a bunch of summary executions, but of whom? A long stone table of old, old men, with skins like dried fruit? That seemed to be what the captain wanted, but she shuddered, imagining guards chasing them down on their crutches, or in their wheelchairs, rounding them up, for some ruthless ending. She pulled the straps of her dress up over her shoulders again, as if it might keep her warm.

Then, as she was nearly across a ten-lane street, where two great sweeping, silent boulevards came together, and just as she was trying to project a powerful attitude in her posture and with her chin held high in the air, the heel of her shoe caught in a grate or a storm sewer, and she went tumbling down like a brick-and-mortar smokestack, flailing for a quick moment forward, until she crashed into the pavement.

So this is power, she told herself, examining the palms of her gloved hands as she rolled back to a sitting position. Her right shoe was certainly ready for some alternate universe, some paradise for defeated footwear. She smoothed her pink frothy skirt, and ran her fingers over her knees and ankles as if she were merely performing a long, fluid dance-phrase, and not searching for sprains or broken bones.

Finally she got up, and began hobbling back the way she'd come, or so she hoped. After all, the alien sea caressing an alien beach seemed to be on the opposite side of her head, though one dark glassy entryway looked the same as any other, along the thoroughfare, and any sound seemed to echo back and forth between long lines of white buildings. She really had no idea where she was, or which way she was going. Hopeless, she told herself. She tapped the broken shoe in the palm of her hand, like an old man's smoking pipe.

But she certainly wasn't feeling numbness or cocooned any longer. She would have preferred it, to the various aches and bruises that were beginning to pound along her shins and knees and wrists as she found herself moving faster and faster, with a staggering shuffle, back toward the museum and the river bridge, as darkness fell.

The general feeling of annoyance, and being hobbled and ridiculous, somehow reminded her of her last little meeting with Uncle Brax. She'd been hearing his voice all her life, of course, the sort of "now, let's think this over," tone; the too-much-sweetness-on-that-wisdom lilt, as he laid those words down on her soul, like a wet cloth on a smoldering ember, just as she was about to leave for Mahlon.

"Now, you know that Captain Kirk killed your brother, don't you?"

She didn't know what to say to that, except that, at this point in life, she had far outgrown the need for someone to tell her what to think about handsome young men. To her way of thinking, Malcolm had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Obviously, it was heroic for him to be trying to clear-out a floating tower, after the harvest had been ruined or impaired or what-have-you by the Enterprise. But what was she to say about the poor people who'd already died on that first ship?

Who knew? She added, to herself, watching the sidewalk go up and down as she limped back the way she came (she hoped). The Enterprise may have been the tenth ship, or even the hundredth ship, to wrangle the gravity just a bit with its engines, to make the harvest safe for Chilion's ramjets, along the blinding trail. It was all new to her. Had it been new to Malcolm, too, or had he known all about the Amphora too?

She supposed all the royal council had known, all along, or why would they have allowed her to be romantic with the captain all this time, till Uncle Brax decided to tell his little secret, so very gently?

And suddenly, she was infuriated that her own hearts had become this sought-after piece of real estate, like the plasma coils themselves: one these ridiculous men thought they could use to get whatever they wanted: in this case, to trap Captain Kirk when push finally came to shove. She put the broken shoe back on her foot and her calves worked furiously as she tried to hurry along, like a wounded herbivore, across the plain, when a wildcat's begun its hungry chase. After a few minutes she realized her reflections were racing by, appearing in and out of the curving face of plate glass windows, streaking over or under the slight bulging of the glass on either side, a leaping pink blob that stretched in all sorts of improbable ways, being chased down by some rushing predator through the tall white grass.

"Allena!"

The voice echoed around maddeningly, in a wide intersection, as she ran limping across. But she'd made up her mind to escape, and resumed her furious, uneven pace.

"Allena!"

A moment later a pair of great strong golden arms caught her and she was brought down all over again, in a rush. It was Jim Kirk, the man she'd become so good at running away from, and now she fought to get free again.

"You killed Malcolm!" She didn't know why she said it; it just raced out of her like the last gasp of an evil spirit.

Then, what astonished her even more was that he wasn't speaking, he was just kissing her—seemingly in reverse order from the last time, in the underground caverns: where he ended up with those awful, horrifying "we're-not-lovers-anymore" kisses on the cheek that still infuriated her.

But as his kisses followed her tears, working his way down from her cheek, or the back of her jaw, toward her mouth, she found the fight going out of her, and a sense of righteous indignation likewise going down to defeat. And all those white buildings were gold and pink at the tops now, and he was cradling her in his arms in the quiet breeze. The ruthless hunting field was gone, and she could almost hear each individual wave crashing out along the unknown shore.

"I think I must have run off too soon, last time," she said, remembering the underground passage, and how hurt and insulted she felt.

"You probably had some very important duties to attend to," he said, between their lips.

"I probably did," she said, very earnestly, along the empty beach.

"I know a nice little place around here, we could go for dinner."

Night crept out across the waves, and slowly up to the height of the city, across the metropolitan bay. The white dwarf slipped between the buildings, sending out violet rays like impossible, nonexistent corridors.

They sat at a table covered in white linen and balanced on the gently sloping sand. And, one by one, champagne and glasses, and a plate of strawberries and cheese, and then their glistening plates and silverware each twinkled into existence before them. She was suitably impressed.

"Well," she shook her head, amazed in spite of herself at the transporter's magic, "talk about worshipping energy!"

"You can worship whatever you want," Kirk smiled, "as long as it only challenges you to be better." He began pouring champagne.

"Suppose I want to learn another language," she said, "that would challenge me, and it wouldn't hurt anybody else. I could call that a religion, too, I suppose."

"You'd have to ask your language teacher about that," he said, tinkling his crystal flute against hers.

"Clever," she said, taking a sip. He reached over and tried to straighten the little mesh bow in her hair, but she started to wince and giggle and popped it out with her free hand. She seemed instantly more grown up all over again. The long-delayed funeral was over, at last.

But then an unearthly rumbling developed behind them, in the city. It had started very briefly as an almost sub-sonic roar, as if from the foundations of the world. And Kirk was standing now, with his communicator open.

"Kirk to Enterprise, Kirk to Enterprise, come in."

When he looked up, he saw Allena was already running barefoot, half-way down the beach and into the little waves that struggled up in shadowy blue and bronze, like the next wave of evolution, reaching out to dry land. As if realizing there was no escape, she stood looking back at the skyline in its silhouette, purple rays of sunset reaching through like fingers, and a horrified glare of astonishment on her face as the breeze whipped at her hair.

"DAUGHTER OF JONOFF!" a thunderous voice boomed, all around. And up the shore, a flock of seabirds began to shriek, and take off into the new night.

Chapter Sixteen

CAPTAIN'S LOG: Supplemental. In an instant, we were swept from the Mahlon beach, to someplace dark and empty. But where? An alternate universe, to where the Mahlons had fled? Or a universe beyond a dozen others, in some anteroom to paradise or perdition, that one imagined they might have found in dimensions beyond reason: panning for gold through the infinities.

Or, perhaps they were still on the beach, and merely overwhelmed by the power of the ghostly empire, blinding them to things as they were.

All was darkness, except for Kirk and Allena themselves. They were perfectly clear, as if standing backstage, in the midst black drapes that separated the real from the imaginary.

And out of the darkness, with a good approximation of her own rhythm, gait and posture, another Allena swam or walked into view, though her features and her pink dress and her hair and her flesh seemed to be made of fluttering moths' wings, not quite settled into place, not quite solid.

