Author's Note
Once again, I have to apologize: this book has not been professionally edited; and there will almost certainly be some sentence(s) I only partially changed, in my haste, in various stages of re-write.
Also, I would be very surprised if some talented person has not already tried to rescue Vina from her cage on Talos IV, where she dreamed with Captain Pike, at last official word. I apologize for splashing around in your pool, if you've also been working on this legend. And, I hope you can still enjoy this book on its own, whether I'm the first, or the third, or the tenth author to come to the aid of the beautiful castaway. In some ways, hers is the most romantic (and bizarre) of all Star Trek stories…
"Star Trek's first mysterious beauty returns; just as the Federation is wracked by irrational hatreds and violence—leading Kirk and Spock back to a strangely abandoned Talos IV..."
"VINA ESCAPED"
by
Richard T. Green
PROLOGUE
It was certainly a beautiful day for shopping, and Jessie Landon bundled along with the crowd, down a sidewalk in Rigel II's busiest city, carrying at least six shopping bags, along with an immense feeling of satisfaction. Only two of the bags were really huge, and though she'd have some explaining to do when she got back home, she felt sure her husband, a dust-back dilithium miner, would have to agree she'd made some very cagey purchases on a weekend spree, all by her lonesome.
The spires of the city reached up all around into the glowing blue sky and, above that, sky-cars soared in great silent grids, occasionally interrupted by a tic-tac-toe line of a larger craft, still higher above, heading off to the still greater Rigel III. It was a far cry from where she usually called home. She simply couldn't imagine a more horrible place to have to strike it rich than Tarsus X. Why was all that precious dilithium always in the hardest place to find, these days? But, strike it rich they had and, in another year or so, Bob would retire and they could spend all their time shopping or relaxing or…
Something caught her eye: a very smart, silky dress in a huge shop window, as robotic mannequins half-swooned like ballet dancers in expensive designer gowns. Jessie stood there, on her way back to the hotel, where she would put in a sub-space call to her sweetie, a week away at warp eight.
What a gown, what a color, what a swooping set of untied-ties coming down off the shoulders, and curling just above the floor, like the ribbons of Fate: starting up around those slender, robotic arms, and unspooling forever like the most elegant of creped streamers. It even had a little round veil to match, brushing against the forehead…
Jessie put one foot out toward the shop entrance, drawn in by the thrill of the kill, as she made up her mind to try for one more find. Then her other foot swung forward with perfect confidence, as busy Rigilians swarmed around her on all sides, in their smart big-city suits and going-to-market clothes.
And her toe bumped into something soft.
"Oh, my," she said, without quite registering the disastrous sight at her feet, nor the fact that she was suddenly standing in what appeared to be a glistening pool of orange blood, around her dressy white shoes. She could swear the sticky orange mess wasn't there a moment ago… And then her temples started to pound, and her forehead felt like ice, and she let out a little scream, right before she fainted dead away: collapsing onto all those shopping bags in a heap.
Now the robotic models in the window seemed to be writhing in mourning: as if they, too, might collapse: slowly and elegantly beseeching the Heavens for some kind of justice or reasoning to explain—not only Mrs. Landon, lying there unconscious, on her all her shopping bags—but the outrageously mutilated body at her feet, with its long silvery robe and huge cranium, as big as a pregnant belly. It also seemed that half the monstrous brain was chopped to bits from knife-wounds above its wizened little face. Its staring eyes seemed wise and hard, even in the absolute stillness of death. Its blood was still spreading, and poor Jessie was the only one close enough to touch the body. Everyone else, who'd stopped so suddenly in amazement, was keeping a half-meter or so's safe-distance. After a long, long moment, Jessie's eyes began to flutter, and she began to stir again.
But the crowd quickly grew, and pictures were snapped, and police were summoned, and their individual murmurs became like a feverish whispered din: all focused into the center of that quiet, polite mob. Everyone had to agree they'd never seen an alien quite like that one before, and wasn't it terrible, and what about that wealthy middle-aged lady lying there next to it, and should they even try to touch her, or it, or either one, themselves?
But what they didn't know; what almost no one knew, was that the United Federation of Planets had gone to very great lengths to make sure that no one had ever heard of Talos IV, or the humanoids they'd found there, and so thoroughly cordoned-off. Only a select handful of officers could have told the story, and they'd been sworn to secrecy years ago, on board a single starship, the USS Enterprise.
But now, all that careful planning was out the window, just like that.
Chapter One
By chance or luck, four great starships lay moored a few days later, at Starbase XI: their saucers and long warp engines lined-up like shields and swords after battle. It wasn't proper security: at least two of them could have been diverted another three weeks out of the way, for safety reasons; but one (the Enterprise)would only be there a short time, and the others would soon depart as well.
From his own bridge, James T. Kirk could see the muscular shadows of the Farragut, and also the newer Constellation and Intrepid lined-up magnificently across the vast grid-work that surrounded the base itself. It had been nearly two years since their two warp-drive namesakes were lost. But, as if to deny the power of their destroyers, Starfleet decreed the greatest fleet in the galaxy would not be broken, 'by name or nemesis.' In fact, there were fourteen starships in the line, at the moment, including the originals. But that number tended to fluctuate.