"You are Queen Allena?" the other Allena asked, her voice also coming together from many hissing strands of sound, into a sand-papery imitation of Allena's normal speaking voice.

"Well, there hasn't been a coronation yet," she said, somewhat surprised by the question. She glanced at Kirk, as if he might have some clever way out of this newest mess.

"Wise foresight," the other Allena answered, gradually coming into sharper focus, and seeming to smile with a hateful look.

"It's all the same to me," Allena said. "There's not much of a world left to rule over, anymore."

"In this universe," the reflection said, "all things come to fruition, and all things fade away."

"Well, if it's some other way in your universe, I'd certainly rather be there," Allena dared to joke.

"Many other ways," the new Allena said.

And as they stared, she seemed to writhe or dance faintly, like a flame on a match, as if feeling the rhythms of the multitudes of overlaid realities all pounding against her body, eliciting a constant shudder of strange pleasure. It was as if the sheer awareness of all the other universes had become a kind of overwhelming madness to this creature before them, this former Mahlon.

"Yes, well," Allena said, growing politely disenchanted, "I'm sure there's a whole new universe for every Mahlon, and that each and every Mahlon achieves some wonderful new perfection in his own god-like state. Or, at least, some sort of god-like authority." Then, she added with seeming helpfulness, "like the way people buy up whole planets in this Universe: masters of all they survey. And you see how well that's worked out."

The Mahlon image began fluttering again, like a million moths' wings. A kind of iridescent powder seemed to rise off its many little feathers, or wings, like a faint, silvery steam.

"How'm I doing?" the real Allena asked, smiling over at Kirk. And every time she turned or moved, the rustling apparition did the same, raising its downy scales on its own matching body parts.

"You don't mind talking like this to a Mahlon, who may have all kinds of terrible, devastating powers?" Kirk said in disbelief. "But you can't defy a room full of legless old men on your own world?"

"Yes. It's funny, isn't it?" she agreed, tilting her head, and watching as the other Allena began shifting shape. "But I suppose I can talk to myself any way I like." She shrugged, and the Mahlon's newly slender shoulders shrugged too.

"I thought you said they were sexless," she said, verifying the existence of small green breasts. He couldn't help smiling.

"Oh, get your mind out of the gutter," she said, sighing at the prospect of one of him and two of her. "Look, it's you now," she said, pleased and triumphant, as the apparition seemed to be fluttering out of the form of the princess, into the shape and colors of the captain: his broad, thick shoulders and square jaw.

"Oh, dear, now what'll I do with three of you?" she wondered, overwhelmed.

"Three?"

"Well, Mr. Exmoor is practically the same, except he has the benefit of wisdom and experience. Oh well," she sighed, "I suppose at least two of you will have to have broken hearts, now."

"You know," he said, "maybe if you'd just stop being ironic, it could settle into one shape and we could start getting somewhere, like back to the Enterprise." And, indeed, the fuzzy, fluttering image of the captain was getting more fuzzy and indistinct before them.

"It's not my fault if they never learned to deal with irony. Probably why they couldn't settle for just one universe," she said, folding her arms appraisingly.

"James T. Kirk, of the starship Enterprise," he said, gently pushing her aside, in the darkness, to try to capture the apparition's full attention. But he couldn't blame Allena for treating the matter as somehow ridiculous. What else could you do when you were dealing with a race that had everything beyond imagination but, apparently, still wanted something from you?

"We'd like to ask you," Kirk said, respectfully, "to shut down the gamma ray devastators. Tens of billions of lives are at stake."

"It is our obligation to the galaxy," the apparition said, its throat sounding full of moths, as well, "to prevent the expansion of our Chilion enemies."

"The Chilion race is under new management," Kirk said loudly and distinctly, as if making a very long subspace call, through all sorts of static. Gradually, he brought his tone under control, though. "King Jonoff is dead, and so is Prince Malcolm. You have an opportunity to create a new relationship with Princess Allena now. Why not take it, and develop something much greater than the ravages of war, your fathers left behind?"

"We believe the Chilions are still dominated by the same leaders, who remain, who fought us to near-extinction." Its voice was even and hard, now. And he could hardly argue with the supposition.

"What if," he said, wishing he could think a little faster, "Allena agrees… to remove… the old leaders on the royal council—completely? And reign, herself, on Chilion. In cooperation with the United Federation of Planets." His hands were flattened out like contractual pages, shuffling earnestly, emphatically, this way and that.

There was a pause, as if a great many people were thinking this over, in this one alien before them: all the Mahlon gods in all the Mahlon universes, convening in this one point. In the meantime, the moths' wings that covered its body slowly rippled straight up, iridescent and strangely tense.

"We must appraise the situation, and assess the character of the queen," the image said, at last.

"And, if you're… satisfied… then you'll set things back… the way they were, in the black hole constellation?"

"As far as we are able," came the raspy reply.

"Do you think you can do it?" he asked, turning to the princess, who seemed a bit overwhelmed.

"I'm not sure I have any choice," she whispered.

Then they were back on the beach, a moment after they'd left, with no twinkling light and no discernable, magical noise, other than the quiet sighing of the waves in the near-dark. And suddenly the champagne seemed ridiculous, in spite of the serenity of the shore and the stillness of the city behind them.

Late that night, hours later, someone rang the buzzer at the captain's quarters on board the Enterprise. They had alreadywarped out of the Mahlons home system, to make way back to the wandering Chilion. And, as Jim Kirk rolled out of bed, the door opened to reveal the princess.

"May I come in?" she asked, seeming to shrug off the corridor lights like a long glittering hood and cape, as she came into the dim light of his cabin.

"What's wrong," he asked, rising and meeting her half-way, where the little work-space was divided off from the equally Spartan bed area.

"I woke up, and there it was!"

He sat her down by his desk-shelf, in a tall padded chair, while he wiped the sleep off his face. He waited for her to elaborate.

"The Mahlon, it was right there when I woke up just now."

"In your cabin?"

She nodded, imploring him with her eyes, leaning forward, as if he would inevitably have the right answer to this strange haunting. He leaned back, feeling slightly amazed.

"Well, maybe we'd better go have a look," he said, getting up again.

"May I stay here?" She seemed to have slumped down in the chair, hopelessly.

It was just a quarter-turn around deck five to her visitor's quarters, and the door snapped open when he touched the buzzer. And there it was, leaning like a broom in one corner, shivering occasionally, at the wonder of countless, overlapping creations.

"To… what do we owe the honor of your company," Kirk asked.

The Mahlon rustled like a pile of a million tiny leaves, as its wings (or feathers) formed knowing, hazel-colored eyes in the appropriate space, and other humanoid features followed. In less than a minute, it had re-formed into the image the captain, himself.

"You know, impersonating a Starfleet officer is a serious offense."

The Mahlon ruffled back into non-descript softness, like a very furry terrier.

"Is it really necessary for you to… be present with Allena… daughter of Jonoff?"

"To see if her resolve is genuine." The Mahlon spoke, but it wasn't at all clear where the words were coming from, on its face or on its body.

Kirk nodded, having the same question himself.

So, of course, the topic turned to her elderly advisors, once again, when Kirk got back to his cabin, to find her looking forlorn: arms folded in the dark, where he'd left her.

"Well, they meet together the night before church every week," Allena sighed, as he walked her over to the little bed.

"And that's three days from now?" Kirk frowned.

"Four." She lied down on the bunk, looking not sexual at all, at this late hour.