Captain Kirk's own ship had only just arrived and, with the usual sense of the absurd, would soon be off again, without much chance for crews to mingle, after some minor business had been settled with an unnamed Admiral on base.
Was it him, or did the usual efficiency on the bridge around him, the men in smart black trousers, the women in impossibly short skirts, seem clipped or even silently offended in their bearing, as they came and went from the turbolift behind him, or monitored distant voices below decks. It seemed clear that each knew they'd be off along the far frontier before they'd ever had a chance to greet their fellow officers for a smile, or a laugh, or some fanciful hope of a chance encounter.
He signed another report on another wedge-pad, another requisition for another batch of flour and rice and beans and well, to be honest, he didn't read through a list of stores that four other officers had signed-off on already. And another beautiful young woman nodded and took the wedge-pad and stylus, barely looking into his smiling, hazel eyes before going back to the turbolift. She pointedly did not stopto regard the lonely human outpost out in space, on the viewscreen, that floated on an imaginary tactical spoke somewhere between Earth and the Neutral Zone, a base suddenly made garish by those four grand starships hanging from her invisible tethers, in the middle of nowhere.
Sorry, was all he could imagine himself saying, as he watched this latest yeoman leave the bridge, turning her back on the starry view of the floating Ferris wheel of the base, where the crews of other ships would already be gathering and getting together and planning dances like characters in a Jane Austen novel, or something more modern. The turbolift doors snapped shut behind her. It almost seemed like his own crew was mad at him: that he couldn't wrangle a few days, or even a few hours' adventure for them with their own kind, before heading back to the depths once more.
"Starbase signals Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock, report at once," Lieutenant Uhura, the most beautiful of all the women on board, announced in her coolest and most efficient tone, from over his right shoulder, in her crimson skirt: also not allowing herself to regard the main viewscreen. Everyone wants off the boat, Kirk mused, when they aren't darkly summoned by some unidentified admiral…
"Come on, Spock," he muttered, not knowing which would be worse: facing a top-level bureaucrat, living in a parallel universe of treaties and tactics; or facing his own men, once the ship had finished its all-too-brief stop. The Vulcan, with his longer legs, was right along-side of him from the science console and into the lift, the two marching almost as one.
"Transporter room," Kirk said, either to his first officer, or to the quietly omnipresent ship's computer, and the small elevator scooted down, and then one way, and then another through the vessel, till they stepped out into a curving corridor.
When they reached the transporter, the usual complex humming filled the air, reassuring him that, in a few moments, he'd be standing in the base itself: his atoms spun into light and then shot across the freezing vacuum. He smiled to Scotty, at the big control panel a safe distance away.
"Ye'll be going through a couple of beaming cycles before ye actually get there, Captain," Mr. Scott said, looking bemused or even worried, as the two commanding officers stepped on to the thick quartz-like pads, and stood at attention.
"You know as much about it as I do, Scotty," Jim Kirk said, and gave a little nod. He and the stalwart Vulcan were seemingly devoured by golden shimmering locusts: first in their bellies, and then their heads and arms and legs; and then they were gone. The transporter's buzzing rose to a peak and fell off, till the steady hum of the machinery resumed its hypnotic regularity.
"Aye, it's like a shell game," Scotty said, standing alone, shaking his head and looking down at the big control scanner, knowing Starfleet was up to something. He could see from the instruments that his two superior officers were already materializing in another, activated chamber, all ready to be beame to some unknown, third location, beyond his detection.
The captain thought he could see, or sense, another Spartan, military-type transporter chamber fleetingly, around him. He knew his boots and feet and ankles had almost come to rest on another glassy lens, somewhere else. And then, it happened again, a faint weightlessness, and then the sensation of gravity again, as that next, second or third, mysterious chamber vanished like a flicker of a dream. But as they finally seemed to have arrived in an utterly blackened room, he also knew he and his first officer might just as well be dead and stuck in Limbo.
He thought he could hear Spock shifting his weight, at arm's distance to his right, so he assumed they were wherever Starfleet wanted them to be. At least, for the moment. But the lights gradually came on around them, and an unsmiling lieutenant led them out.
They were silently ushered through a long succession of corridors and doorways and even trams and station stops and across hallway intersections, where guards were holding back the usual Starbase personnel, and Kirk and Spock (and their dour escort) rode alone through tunnels and above station mezzanines. It seemed they traced their way from one end of the Starbase to the other. And all the while, the number of technicians roaming the halls or chatting in hatches grew smaller and smaller as they went around one corner after another, till it seemed they'd run out of all other life forms entirely. But it was clear that someone could have given someone some better coordinates, to save time and boot-leather, if there'd been any real planning before-hand. The sheer waste of time began to wear on him, though his Vulcan friend seemed unperturbed. What were they pursuing? Or perhaps, what were they running away from, in such secrecy?
Finally, they stepped through some odd black doors into another darkened room, like the one they'd finally materialized in nearly twenty minutes earlier and, by that time, Kirk was thoroughly exasperated. It was not much different from a cadet's nightmare, where you search and search, but never find the right Academy classroom, hurrying up and down every hall and passageway, until you've searched the entire year away, only to stumble in, and be swept into a final exam you couldn't possibly pass.