"Can't you call them all together in a meeting before then?" As he sat down next to her, and stroked her shoulders, he was suddenly aware that she seemed a lot more banged-up from her run through the city than he'd thought. Or maybe she also tumbled out of bed when she woke up to find her father's sworn enemy towering over her, fifteen minutes ago in her cabin.

He made a few gentle gestures to straighten out the mess, laying a torn section of her dress back in place, and brushing the insides of his fingers over a sprinkling of red speckles on her knees and elbows. But somehow, it only completed the picture of a little girl who'd dressed for a party, and found herself in a blood feud along the way. Yet her breasts and her long dancer's limbs belied the image of a little tomboy who'd met with disaster.

"I suppose it's possible," she said, trying to figure out how to get all those royal advisors together on such short notice. She looked hopelessly across the little bedroom space, toward the bathroom door: as if it were some means of escape, but also a quadrillion miles away. But when she closed her eyes, he leaned down, and she could feel the warmth of his face near her cheek. He slid on to the bed, wrapping himself around her from behind.

An hour or two later, she had pulled his sleeping hand up to her lips, and was using it to wipe away a strand of hair. He sighed.

"I suppose I could tell them I've had a sort of top-level meeting with a Mahlon, after all these years," she sighed. She could only imagine the reaction to that.

"So riled," he said, still astonished at his first encounter with the old men, where he'd demanded an accounting of all the ships that had been destroyed before the Amphora, and at the chaos that erupted at his implied accusation.

"Because you're a man," she shrugged, her shoulder coming up to his mouth, irresistible to his lips.

"They're used to getting what they want," he said quietly, in her ear.

"Everybody's used to that, except me."

"And it looks like it's all going down to ruins either way," Kirk said, also rolling on to his back.

"Don't say that, please."

He stroked her arm and she rolled again, up against him, watching him watching the ceiling.

"What do other women say about you," Allena wondered, changing the subject with a languid air, and tousling the hair on his forehead.

"What other women?"

"You're a very clever man, James T. Kirk," she squinted, as if she was a criminal mastermind, about to wring the truth out of him. "Don't you want to know what other men say about me?"

He hoisted himself up on one elbow, and she reclined gracefully on the bunk again, folding her arms on her chest like a mummy, but also delighted to be admired.

"Do they say… your eyes are like twin eclipses?"

"No," she laughed. "What's an eclipse?"

"Do they say… you're fiercely loyal, even when people want to take advantage of you?"

"They probably should," she said, looking away and turning glum again.

"Do they say… that your beauty is like the sudden shift in the breeze? Something that just makes a man stop and back up and smell the air, trying to capture it again and again for the first time? Until he's just lost in the vibration?"

"I don't know what that means, either!" she said, suddenly laughing again.

"It means everything to me." And then their eyes met again, as if they were finally seeing one another for the first time.

Looking back, of course, he should have known the intercom on the countertop behind him would buzz suddenly, just at that moment. He rolled away and sat up on the edge of the bunk, while she watched.

"Captain," Sulu's voice came down from the bridge, "we're still two hours out of Chilion, but long-range sensors register a massive seismic quake. We think it might possibly have been triggered by those underground rockets."

"Understood. Best speed, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, his head feeling heavy again as he tapped the intercom to the "off" position. Beneath them, the sound of the warp engines thrummed up another octave.

"That's why the royal advisors never actually got around to using the rockets before," Allena said, rolling up into a ball on the bed, her knees under her chin. "Now they must think they've got nothing left to lose."

"Funny how things turn around like that," Kirk said, sitting on the edge of the bed again.

"But don't you see? Now we can collect energy without all that horrible bloodshed! They've put all sorts of collectors and refractors all across space. If they can just catch some of that energy and channel it into usable form, somehow," she said, trailing off, as if it were simply the next logical step. Then, with very little movement, she suddenly looked very philosophical, alone on the little section of the bunk, realizing she was about to become the besieged queen of a bankrupt empire.

"Of course," he said, though he sounded far from encouraging. He got up to go to the door.

"Wait," she said, her fist coming up to her mouth, as if she would almost block the words before they came out. "Does every… planet… have some horrible past it's running away from? Something that always comes back to haunt it, like this?"

He paused, his hand on the automatic door, as cadets and yeoman and the occasional lieutenant streamed by in the usual efficient, non-stop way out in the corridor.

"A lot of them do," he said, after thinking.

"What do they do?" she asked.

He didn't want to just say "I don't know," even though it was true. How did any planet reconcile its own rude path to glory or destruction?

"Sometimes that 'haunting,' by the Mahlons, or by whomever …is a second chance for the victors to set things right," he managed to say, as the light from the doorway cut across the cabin and on to the bunk, his long shadow falling with it, across to the farthest corner of the room.

Then, he was gone in the passing stream of crewmen around the curving corridor. And, once again the shaft of light closed up, leaving her alone in the dark.

"None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for the Enterprise," Mr. Brazeltine was saying as he lightly, rhythmically pounded on a lectern the meeting cavern, and emergency crews hustled back and forth out in the gantry pit, beyond the guards and arched entrance. The lights overhead had been flickering for so long that no one seemed to notice any longer.

"Why did you let her go, Brazeltine," one of the very old men in the underground chapel protested.

"To see a dead, abandoned world?" the chief council member scoffed.

"It's moral contamination," another old man ventured, with a quavering voice, as he tried to raise a gnarled old hand in remonstration. A few others around the rocky, underground chamber echoed the phrase "moral contamination" to their hearing-impaired bench-mates.

"Now," Brazeltine resumed, paying no attention, "the worst that can happen is that she and Captain Kirk would want to get married, and we'd be stuck with his influence for the foreseeable future. But the more likely next step, to my mind, is for Allena to move up her coronation, and seek some kind of alliance with the Captain's federation."

"I love a coronation," one of the old men said, his eyes going all dewy.

"Oh, shut up," said another man on the bench in front of him.

"Are we making any headway in channeling the energy of those gamma rays?" another old man demanded to know.

"Yes, we have every hope of restoring and re-calibrating our harvest network, putting us back at full power in a matter of weeks, sir," the head of the royal council nodded confidently.

"But that fool Lysander," another counsel member said loudly, "has been blocking off the radiation with those damned rocks!"

"We must respect the wisdom of the general," Brazeltine said, looking down, and furrowing his brow. "If just one of those rays hit Chilion full-on, it could blow our atmosphere right off."

At this there was a quiet chorus of grumbling and frustration.

"We'll get our power, gentlemen, and with it our freedom, once again," he proclaimed, with a big, frozen smile on his face.

Then, unexpected and unbidden, Captain Kirk stepped in to the chapel cavern, with Allena lightly holding his elbow. He wheeled to a confident stop, like some old Viennese waltz expert, and she stepped in ahead of him to begin the slow walk up the aisle toward a slightly puzzled Mr. Brazeltine.

She wore a long blue dress, with her gloved hands were folded demurely over her waist, and her hair piled high, like an tray of black Russian bread rolls. A galaxy of diamonds gleamed around her neck.

Kirk, in his satin dress tunic, tried not to smile as the old men turned and stared, in a very slow wave of recognition, their squinting gaze going back and forth, toward him, and again at the impossible beauty of his bride.

"We've come to be married," Allena said, barely able to look Brazeltine in the face, when she reached the lectern.

"We're in love," Kirk insisted, with comical delight, plainly hoping to cause an incident.

"Do you understand," Brazeltine began, making a clear show of his own incredulity, "that this man stands opposed to everything your father built up for Chilion, and everything he lived and died for?"

"I do," Allena said humbly, as though he'd reverentially inquired as to her understanding of the obligations of love and loyalty and trust.

"And do you understand, Captain Kirk," Brazeltine said, his astonishment reaching almost operatic proportions, as all the old men leaned forward and strained to hear. "Do you understand that you have reduced this world to ruins, even to living like insects, underground? And that our grand culture must be sworn to oppose you at every opportunity?"

"I do," Kirk said, with solemnity and a show of innocence that nearly matched Allena's.

And with that, the captain reached under his tunic and produced a chrysalis of light: a large green diamond, set in a nest of what appeared to be tiny rubies and dark emeralds, atop a polished silver ring. To the horror of everyone else in the cavern, he slipped it on her gloved finger and kissed her on the lips. His eyes returned to Brazeltine now, as if Kirk had just swept all the poker chips off the table.

Then, his communicator beeped, as Allena gently pulled away, and smiled. With a deferential nod, Kirk whipped out the little device and flipped up the gold mesh cover.

"Whenever you're ready, Mr. Scott."

"It's Sulu, sir," came the navigator's voice. "It's the Orions, they're early and targeting us now, Captain."

"I see," Kirk said quietly, his plans going wildly, terribly awry all of a sudden, or equally awry as Brazeltine's, but still not wanting to spoil the moment. "Stand by to energize."

"Shields on automatic, sir," Sulu said, apologetically. So he was stuck down here, in the vipers' nest.

"Take good care of her, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, still quietly, and closed his communicator, for what suddenly felt like the very last time. But, once again, he adopted his cool, confident expression, and turned to address the benches of advisors.

"Gentlemen," Kirk began, with a hasty glance down at his boots, and then out, brashly at the dozens of annoyed, or impatient, or asleep old men. "When I… walked among you just now, my ship in orbit collected your life form readings… and beamed down signaling elements on to each and every one of you." (At least, he hoped that's what had happened, right before the Orions showed up.)

"And at any moment of our choosing, we will be able to reach down and collect you with our dematerializing, transporting rays, for trial at the nearest Starbase. Nothing you do can remove the molecular markers. And nothing you do now can change the fact—"

"We'll be swept up—we'll all be taken up," one of the old men said, staggering to his feet, overcome with religious amazement as he balanced on matching ebony canes, with ornate silver handles.

"Sit down, you fool," the old man next to him snarled. But others were slowly rising, too. "Swept up," they began whispering, looking up toward the sky in long-cherished confirmation. "Swept up!" Their scowling old faces softened and filled with childlike wonder.

"Now," Kirk tried to resume, as more and more old men rose breathlessly to their feet, "as you may know, our warp drive can take us from star to star in as little as a day, in some cases. Or, by the… unimaginable… power… of these matter and anti-matter conversion engines, these two great contradictions, crashing together, they can even alter the… flow of your energy rich plasma before it races down into the black holes in the region you call the Pocket." He daren't glance at Allena now, as he went trampling all over the planet's religion. And he didn't want the added distraction, because he had no idea what he was going to say next.

But he needn't have worried, as six or seven of the old men were singing an old, old hymn, "Swept Up!" and tears were streaming down their faces, after their long, long wait.

"They've linked up with the computer on the wrecked ship, Mr. Scott," Chekov said, as the chief engineer returned from below decks. Everyone on the bridge tried to steal a glance at the second Orion attack force approaching. The red alert was still flashing, after the loud warning had been called several minutes earlier. And the Orions were still refusing the Enterprise' hails.

"Gi' us a visual, Lieutenant," Scotty said, though he didn't turn to face Uhura directly.

"Aye, sir," she said, and now two naked Orion slave girls were whispering back and forth, stretched out like cats on a sunny windowsill, on the command deck of the second Orions battalion's lead vessel. One perfect female hologram must have been from the incoming command ship, and the other was the re-booted avatar of the dead ship hanging just behind Chilion. And around these two beautiful phenomena, the green-skinned commander of the Orion flagship seemed amazed and a little breathless, in the glow of blinking control panels.

"The Federation starship is now scanning the main control room," one naked hologram said, her long black hair weaving its way down her shoulders as she reclined by her "sister" on a long shelf.

Most of the Orion crewmen looked up on hearing the news, almost guiltily, and a few of them even looked over their shoulders: as if they might catch sight of the Federation spies in some corner.

Mr. Scott tried to look away politely, himself, at three-to-five second intervals. But, he had to admit the two holographic girls made a lovely pair, in a vaguely frightening way. He couldn't quite shake the notion that they'd just dive in through the screen like ravenous banshees the first chance they got.

The two green ladies whispered back and forth and, Scotty reasoned, the Orions were still downloading information from the dead ship the Enterprise had previously snagged, on its way out of the galaxy. He shook his head, imagining this second attack force was carefully trying to find any little sign of Federation complicity in the foolish, wasteful tragedy of their first attack force, seeking vengeance for the Amphora.

Long minutes passed as he watched the Orion crew, and the inevitable parallels began to emerge: one algae-colored crewman seemed to be the piratical commander; another, his navigator, consumed by the readings from the helm; and a third was either the weapons or engineering officer. Others dithered around them in their animal-skin uniforms, almost as though they were perplexed by the readouts on blockish machines in the darkened control room… and then there were those two, amazing women, smiling and talking inaudibly into one another's ear, like twin gossiping goddesses of irresistible temptation. How the crewmen's wives dealt with that, he could'na say.

Occasionally the Orion officers would try to beseech the naked holograms for their attention, as the attack force raced toward Chilion, but with no result. One girl, from the dead ship, simply kept whispering into the other's ear as the uploading of data dragged on and on; as their breasts heaved up and down in an imitation of life. Occasionally they'd change their pose (apparently to keep the attention of the thuggish crew).

"Mr. Scott!" It was Sulu, in front of him, throwing a switch that wiped away the image of the two ladies, to switch to an exterior image of the Orion attack force on the bridge viewscreen.

A new beam of gamma radiation went firing down across the lead Orion vessel, which was beginning to go dark from the onslaught. Navigation lights and the glow from the few windows on board flickered and then just went out, and it looked like the command ship was beginning to drift out of formation. But this time, the computer-enhanced rays were coming from somewhere else, out in space.

"Aye, it's those Chilion reflectors," Scotty knew immediately, referring to the network of power stations back and forth between the Pocket and this world. "Target nearest reflector Mr. Hadley, and fire when ready."

"Aye, sir," the helmsman nodded, still remarkably stone-faced for a human being, especially considering the Enterprise was now coming to the rescue of its latest would-be attackers.

"But won't that cut power to the planet?" Chekov wondered, from the science station.

"They're underground now, lad. And if it's hell for them down there, it's only premature," Scotty said, with quiet certainty.

"But what about the captain," Uhura wondered.

"He'll be fine, lass," Scotty said, gruffly. Then, more whimsically, "he likes the taste of justice. How are our shields, Mr. Sulu?"

"Back to ninety-percent overall, Mr. Scott."

"Deep space reflector targeted, phasers locked," Hadley said.

"Fire."

Mr. Hadley signaled phaser control, below decks. The view of the alien attack force; and dust-shrouded Chilion, dipped mostly below the lower edge of the viewscreen, as the starship lined up its shot.