"Ah, hello, gentlemen," a rich, British, or perhaps Lunar-sounding voice said, from somewhere up above. A moment's visual searching finally allowed Kirk to pinpoint a ruddy, square-faced man, slowly descending toward them in this very poorly lit room… or hanger. From the sound of his boots, it seemed he was quietly clanging down a metal staircase, and the sound echoed into unseen corners.
"Admiral," Kirk nodded, and in a moment he recognized the bulldog jowls of the head of Starfleet Intelligence. "Admiral McCrae," he said, introducing him to Mr. Spock.
"Forgive me, gentleman," McCrae shrugged, as if forgiveness would be automatic, "Starfleet insists my own coordinates remain unlisted," he smiled, as if it was a rather idiotic little joke. "Otherwise, you'd be finished and on your way by now."
"On our way…" Kirk said, stopping himself in his impatient mood.
"If you would, please," McCrae said, gesturing toward them with one old, blotchy hand, stretched out from an entirely black Starfleet Intelligence tunic, while the other hand seemed suspended in the dark, pointing them up the way he'd come. And so they climbed the black stairs, in the dark hanger, following the man who seemed to command the very shadows themselves.
McCrae disappeared into a room up the stairs and ahead of them, and as they caught up, everything was suddenly impossibly white inside, including the admiral's own tunic, slacks, boots and all, through some chameleonic gimmickry, probably a sudden power charge through the clothing fibers, altering the molecular structure from black to white, using certain 23rd Century paints or dyes. He had to double-check to see that his own golden-brown tunic, and Spock's blue science shirt, hadn't changed as well, before he noticed they stood around a white table, in the blindingly lit room.
"Won't you sit down," McCrae sighed, his voice as comforting as an oboe, though his expression seemed frozen, in this arctic chamber. Against the plain glowing walls and floor, the little imperfections in his skin, and even the tiniest terra-cotta veins in his old eyes, stood out like gashes.
A moment later, something awful happened, as if Kirk had blinked and missed some terrible murder right before his very eyes: a frail little body had appeared before them on the table, bloody and mutilated. Its head was odd and huge, though the face was as small as an old woman's below the great brain-case, and stony brow. The penetrating eyes seemed infinitely weary. The captain sat down, like an unwilling participant at a cannibal's dinner table, and watched as McCrae counted-up all the open gashes in the forehead, like distant birds silhouetted against a wintry sky.
He glanced across the table at Spock, as if expecting the science officer to share his schoolboy's air of revulsion. But, instead, Spock seemed utterly transfixed. It had been, well, nearly three years, but after a moment Kirk recognized the tiny alien form as a Talosian, a member of a dying race of telepaths so feared and powerful, they were cordoned off to live their last days buried inside a planet under strict Federation quarantine. Except of course, for this one, he supposed. It seemed to hypnotize Spock, even after an obviously brutal death.
"Words hardly suffice," McCrae sighed, finally, having quietly counted up the chaos of all the wounds across the corpse's head. Then he turned to study Mr. Spock's own face, in particular, and Kirk himself had to admit, the Vulcan looked as though he'd been stabbed as well, by some unseen blade.
"Words hardly suffice," McCrae repeated, as if he were a character in a play, in which Mr. Spock had apparently failed to learn his lines. And now it seemed to Jim Kirk the story had somehow become entirely about Mr. Spock, and this alien body, so far from its natural grave.
"Explain," Kirk said, now angry at the admiral's apparent need to embarrass, or to be more precise, humiliate his close friend.
Mr. Spock cleared his throat, something he would never do in a formal setting, under normal circumstances at all. At last, he spoke, and his words seemed embroidered, each one, by a Vulcan intensity that might pass for shame, in a lesser race.
"I had, perhaps," the Vulcan began, his eyes wandering along the edge of the white table, where holographic blood pooled in a river and tributaries of shallow lines, and vanished as it reached the edge, "believed too much in the good will of…"
"In the good will of an alien race? Desperate to save itself from forced extinction?" McCrae interrupted, nodding in false sympathy, quietly becoming more scornful than the worst sarcasm. "So desperate were they, that, upon your first encounter on Talos IV, they lured your ship into their system with a false distress signal, and Captain Pike, along with two female crewmen, as part of some ridiculous plan to revive their ruined world? Using the offspring of Starfleet officers like herds of cattle, to rebuild an entire civilization?" Each new question made his vocal woodwinds harsher, as the admiral's face grew red against his white collar. "A noble plan," McCrae smiled, "marred only by an… unbroken string of utterly despicable acts."
"My chief concern," the Vulcan began, blinking and breathing in a strange, uneven pace, "was the welfare of my previous captain, so gravely injured that no science we know could treat him. It was with that motive alone that I brought him back, years later, to…"
"Talos IV," Kirk nodded, remembering the death sentence Spock faced—was it two and a half years ago? For his noble deed? "But you can't try a man twice for the same crime," the current captain of the Enterprise insisted, now fully McCrae's equal in righteous indignation.
The admiral's look of withering disdain seemed to suggest that he could do pretty much anything he wanted to, to anyone, and find a way to keep it secret if he chose. Finally, the moment of quiet that followed, along with the lifeless body in their midst, reduced their passions to a respectful quietude, allowing a tense silence pushed through the room like a glacier.