Long streams of perfectly straight lightning roared out from under the ship's saucer, and what was still to be seen of the Orion ships seemed frail and cold below the beams. Then, as if nothing had happened, the searing light was gone, along with the roar of power. The Enterprise returned to its face-off with the Orions, though there seemed to be a moment of calculation, as things quieted down a bit.

"Gi' an old man another look at that lovely pair again, would ye?"

But it was too late. When the image of the enemy command deck returned, it was nearly dark. The last of the reflected gamma rays had broken through the enemy shields, and now the two slave-girl images were nowhere to be seen.

"Meester Scott!" As Chekov turned around from the science station, the red alert light atop the helm began flashing, detecting an attack from another reflector. And then, the crash of a ray, just a fraction of what was flashing out of one of the singularity's poles: the Chilion energy barons, striking back.

"Aye, now they're doin' it to us," Scotty snarled. "Target and destroy, Mr. Hadley." Was it going to be like this all day?

"Another one, sir," Sulu nodded, in grim confirmation of a fragment of a gamma ray sweeping over them.

"Get us clear, Sulu."

"Aye, sir." And just that fast, there was another crash against the shields, from another direction.

"They're trying to nail us down, sir," Chekov said, and with the touch of a button, he took control of the main viewscreen, showing flickering gamma ray reflections that focused in on the Enterprise and the Orion ships—one by one at first, and then two by two. A graph in the corner of the big screen showed two more reflectors turning to catch part of a full-strength ray, to hurl against them.

"Going to full impulse power," Sulu said, and the planet shrank very quickly, along with their newer adversaries.

"Warp power, stand by," Scotty said, though he couldn't imagine their reflectors could focus on them, even at a fraction of impulse. "Phasers target for minimal damage." For the senior commander, the taste of mercy seemed bitter.

"Standing by," Sulu said, checking the engine status.

"Now targeting four reflectors, make that nine," Hadley said, finally showing some grim satisfaction at the helm. "Fire at will."

"Keptin!" It was Chekov again, in a moment of confusion. "Mr. Scott—the planet—"

And from that dusty, faraway ruin came an ocean rocket thrust: a golden thread at this distance, out of the hexagonal blue, billowing against the Orion force. It sent their nearest ships up from orbit, into a billowing cloud of fire and wreckage.

Chapter Seventeen

The ship began throwing blue-white spears of light in all directions, in a computer-guided barrage that only lasted for about ten seconds. She twisted to make two more shots.

The regular computer noise and status reports were still going back and forth, as always, but it seemed as quiet as dawn for just that moment when the shooting finally stopped. In the command chair, Scotty's eyes were smiling as he imagined the councilmen of Chilion getting their first taste of the frigid wind of space, even deep underground. Finally, their power source was abolished.

"Attack force approaching at warp-point-eight," Sulu said, purely on the strength of the instrument readings, as they were now far beyond the planet's orbit. At this distance, if the Orions had gone any faster, they would likely have shot right past the starship.

"What do they want with us," Scotty sighed, his mouth beginning to pull diagonally, at the ridiculous misunderstanding that would end in some unknown number of needless deaths.

"Their flagship is still back at Chilion, sir," Sulu reported. "Looks like she's lost to those undersea rockets."

He touched a panel on the controls and they could see a magnification showing what the brief reflection of gamma rays, and an opportunistic blast from the planet, had done: turning head over tail, the command ship looked like a flattened cinder, silently trailing spirals of dying sparks.

"Well, I don't like the looks of that," Scotty said, with grim playfulness, as the attack force came back on the viewscreen. "Open hailing frequency," he said, though they hadn't responded at all, so far.

"Hailing frequency open, Mr. Scott," Uhura said quietly.

"This is Commander Montgomery Scott of the U.S.S. Enterprise," he began with point-blank forcefulness. "Your ships were targeted by the planet below, and we have destroyed their offensive capability for further gamma ray attack, for our sake, and your own. However, the planet then resorted to another form of attack, as ye know, through a weapon buried deep under water."

Once again, they were able to get a picture of the bridge of the approaching lead ship. The Orions were listening, but didn't seem quelled by his presentation of the facts.

"We propose to return to the planet to rebuke them properly," Scotty added, even as Mr. Sulu and Mr. Hadley exchanged wary glances, and the distance shrank between them and the Orions.

"Closing at one million kilometers," Sulu said, quietly.

"To show our good faith," Scotty said, sounding more and more like a Sunday school teacher, at least to his own ears, "we will return to Chilion now and fire a torpedo attack on the offensive target."

At that, Sulu kept one hand on a tactical program he'd set up, and the other began tapping in a return course, corresponding to the ocean rocket thruster, gradually disappearing behind the rising moon. Something between the right and left halves of his brain erupted at the ridiculous complexity of it all, though he wasn't sure which it was, a little laugh or the spasm of a shriek.

"Take us right over their heads, Mr. Sulu," Scotty said, contemptuous of Orion pride. "Warp point-nine."

"Warp point-nine," Sulu said, and in a blur they went skating right over the approaching sortie, which slid beneath them like ripples on a silver-tipped lake.

"Mr. Hadley, I don't want to get any closer than necessary," the commander cautioned, as the helmsman kept his fingers poised on the photon torpedo links.

"Approaching maximum range," Hadley said, as though he were merely easing a sailboat into a slip.

"Target and destroy," Scotty said, as they watched the dust-covered planet grow on screen.

"Firing torpedoes," Hadley said, without fanfare. That familiar, echoing 'bang!' sounded through the ship, as horrific blobs of green light shot out and arced with an eerie intelligence around the Chilion horizon, toward the offending thruster site. He could only imagine the blinding lights roaring down through a cloud of moon-dust, into the sea, shattering the ocean's floor and the intricate old pipes and girders of the mantle-thruster. Flares of light in the dust cloud seemed to indicate the torpedoes had done their job.

"Status of the Orion vessels, Mr. Chekov," Scotty said, still grimacing. At the science station, the Russian lieutenant turned toward the center of the bridge.

"They have turned, but at station-keeping, one point seven three nine million kilometers."

"Aye, now they want to watch us doin' their own dirty work," the chief engineer said, almost to himself. The history of the Orions and the Federation had been filled with disputes, and somehow the central issue always came down to Orion pride, or energy, like their apparent cousins, down below.

"I think I can get a visual of the target, Mr. Scott," Uhura said, from behind him.

"On screen, lass."

And there it was, the great hexagonal ocean, grainy and flickering from small to medium to large on the main viewer: a horrendous gash like the parting of the Red Sea becoming visible right across the middle, through which the waters rushed down into the bowels of that earth. Two or three sheets of steam or vapor wavered up like an evanescent flag of surrender. A strangled stream of black smoke and gray steam finally poured up through the cascade as the machinery deep below collapsed.

"That ought to put their minds at ease," Scotty sighed, as the big screen image wavered and returned to a view of the Orion ships.

"They're approaching, Mr. Scott: still in attack mode," Hadley noted.

Spoke too soon, Scotty told himself. Now he could see the alien ships coming in for a roaring pass between Enterprise and Chilion.

"Phasers targeting," the helmsman said quietly, knowing he might sound over-eager.

"Tell them we'll put a stop to any hostilities with irrevocable force," Scotty snarled, and behind him Lieutenant Uhura opened a channel and began warning off the squadron.

"Targeting complete," Hadley said, growing slightly more confident of his reading, not only of the approaching vessels, but also of his senior officer.

"Fire across their bows, Mr. Hadley," Scotty said, without any trace of pleasure.

And then there was another dazzling burst of long lightning: striking out from Enterprise, ahead of most of the Orion force, and then behind the previous craft, in succession, as if smacking them on the tails.

"They're dropping fusion bombs, Mr. Scott," Chekov warned, from his right.

"Well, they dinna want to come all this way for nothing," Scotty said with renewed sarcasm. "Imagine livin' in your own little world of petty wrath and dreams of vengeance," he added, and then stopped. "Huh! Imagine a good Scotsman sayin' a thing like that!"

"All right," he said, after a very brief pause, and a change of gears. "We warned them, but they did it anyway. Mr. Sulu, get out ahead of them. Mr. Hadley, target their weaponry; fire phasers when ready."

Both men responded, saying "Aye, sir."

The great starship blipped into warp drive and emerged again a few million miles beyond the fleet of smaller ships. Then, the alien attack force split like nine-pins to avoid the very obvious, unexpected confrontation.

"Target the half heading back toward the planet," Scotty said, in a moment of icy inspiration.

And there went the phasers (Scotty guessed they were temporarily down to about 40% of phaser power after all of this). But as soon as the beams had struck through the Orion shields and jostled the ships from their courses, he began to think he might have made a mistake. And whenever he felt like that, it seemed as though he were holding ice cubes in the aching palms of each hand.

Then his mind began to move faster again, as Mr. Hadley was reciting the phaser reserves (43%); and Mr. Sulu, the changing positions of the other half of the Orion force, out beyond visual range again. If we could get all the other ships and neutralize them, Scotty reasoned, we could get the captain back and maybe, once and for all, those councilmen who seemed to be running the show snatched up from down there too. But now he'd smacked a hornets' nest, and all of that was out of reach.

"Stand by, transporter room," he said, as the viewscreen changed to a starboard view of those other ships, maneuvering around for their counter.

"We have his signal, bridge," Lt. Kyle's voice came.

"As quick as you can manage, Mr. Kyle," Scotty said, and snapped off the comm link.

"With all the councilmen?"

"No—forget about that for now."

"Closing to firing range in ten seconds," Mr. Sulu said, though there was an edge to his voice.

"Stand by to warp out, evasive maneuvers," the senior officer said flatly. He waited a generous three seconds, and tapped the captain's armrest again.

"Transporter room," he said.

"We had him for a moment, sir," Kyle said, panic rising in his voice, in spite of experience, "but we lost the signal."

"Mr. Sulu, turn and fire on attack force," Scotty said, his mind already back to the problem at hand.

The stars, and Chilion flew past on the screen, and their fire scattered into the distance.

"Scan the area Mr. Chekov," Scotty said. "Show the Orion ships between us and Chilion."

"On screen," the acting science officer said. A series of computer-generated lines showed the recent trails of Orion vessels that had swept back toward the planet.

"Now show the transporter signal," the chief said, already knowing what would come up.

And, of course, the signal was chopped off right where the Orion ships had passed a moment ago.

"Uhura, any signal from the captain," Scotty said.

"Nothing, Mr. Scott," she said.

"Take the con, Mr. Sulu," Scotty said, wondering what could possibly go wrong next.

He slowly got up from the captain's chair, and went down to the transporter room.

"They've got him, sir," Lt. Kyle said, with a rueful, apologetic air as he and Mr. Scott stood over the transporter console, a few minutes later. The steady hum of the machinery filled the room, even to the empty chamber where the captain should have materialized ten minutes ago.

"Aye," Scotty nodded. He couldn't come up with any other explanation. And their technology still held a few surprises, especially when it came to snatching up things that weren't theirs.

"And we don't know which ship he's on," Kyle protested.

"Well, he's on one of the ones with no weapons," Scotty said, axiomatically (for they had fired on every other ship). Mr. Kyle nodded, without any sign of hopefulness.

The boatswain's whistle sounded on the top of the transporter console.

"Scott here," he said, twisting a frustrated thumb against the oval light pad.

"We're getting a rough, bundled signal from Mr. Spock again, sir," Uhura said, through the little speaker grill, as though preparing him for an awkward experience. More light flares, in the dark.

"Pipe it down here, Lieutenant." He looked at the controls in dismay.

There was an ominous rumble, as if another gamma ray had rolled across the sector. But a moment later the Vulcan's level voice could be heard reciting:

"…From seven-three-nine-oh-one, please note that overall parameter opacity is not exceeded by the previously noted factors of L, or M, or N. However, if the sub 'f' variable is maintained across the equations pertaining to sub-dimensional dilation, the usual rule for sub-critical wavelengths may be recognized in rational numbers through the conversion of sub-g."

"Ach," Scotty shook his head. "He's havin' it off with the computer." He clicked-off the intercom. And, as he walked out into the curving corridor, he said, half over his shoulder, "keep an eye on 'em, Mr. Kyle. If they start beaming between ships, I want to know it."

"Yes, Mr. Scott," Kyle said, relieved to have some idea of how to deal with the dismal situation. And, for the rest of his shift, he dared not take his eyes from the instruments.

"Open a channel to the Orions, Uhura," Scotty said, as he came marching back out of the turbolift, onto the bridge.

"Aye, Mr. Scott."

By the time he'd sat down in the center seat, posing like an angry warrior chieftain, Uhura nodded to go ahead.

"This is Commander Montgomery Scott, of the Starship Enterprise. You have sixty seconds to return our captain, unharmed, or we will destroy all your ships. That is all."

There was a sudden coolness in the air, as if the clarity of brute force had somehow seized all their problems at once.

"Arm phasers, target on automatic," Scotty said. "First, of course, I want the ships that still have their major weapons systems."

"Targeted, Mr. Scott," Sulu said, carefully, as if he did not want to touch-off a premature explosion.

"Time."

"Forty-five seconds," Hadley noted.

" Uhura?"

"No response, sir."

"Meester Scott, I think I have a life-form reading!" Chekov said, from the science station.

"Aye, they're liftin' their skirt a bit, for their own good. You can spare that ship, helm, till we get further word."

"Yes sir," Sulu agreed, with a sigh of relief.

"Thirty seconds," Hadley said, after a bit.

"Mr. Scott, I have a signal now from the lead ship," Uhura said.

"Go ahead," Scotty nodded.

The image of the utterly inward and insular planet Chilion, and the now-distant Orion ships blurred away, and a scowling green-faced commander stared down at them from their own screen.

"This is Commander Montgomery Scott, in command of the USS Enterprise. Release your hostages at once, or prepare to be permanently disabled."

The Orion on the screen flinched, visibly—which was the last thing Scotty had been expecting.

"We have no hostages!"

"Our life-readings indicate you do. You now have thirty standard seconds to lower your shields and we'll beam him on board."

The Orion looked exasperated, as if none of this was his will in the first place.

"We have no information on this matter. We were dispatched to stop a gamma ray attack on our systems, after our first squadron failed to complete." Still, he remembered to look fearsome.

Scotty just could not get over the idea that something was completely wrong with this, and he hated to admit it, but he was starting to believe the Orion captain, despite his green skin, dressed in ridiculous bands and braces and hides.

"We will forward our life-reading data at once," Scotty said, waving at Chekov, up at science.

There were some very unconcerned, strangely un-stressed computer noise, and then a long pause.

Finally, the Orion squinted down, apparently at a screen by his knees.

"That reading emanates from a ship of the first squadron, the Sea God's Trident," the other commander said, shaking his head in abrupt dismissal, as if the whole thing were some idiotic misconception.

"Sulu, get me a reading on the location of that ship."

"Aye, sir."

And a few seconds later, the navigator had the answer.