"The only problem with your Vulcan heart," McCrae said at last, "is its lack of practiced discretion. No one questions your devotion to Captain Pike, but a human heart grows used to its own passions, and accepts some awful truths as inevitable, and regrettably… un-fixable. Perhaps, if you'd merely had the emotional perspective, to come to terms with Captain Pike's unfortunate condition," the admiral nearly shrugged, "none of this would ever have had to happen."
"None of what?" Kirk demanded, for nothing had really been explained yet.
"It did occur to me," Spock said, almost inaudibly, "sometime later, that the telepaths of Talos IV might eventually unlock Captain Pike's mind, and perhaps… trick him… into restoring their ancient technology, through his own intuitive mechanical brilliance." The words, though kind to the memory of his former commander, seemed like ashes in his mouth.
"And like any being on any world other than Vulcan," McCrae said, seemingly grateful at last to be near the end of a very unpleasant conference, "their ambitions have become all-consuming. Probably without Captain Pike's ever really understanding their larger purpose," McCrae continued, wiping his brow and turning away, mercifully, at last. "Or, let us hope that to be the case."
The admiral began pacing around the table, ponderously close behind each commander in his chair, as he went around. "It's quite probable that Captain Pike, in his diminished physical state, never knew what they were up to. He may have thought he was preparing his own escape, or merely distracting himself with some novel, unknown science, to while away the hours: as they presented him with one ancient, forgotten machine after another."
Now even Kirk's anger chilled, as he imagined the hungry mind of Chris Pike, feasting upon some rare, magical machinery, buried far below the surface of Talos IV: the oddest playthings a man might ever find, and just when he thought his adventures had all run out.
"I hesitate to ask," Kirk said at last, "but where…" his eyes swept along the length of the corpse before him.
"Where was this one found? Blessedly not on the most populated of planets, Captain. Not on Rigel III, nor on Earth; nor on the great teaching planets. At least, not yet. But word travels fast. And pictures and a few unfortunate comments from retired officers have all raised certain questions. And in the meantime, we have no way of controlling that chatter, if the denizens of Talos IV choose to lurk among us."
"With their power of illusion," Kirk said, his words coming in fragments as his mind raced along.
"I'm sure you understand the danger," McCrae said, professorially.
"If I didn't know better, I might wonder," Kirk said, folding his arms uncomfortably over his chest, "if my whole life had been an illusion, if these creatures were on the loose. Never knowing if I were a slave, or a fool, or… just living someone else's dreams. If… even my dreams were not my own."
"If you were capable of wondering, at all," the admiral nodded, and clucked his lips together. At last, he touched the edge of the white table, and the holographic corpse mercifully vanished, along with all the guilty streams of orange blood around its head.
"And at that point," McCrae said, stepping around where the Talosian head had been a few seconds ago, "illusion becomes the power beyond all powers. Along with the fear born of that power's very existence. And, if they can trick Captain Pike into doing their bidding, who among us is safe?"
"How do you clean up… something like that?" Kirk was utterly perplexed.
"I'm so glad you asked, Captain Kirk," the admiral said, a funny half-smile playing on his face, like a challenge, as he walked back to the white door. And, as he stepped outside, his tunic and slacks and boots all turned black again, and the two Enterprise commanders got up and followed back into the dark hanger. Now they stood at the top of that seemingly invisible staircase, and McCrae spoke again with that little smile, that might have been reassuring under almost any other circumstance.
"Oh, and Mr. Spock," he began, just as the Vulcan passed, causing him to turn around with a trace of surprise or even anguish. "There are those, in my branch, who believe," McCrae continued, smiling all the while, "…who believe that you, as a partial telepath yourself, may be operating in sympathy with this adversary. I do hope you can prove them wrong."
Slowly, Jim Kirk turned to find the black hand-rail, and take the first step down on the metal tread, his boot clanging quietly against it, down into the hanger. McCrae's voice, taunting once again, stopped him, half-way down.
"You're really neither fish nor fowl, are you, Mr. Spock?" The words echoed in the dark.
And with that, the admiral vanished behind them, like a ghost, or like that dead body on the table. Kirk realized—the admiral had protected himself from contamination by them—though Kirk hardly had any contact with a Talosian, himself, and Spock, barely any more than that. But, as far as Starfleet was concerned, even that meant they were already damaged goods. Holograms were all they could be trusted with, now.
The damage, too, from McCrae's final, zoological observation was also done, and both commanders knew exactly what the head of intelligence had meant, before he disappeared with his sententious little smile: that a man like Spock, being half-Vulcan and half-human, would always be the first to be suspected in any question of betrayal.
"Here's your hat, what's your hurry," Kirk mused, trying to change the subject.
As they climbed down into the echoing chamber, wondering what would come next, a shaft of light opened up in the center of the hanger, and then another, and several more, until they could see a smallish black ship resting before them, with a fuselage that was about the size of a half-dozen shuttlecraft. It was fitted with very large warp engines, for its size, and coated with a black finish. Cautiously at first, they circled the scout ship, taking note of each odd armor plate and sensor intake and weapons muzzle scattered across the top and bottom.
Once they'd come full-circle, a hatch opened with a vacuum gasp! Kirk raised his eyebrows and led the way inside, up a little series of rungs, into the stealthy little craft.