"Mr. Scott, it's the ship we grabbed an hour ago—it was parked behind the moon. But now it's gone."

Now Scotty leaned back, and sighed.

"Thank you for your attention to this matter, Commander," was all Scotty could think to say, as the Orion had (quite unexpectedly) been telling the truth. "Please stand by while we attempt a… peaceful… rescue of our Captain, from that vessel."

With a trace of exasperation, mixed with relief in the face of a much larger ship, the Orion broke the connection, and once again the bridge crew looked out on the rogue planet: largely hidden by the dust from its recent brush with the glowing moon.

"They're out of range, Mr. Scott," Sulu said, anticipating the commander's next move.

"Aye, they would be. Bring us around, we're goin' out there again, after her."

Jagged bits of blue lightning danced across Jim Kirk's head and body, almost as tight as his own skin.

He was lying on the deck of some ship: Orion, it seemed to him, from the design. And Mr. Brazeltine paced around him as though he could thoroughly enjoy the sight of the captain writhing on the floor for hours on end. Once again Brazeltine had donned his zebra-striped robe, as the minister of energy, and the cassock-like garment swayed as he circled, over a suit of dark clothes. The swagger of his triumph was unmistakable, along with the possibility of some ritualistic punishment.

"Just… tell me what you want," Kirk finally gasped out, trying to maintain eye contact with the Chilion counsel leader.

"Well," Brazeltine said, tilting his head and looking out into the gangway of the vessel, to where there must still be some badly scorched Orion bodies, "to tell the truth, I haven't quite decided yet, Captain."

This was not good news, as it left Kirk no place to start the bargaining. The sizzling blue energy burned like a thousand jagged knife tips against his flesh, casting a white glow that left him looking like a veined marble statue, fallen off its pedestal, perhaps.

It was about then that Jim Kirk realized they must be in the shadow of Chilion, or perhaps of the moon (relative to the Pocket), and that he must be on the ship they'd brought back from the abyss of intergalactic space, with such great effort. He hadn't felt a single explosion of gamma rays against the hull yet, and there wasn't a living Orion in sight.

But just then, to his surprise, a green-skinned amazon sauntered in, with the usual Orion pretense of a gracious kind of sleaze: wearing little more than the long dark wreath of curls that reached from the top of her head, all the way down below her waist.

An occasional spectral "jump," and a dash of diagonal green lightning across her undulating torso made it clear she was just the face of the damaged computer, though, seemingly come to life—to watch what was going on in this round metal room. Kirk could only hope the proceedings would be transmitted to her sister ships—and somehow even to the Enterprise.

He tried to get up off the deck, but those hundred or so little spiders of electricity all became stronger, merging with seeming enthusiasm into a dozen larger, much stronger charges that still covered him, and pushed him back down in a painful struggle. Then those greater, throbbing lightning bolts finally scattered out again, from the hideous, blinding dozen, once he was flat on his back. And he was back where he started: covered with blue-white arachnids—just the way he was, a second or two after beam-up, once he'd been brought down by the flash of some hand-weapon.

The council leader sighed, and even smiled a bit, at Kirk's painful attempts to rise up off the deck of the alien craft. Brazeltine's manner was decidedly light-hearted as he wandered back and forth, first examining Orion equipment, and then regarding the great explorer, brought low: looking as if he couldn't decide if he wanted to pilfer some more alien technology, or merely grind a shoe-tip between Kirk's ribs.

"You think we're just… some kind of joke, Captain: that we preen and pose and imagine ourselves to be these exalted creatures, stomping on every innocent little thing in our path, for the sake of our own luxury. Believe me, I know all about it," he nodded with great self-assurance, for he must have listened to every conversation Jim Kirk had had with the beautiful Allena.

"You weren't a joke to the people on the Aurora," Kirk said, between gritted teeth. He didn't mention the eight crewmen he'd lost the same way.

"We're all just passing through this Universe, Captain," Brazeltine smiled, in that rehearsed-looking way. "I'm sure, in the long run, your Starfleet would much rather find some way to work with us, than against us."

Something flickered just beyond the corner of his eye, and the captain strained to see the Orion slave girl had knelt down by him, and stretched out along his electrified form on the cold metal floor, as if it were a cozy cushion by the fire. Gently, down came her knees, then her hands, then her elbows, till she was almost wrapped around him, her legs stretching up past his head, and his past hers as well. Her lazy green arm reached out to "feel" the sizzling little charges all along his body, as if stroking down his chest, and down toward his knees, and then back up again. It was very nearly the same pose she would have taken on the bridge of the ship, to dominate her own men.

Brazeltine watched, as if he might have said something to activate into this new posture. Till now, she'd only been standing on the sidelines, as a disengaged party. Then, as if it were a "thought bubble" over his own head, he seemed to re-examine his previous words, looking for a clue: to getting inside the computer of an alien technology. Just as Kirk, himself had done, a dozen times before.

To Kirk's mind, it had to be something he had said about Starfleet: something that set the Orion hologram into an investigative mode… And now both men were watching the ravishing green woman with something vastly different from sex on their minds.

"Yes," Brazeltine said, as if he were merely resuming his previous comments, and not at all striking out on some entirely new strategy. "We are just passing through, possibly into Orion space, where we could make contact with the powerful empire there… Perhaps share our gravity beam technology, or our means of harvesting the plasma swirling into the black holes we share between us."

But the beautiful woman seemed maddeningly aloof, and ran a playful hand along Kirk's arm and leg, which were hairy with blue tendrils of electricity.

"Starfleet has many ways of dealing with those who oppose it," Kirk said defiantly, though he forced the words out with great effort. He dared to lift his head up, to watch both of the green-skinned beings—the corporeal, and the projection, above him.

And, indeed, something suddenly jerked inside the image of the slave girl, as if she had been reminded of something very important. She sat up, quietly, and reversed her position, till her face hovered above his, and those long curls of hair began to drape down into Kirk's own face: as if the dark, shining locks had become the power cords that would link up their minds, and join whole races together. She stared intently down into his eyes: her gaze wrapping around him, as electric spiders danced between their faces.

So it was something to do with Starfleet. And judging from her reaction, bringing her closer, he had to guess it was something else he'd said, as well. What else was opposed to Starfleet, that was so interesting to this beautiful, naked woman?

"It's the beautiful women," Kirk whispered, so quietly Brazeltine couldn't quite hear. The older man knelt down as well; so all three were close together in the middle of the round chamber, inside the dead ship.

"Starfleet, and the enemies who oppose it," he said, repeating the words that had drawn her so close. "And the beautiful women… and" he groped for the final word, the hardest word: "me…"

And just as quickly as that, a fourth face came into view, a grainy projection of the surgeon general, which McCoy had played for him before all of this began: General Crusher's face (like a mask), directly between him and the green-skinned woman, speaking without words. For the Orions had found a way to intercept a particular, coded message, warning of Kirk and a "third front" against the Federation itself.

Chapter Eighteen

Brazeltine stared intently at the projection of the face between Kirk and the slave girl, his own mouth repeating the words General Crusher seemed to be saying, despite a flurry of static from the intercepted message, and the jagged brilliance of the force-field around the captain, and the beautiful woman above it all.

Then the chief councilman leaned back from his lip-reading, and squinted in stunned surprise, repeating to himself:

"Castration." Then he paused again, and looked down at Jim Kirk under a Lilliputian thunderstorm. "Well now, there's a concept we both have in common!"