Of course, the crawl-way and then the central corridor from stem to stern was very cramped, and studded with knobs and panels and lights and smaller hatches, and four small cabins—nothing like the broad corridors on the Enterprise, a ship that was meant to be lived in, self-contained, for years. Just squeezing up to its control cabin seemed to take almost as much time as a stroll from his quarters on deck five, up to the bridge—though the actual distance was less than a walk to the turbolift. The two men catapulted themselves, gymnast-style, into the padded pilots' seats, and all at once the control panels before them came to glittering life, with dozens of Duotronic readouts.
"At least that part's familiar," the captain said, relieved. He studied the computer panels at his fingertips for a moment, before toying with the astrogation controls, which were also quite like a starship's.
"Controls are locked," he said, with a trace of surprise, being used to making his own path, out along the edge of the galaxy. He tried to program the navigation system once again, touching a button here, and then another there.
"This ship's course must have been programmed in advance, Captain," Spock said, turning his gaze out the forward slanting portals, to a black wall that suddenly seemed to be splitting in half: revealing more blackness beyond, and the bright distant stars. Finally, Kirk too gave in to the ship's computer, watching helplessly as they emerged on the far end of the Starbase, and out of sight of the Enterprise, if she was even there anymore. Once they'd made safe-distance on impulse power, the little ship's hulking engines came thrumming to life. And, without any command or warning, they simply disappeared into warp space.
But, two hours later, Kirk could stand it no longer.
"I hope you're not… taking this too hard, Mr. Spock," he said, embarrassed to bring it up at all. But when he glanced over at his friend, the Vulcan was as unreadable as ever, though perhaps he nodded in acknowledgement of Kirk's thoughtfulness. Only the quiet voices of the cockpit computers, announcing little reports and statuses, filled the awkward silence. Eventually, Jim Kirk excused himself and roamed down through the ship, learning many of its secrets.
There wasn't really that much to see, just the plain cabins, with their empty hammocks, a transporter booth, and various wall consoles to sustain life and nutrition, and a weapons closet with two sets of big phaser rifles and pistols. Finally the captain squeezed up the central gangway again, and up into the big pilot's seat. He allowed himself one quick probing glance at the science officer, whose attention to the instruments had hardened to a hawk-like intensity .
"ETA?" Kirk said, as casually as he could manage.
"Fourteen hours, seventeen minutes, eleven seconds at warp sixteen."
"What do you think," Kirk finally said, studying the computer readouts at his finger-tips, "we'll find when we get there?"
"Unknown. Clearly, if one of them has made it off-world, some greater number of them may have also moved out into other systems. Some may still remain."
"What about Chris Pike," Kirk said.
Spock allowed himself to lean back slightly, as if surrendering to the inevitable. His lower lip thrust upward, almost truculently, though it might have been nothing more than his own uncertainty.
"Survival rates for victims of Prometheus radiation vary widely," he said, quietly. "The flesh and organs are simultaneously ravaged and regenerated, like the entrails of the titan Prometheus, himself, in the first part of a dramatic trilogy, based on your Earth legend. But without adequate medical attention…" His voice trailed off for a moment, and Captain Kirk had to resist the temptation to interrupt.
"I would assign a very low probability to his survival," the Vulcan finished, at last. Then, his only emotional reaction (if it could even be described as such) was to blink once, and purse his lips again, as if to swallow some unspeakably human sentiment.
"Mr. Spock," Kirk began, "I'm not sure I have the right to ask this, but… how different was your relationship with Captain Pike, from ours?" He felt like a worried wife, asking "was she prettier than me." But, he knew, it was also a key to understanding everything that led up to this moment.
The first officer allowed his head to rear back slightly, in open surprise, though his dark eyes stared straight ahead, through the forward portal. "I was somewhat younger. But, if you are implying Captain Pike was a sort of 'father figure,' I would remind you that Vulcan psychology is somewhat different from that of humans."
"But you're both."
The science officer's shoulders sank slightly, at being reminded again of his mixed heritage, and how it may have betrayed him, and now all of them. "I am incapable of analyzing feelings that have never broached my consciousness. And," he added, in a moment of surprising vulnerability, "I am equally unable to assess any feelings that may have colored my relationship, without my knowledge."
"Fair enough," Kirk said, no closer to understanding than before. "But if I ever… end up like Chris Pike," he said, beginning to smile in spite of himself, "I hope you'll rescue me from a burn ward, too."
"The statistical probability of any starship commander ending his years in a persistent vegetative state has proven to be extremely low. They rarely last long enough." Then, after a moment, "but should such a thing ever come to pass, I will certainly do my utmost to put you in more favorable circumstances."
"Thank you, Mr. Spock," Kirk nodded, imagining the Vulcan spiriting him away to some planet of buxom amazons, somewhere in the unknown reaches of the galaxy, when his own good luck had finally run out. Then he busied himself with the cockpit's scanners, which showed the Talos star-system about to appear on the wide, narrow portals ahead. But, in his own mind, it was clear that Chris Pike was more than a commander to the younger Spock.
Talos IV, on the long-range sensor, resembled a little circle of diseased tissue, as seen through an old optical microscope. Its surface was faintly illumined by an ancient star, to reveal dull pewter swathes of cloud, and bruised vistas where some kind of oceans once rolled. The exposed purple of the sea beds reminded Kirk of the terrible radiation burns that had scarred Captain Pike's own face.
Shattered cliffs stood where mountains had soared, a dusty continent on an equally dusty sea now. And all the cities that glittered upon its breast were long gone. But, as Spock had learned, a few thousand inhabitants had managed to survive underground, using their mental powers to lure unsuspecting ships from the nearest space-lanes, to be imprisoned in deep volcanic chambers. There, those poor captains and whatever crews they had were forced to relive old and loves and battles, for the amusement of their dream-masters, as all concerned just withered away. Long before their time, their explorers' lives had turned to the stuff of nursing homes, or asylums.
They also knew that only a tiny handful of those thousands of "keepers" had ever been seen, when the Enterprise first answered a false distress signal, and they disappeared inside a long-dead volcano with the cruelly disfigured Captain Pike, when the Enterprise finally returned again, less than three years ago. At the time, it seemed like a harmless enough arrangement: the last of the telepaths tending to a legendary captain in his last, helpless days.
"Well, you know what they say," Kirk said, as though he were reading Spock's mind, for a change. "Every officer has that 'one planet' they just keep coming back to. Whether they want to, or not," he added, as if you couldn't have picked a much worse one if you tried.
"Indeed," Spock said, still very quiet, and almost to himself.
"No sign of warning, from the deep space buoys," Kirk said, checking the instruments quizzically, wondering if they'd see any warning shots across their bow, as they entered the quarantined system.
"Our passage may have been cleared by Starfleet." Another minute or two passed.
"Do you ever wonder," Kirk said, almost whimsically, "if we haven't just been stuck back there ourselves, on Talos, and if all of this isn't just some sort of illusion?"
"They were quite clear about their motives," the Vulcan tilting his head, as if to review his calculations once more, afresh. "Repopulate their ruined world, as the air and land gradually healed itself, if it wasn't too late already. Perhaps they hoped to live through their new colonists, or merge consciences with them entirely, to retake their own world one day... However, I, myself, am quite certain I have not been part of some vast repopulation effort, thus far." There was an awkward pause after that declaration.
"That's easy for you to say, Mr. Spock! Some of us can't be so sure!" Kirk said, unable to keep from smiling at the sudden thought that all his own sexual conquests since they dropped-off Captain Pike might just have been an illusion, to disguise a clever breeding program they'd been caught in, unawares.
"Indeed," Spock said, seeming to acknowledge Kirk's sudden doubts. "You may have had a different set of experiences."
Jim Kirk decided to mark that down as a rare joke from his science officer, in hopes his mood might brighten. The captain excused himself and crawled out of the tiny nose of the ship, and back down the submarine-type corridor, bristling with grab-holds and blinking environmental read-outs, along with various control panels for docking and hatches, till he finally stepped inside the little closet that passed for a shared bunk room: two semi-rigid hammocks and a metallic communications grill on the wall. He climbed into the lower one hammock, swaying gently as he fell asleep.
Six hours later, right on cue, he woke up and stumbled up the long, squeezed corridor on his way to the cockpit. The rooms on either side looked like tiny jail cells, without bars.
And there was Mr. Spock, looking strangely transfixed, as if he were locked in some kind of horrific telepathic struggle already. It occurred to Jim Kirk to shake him a bit, and see if he was all right but, then again, that just might make things worse.
The pathetic old Talos sun was now faintly visible in the upper left of the screen, as the ship made its final arc toward the fourth planet in orbit. The other worlds didn't look much better—they passed a monstrous gas giant that seemed puffed with false pride, tilting and laughing like a fat man just off to the lower left, as the sun gazed back, looking tiny and cold by comparison. Inside Talos IV's orbit, the inner three worlds were too small to see with the naked eye, but eventually Kirk thought he could just barely discern one of them, adrift in the lonely middle. And here was Talos IV growing before them: he wondered if it might finally, perversely, be safe—now that the rest of the galaxy faced the threat of their rule.
Suddenly Spock snapped out of it, as if he'd been in a very deep trance or buried under an avalanche of memories. His fingers tapped on the controls, and the captain could see he was working up his report.
"Life form readings?" Kirk knew that was the first thing the scientist was calling up from the sensors.
"There are signs of at least two beneath the surface. Though, whether they are Talosians, or merely the last prisoners of their menagerie, remains unclear."
"And Captain Pike?" There was another dreadful pause, as Spock looked down at the blinking instruments.
"Negative. Preparing to enter orbit," Spock added, only occasionally touching a light pad on the sweeping console before them.
Kirk nodded, wanting to ask about that strange, trance-like episode but, somehow, thinking it might be too personal, filled with too many empty dreams. This time, at least, Spock had been able to fight his way off his own dead Talos.
"Anything else to report?" Obviously, the captain couldn't quite give up his curiosity.
"Signs of minor renewal of the planet's atmosphere and soil balance, some three-quarters' million standard years after a cataclysmic war."
"Anything else to report… on your own… status?"
Inevitably, there was a moment's pause, not as awkward as it would have been on the busy bridge of the USS Enterprise, but it did seem to Jim Kirk that his friend and first officer was trying to remove the king of clubs from the middle of a very large house of cards, while leaving the rest of the structure perfectly intact. The Vulcan swallowed once, before speaking.
"I was simply trying to prepare myself. Logically, I should also offer to prepare you, mentally, for any illusions that may… overwhelm your own better judgment."