As quickly as that, the minister produced what looked like a jeweled scalpel from his black-and-white striped robes, and ran it down toward Kirk's thighs. The spiders of electricity reacted hungrily, sending out new little tendrils, as if to taste the blade as it went from the captain's chest, down to the front of his trousers.

"This really works out to everyone's advantage, doesn't it?" Brazeltine was pleasantly transfixed by the notion that no one could argue over the merits of what he was about to do. He skated the knife around down there, between Kirk's legs, watching the energy from little trails of brilliance in its wake.

"Your 'Federation' gets the future of its frontier back under control; the Orions get their vengeance for the destruction of their ships; and we begin to balance the scales, after you ruined… our dear planet."

The projection of the beautiful woman leaned back again, so she was on Kirk's other side. But now her interest seemed to run toward the chief councilman's green skin, like her own. She held her hand out, to see how closely the colors matched, though his was somehow more tinged with blustery red.

"Yes, we are the same, or distant cousins," Brazeltine smiled, encouragingly.

"We don't," Kirk said, nearly gasping as he tried to sit up, "make those… racial associations so lightly. You may seem the same… externally."

He had nearly propped himself up on one elbow, toward the avatar, "but his… circumstance… makes him very different from your people—his love of his own circumstance. His devotion…" Now he groaned, and had to lie back down again, as the sprites of current had grown into throbbing white vines around him.

There was an unmistakable, heavy clang! against the Orion hull—unmistakable to Kirk and the computer woman, anyway. Brazeltine, being a man of palace chambers and not the strange connections between spacecraft in the cold and dark, seemed to ignore the noise, and the odd scraping that followed along after it.

"You can make use of the energy discs," Kirk said, hurriedly, before things got any more out of hand—"you can harness your own warp drive to do—" and here, he had to just mournfully accept the pain of straining against the field—"to do harmlessly, what he's been doing with murder and cruelty."

"This is a matter for further consideration," the beautiful lady said, getting up to go, even though Kirk was still held down by the brilliance, and the knife was finally digging in: cutting open his black trousers. Evidently, Brazeltine had decided he could negotiate with the Orion and get his vengeance all at the same time. Or, he'd somehow sensed his time was nearly up.

Just then, there was a rush of boots running up from below decks, up a metallic staircase that swept around through one of the doors in the circular bulkhead. A phalanx of royal guards, in their black uniforms and red "X" bandoliers across the front, suddenly filled the room. Allena was at the center of the group.

"I'm afraid I can't let you go that far, Uncle Brax," she said, as if the older man were suddenly a disobedient child. The guards lifted Brazeltine off the captain's mid-section, and half of them dragged him back down below, to the transport outside.

Then she did a very quick examination of both the captain's trousers, from a foot or two away, and the naked woman, who seemed to have frozen, temporarily. The naked woman seemed to ignore her, and Allena decided to do likewise, after a moment.

The familiar buzzing of the Enterprise' transporter beams became audible, in that moment, and four red-shirts materialized behind Mr. Spock, who made his own visual check of the situation, with some trace of surprise. He looked around, a fraction of a second later, and spotted a small device on a shelf beyond Kirk's shoulder.

The Vulcan picked it up, a little piece of folded metal with odd hollow spaces, and began sliding a fingertip over one surface, and then another. Finally, the electrical storm that had trapped Kirk so long merely sizzled away into nothingness.

Likewise, as they could hear the space transport outside releasing its hold on an airlock, the other four royal guards simply vanished as if they'd never been there at all.

"It was the Mahlon, or perhaps more than one. I really can't say," Allena confessed, as she was alone with the two commanders, and the naked lady had become permanently lost in thought.

"It really is the strangest thing," Allena said, still sorting it all out herself, barely ten minutes later. "The high council seems utterly de-activated, I suppose you could say. Thanks to you."

"Thanks to me?" Kirk was hastily putting on a new pair of pants in his cabin. Meanwhile, Allena was making a point of looking in the mirror, putting her hair back up in place, to allow him a moment of privacy.

"Well, you've utterly put the fear of the end-times into half of them. You saw how they got up and sang "Swept Away," when we were married last night," she added, pleasantly exasperated by the whole matter. "Now the religious half won't work with the pragmatic half, and the feeling is apparently mutual, so they can't get anything done anymore. They've become powerless. Thanks to you!"

"The price you pay for playing god," he agreed, thinking of the seemingly eternal power of all those old men, and the lives they crushed without a thought. Now they were locked-up, and stalled-out, like an overheated computer themselves.

"So now, I suppose, we shall have to get a divorce," she said, taking him by the hand, as they stood very close together, alone in his rooms.

"It seems so odd," he said, feeling locked-up, and stalled-out, as well.

"Yes," she said, smiling, but looking into the almost non-existent space between them. "You know, I feel like we've been saying goodbye to one another so long, ever since we met, almost, it just seems impossible to say it now, somehow."

"I know," he said, leaning in that last little bit, his arm coming up across her back, to draw her close.

"I guess I thought I could manage the contradiction," the princess said, with a little laugh that wasn't really happy at all. "I mean, I knew you'd have to go along and do all of those things eventually, that we'd have to say goodbye after all and really mean it, forever and always…"

"Then say it as if you don't really mean it at all," he said, still holding her, not knowing which was the contradiction, anymore.

Kirk watched, from the bridge, an hour later, as the destructive gamma rays dwindled and died, and the mysterious Mahlons restored the event horizons around those two black holes in the Pocket. The Orion warships, which had moved to a safe distance behind Chilion, began speeding homeward, without saying a word.

"The planet has begun altering its course, using its artificial oceans," Spock was saying, as he sat at his post again. "It should reach the Orion side, and the nearest star in approximately one hundred and fifty years."

"And, with the high council out of business," McCoy said, with a visible air of relief where he stood, half-way between Jim Kirk and the science officer, "they can probably get their plasma harvest back on-line in a matter of weeks, without having to harm anyone."

"That's the plan," Kirk sighed, glad to be back in the captain's chair at last. Somehow, though, he never wanted to have to go through the joy and anguish and longing and sadness ever again, at least for the time being. He leaned a little closer to the doctor, at his right, and spoke quietly.

"I suppose you can tell the surgeon general he can do… whatever he thinks is right, Bones."

"I think they've given up on all that, for now, Jim," McCoy said, shaking his head. The bridge of the Enterprise overwhelmed all other thought: a huge black ring of control panels, with a hundred flashing bits of information every moment; and the last glimpse of Chilion below, on the main viewer.

"It's something to think about, though," Kirk mused, looking off into the space beyond this funny, isolated world. "All the little princes, all the little princesses, waiting to be united as brothers and sisters, out here."

"I wouldn't pin all my hopes on that," McCoy said, turning to go. "Starfleet will probably just promote you up and away from all of this, before things ever really get out of hand." A few heads turned toward them, at the strange idea of Kirk ever being anywhere else.

"Have to be some pretty big kind of a promotion," the captain managed a smile.

The doctor looked at him for a moment, as if seeing a trace of hidden ruin, from the crash of another warm moon against the captain's own exterior. McCoy just patted him on the shoulder and climbed up the steps to the turbolift.

"A very big promotion," the chief medical officer said, smiling at the unlikeliness of it all, as the red doors closed between them, and he went his way, back down to the ship's infirmary.

Another moment passed, and for some strange reason, just the simple familiarity of it all, everything seemed to have returned to normal once again.

"Take us out of orbit, back to Starbase four, warp-factor three, Mr. Chekov."

"Aye, sir, warp three."

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