"That would be fine, Mr. Spock," he said, diplomatically, as the puss-colored planet rolled just off the port-side, its old sea beds aching beneath icy mountains.
After first trying to lay hands on the captain across the gap between the two pilots' seats, they realized they'd have to get up and stand in the little vestibule at the rear of the cockpit, in order to exchange thoughts in the usual manner. So, there they were, Kirk kneeling like an acolyte before a saint, whose long orange fingers pressed the nerves and blood vessels in the Iowa farm boy's cheeks and temples, and behind his human jaw, till Jim Kirk thought he might be in danger of passing out.
And then there was the strangely beautiful rush of something like sparkling numbers and equations, and an odd joy in peacefulness: a reassurance that he could open his mind. It was, at first, like looking over a very tall building's edge, except that everything below was rushing up at him, windows and transports and pedestrians far below, people from his past, from Spock's past; windows of days passing by, flying up to the sky behind him, and the occasional unpredictability, like an odd, spectral, holographic giraffe, or perhaps a hundred moments of shared duty on board their great starship.
And then it was a strange rush of conviction, the kind you never feel when you're actually doing the everyday things you take for granted. But suddenly every relationship in Jim Kirk's life became ten times stronger, more valuable, and everything he just assumed would always be there was fiercely stamped into his soul, like the souls of women: like loving fire-brands that would show his true self's ownership, and anchor him to his previous reality. At the same time, his heart was pounding like an old piston engine about to explode from within. How could a cold-hearted Vulcan understand anything about the importance of human relations, in this way? And how could a half-Vulcan ever even admit to understanding? But the two men communicated that very idea, if only for a moment because, of course, they didn't know where all of this would lead them a day or a week or even a year from now.
And, as much as he hated to accept the notion, it was soon over. Spock disengaged his iron grip from Kirk's face, and the pressures all equalized, and he gasped a deep, cool breath, feeling slightly dizzy.
"Shall I prepare the transporter, Captain?" Spock was helping him up from the metal mesh deck, and then Kirk supported himself with a hand on the back of the pilot's seat.
"Yes, Mr. Spock," he answered, turning to gaze down on Talos IV through the rectangular portals, and knowing this could all still be a terrible mistake. But what could they do, turn and run? The ship itself seemed hard-wired to bring them here. He could only hope it would get them out again, and on to the next step after this, assuming there weren't hundreds of Talosians down there, angrily waiting for them. And, even as he turned and climbed into the pilot's seat, Spock had gone the other way, his boots clanging down to a sealed, armored cabin with the transporter controls inside.
Hard to believe that such a poor excuse for a planet could hold the key to the fate of everyone he'd ever known, across the galaxy, one way or another, in his soul, or through invasion: a rock full of hidden veins and crypts, crawling with tepid, parasitic telepaths, and their wounded, misguided specimens shivering in permanent confinement, and permanent illusion. He let his first full breath in orbit slowly escape his lungs, wondering if he really saw a bit of mist curling from his lips.
And then there was the problem of Chris Pike, left in the worst of medical circumstances, conveniently presumed near death, conveniently presumed to be of no harm or interest to anyone. Except that his mind was still intact. Along with his ingenuity. And (for better or worse) his hopes, as well.
What were they supposed to do? Bring Pike back to Starfleet in chains, in his motorized wheelchair, for somehow unleashing the keepers? How much worse could this get for Spock?
"Not much of a postcard," Kirk sighed, as he and Spock looked around, at the foot of a blasted hill-top. They climbed up a dirt path to where an ancient elevator pad sat within the ruins, where a phaser cannon had shattered many tons of rock, on Spock's first visit.
"Their captives themselves became the postcards, from the worlds and lives they left behind," Spock said, with a trace of bitterness, mumbling the hideous truth. "Each was received here by one cruel deception or another," he added, as they felt the beaming pad beneath them whir to life. "Bringing visions of faraway empires, to amuse these ruined people."
The grasping rocks seemed to ascend up and around them, and fear rolled itself into a ball inside Kirk's stomach. He immediately tried to crush it, clenching his abdominal muscles tight.
He didn't know quite what to expect, except that he knew it would seem extremely, inescapably real to him, whenever it finally happened. And the Talosians wasted no time.
For as soon as they began their descent on a large round elevator pad, he was suddenly whisked away to some filthy prison cell. It was dark and rank and he was pressed-in among too many other prisoners, all stripped of their clothing, like Russian dissidents on old Earth. And he realized, with a sick feeling, that he had been trapped there for years. His sense of revulsion was doubled by a momentary glimpse of his own lost humanity. It taunted him, even as he was pushed this way and that in the stinking unseen crowd, pressing against him on all sides—hearing only the occasional sobbing or sighs in the dark around him, and the splatter of urine against a nearby corner. His own skin was pricked by lice, and his belly panged with hunger, even though his nostrils caught a hundred different scents of dirt and disease. And in a moment, another ten years had passed. And another ten years began unfolding before him, as he shifted from one foot to another, half-asleep in this Earthly cage. He was overwhelmed by the pure barbarism and hopelessness that drowned his senses.
Then, not nearly so real at first, he could see the dark eyes of Mr. Spock burning into his, and felt himself thrashing around in helpless terror. And he emerged, gasping, from this first, long dark trial that day. Gradually, Spock lifted each of his finger-tips from Jim Kirk's face, releasing pressure on his neural pathways, allowing him his own natural human dignity once more.
"Thank you… Mr. Spock," was all he could think to say, as he finally began to look around, still half-bent over, his hands on his thighs as he caught his breath. They were still on the elevator pad, but some meters (or even kilometers) down into the planet, where the occasional drop of unseen water plinked away in the hollow magma tunnels that stretched out in all directions.
He got up, latching his own arm across that of his first officer and, with great effort, he pushed the last memory of the filthy, crowded cell back into the farthest recesses of his mind. "At least we know… the welcoming committee hasn't died out yet," he said, stepping down from the platform, toward a long corridor of ancient, rough rock.
"So it would seem," the Vulcan said, drawing his tricorder as they struck out. Kirk took his phaser off his waistband, and the trilling of the tricorder, and the click of their black boots, made the only sound as they walked. Caves, he thought, running through a list familiar to any Earth man: water, stalactites, stalagmites, slime pits, bats. But the only pitfalls, or diseased little fliers, he could think of now would spring from the dark of the mind. "One that way," Spock said, nodding to his right, having registered a life-form.
"If I had a credit… for every tunnel, under every planet," Kirk said, trying to sound light-hearted, "I could buy a planet. And then spend all the rest of the credits… digging tunnels." Spock, looking into his tricorder, did not appear to have registered the joke. And, immediately, Kirk admonished himself, as he would have done to any younger officer under his command: if Starfleet had wanted a comedian along, they would have nabbed Dr. McCoy, too. But the chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise had nothing to do with creating this whole mess, and Kirk was only there (he supposed) to provide some kind of back-up, as one who may also have been tainted by the thought waves of the Talosians…
"Seventy point four-one meters ahead," Spock said, very quietly, as if they were walking through an unusually dank hospital, so as not to disturb any ghostly patients around them. Soon, darkened cells appeared up ahead, where specimens, or prisoners, once languished behind unbreakable glass.
"If you sense another mental illusion, coming our way," Captain Kirk said, equally quietly, "feel free to warn me. That last one seemed to go on forever."
"I, too, suffered some false imagery," Spock said, without going into any detail. "In reality, it lasted somewhat less than a minute, however."
"When you're in it," Kirk laughed bitterly, "the long passage of time is a very real part of the illusion."
"Agreed," Spock said and, in a minute or so, he touched Kirk on the shoulder, pointing to a dark glass wall just ahead. Kirk strode forward, scratching his upper lip, and re-holstering his weapon, in a show of good will.
Then he stopped, peering into the dim cage where their sensor readings had led them. He looked around for a moment, till he spotted a dim, solitary lump in a far corner. Carefully, he stepped up on a rocky ledge, and cupped his hands against the glass, to screen out reflections from outside.
All at once, and at great speed, the lump lunged toward him from about five meters' distance, slamming against the glass wall with an echoing "thrum!" Kirk stumbled backwards, and was barely caught from falling by his first officer. When he looked up again, he could see a hairy humanoid, with a pig-like snout and dark beady eyes, pressing against the transparency, fogging the glass with heavy breathing from the other side.
After a moment, though, as if he were disappointed, the pig-like creature shuffled back to his corner, and curled up again.
"I'm Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise," Kirk said, a bit loudly, to penetrate the glass, and also as if to penetrate whatever else contained the Tellarite, for this was the species of creature they'd found.
No reaction. Kirk checked over his shoulder, to find Mr. Spock waiting within arms' distance, as if he might stumble or collapse again at any moment from another mysterious illusion, or alien assault. This was, at once, both comical and annoying, and he looked again, to make sure the Vulcan wasn't simply teasing.
"It would appear," Spock said, observing the alien's attitude with interest, "that he has assumed you are simply another illusion yourself, possibly in a long string of unwelcomed dreams." But Kirk was less than entranced. If he had to make up a great argument in favor of his own existence, to every prisoner in this underground penitentiary, and why they should want to escape, he'd never get out himself.
"Go away!" the Tellarite grumbled, curling up in the far corner, like a very bristly, unattractive dog.
"Don't you want to leave this planet?" Kirk asked. "We could take you back to Tellar, or wherever you like!"
The Tellarite grudgingly, raised his boar-like head up and then propped it on his paw, with its curved black claws, the very picture of disinterest; as if he had no intention of coming along.
"Do you know," he asked at last, with a kind of very dry sarcasm, "who I am?"
"No sir, I'm afraid I don't," Kirk said, as graciously as he could.
"I am Hof. General Hof. And as a superior officer, I am accustomed to a certain amount of respect. I am also the most celebrated dreamer on this planet," Hof added, becoming more and more proud and angry as he spoke, his voice quavering at his own undeserved obscurity, and raising himself up to a sitting position. "Every year we have a ceremony to name the one dreamer who dreams the greatest dreams. And every year, it is I who claims the greatest victory of the dreamers' 'dreaming competition'!"
By now, the Tellarite's voice had become louder, and one of his paws extended like a fist in their direction. "Every year, all the dreamers of this world are gathered together in their most elegant finery," Hof said, slowly rising on his haunches, like a rusty-colored bear, standing hunched over. "Every year," he said, his little piggy eyes glowing with dew, "they rise to their feet and applaud the great General Hof, for his most dramatic dreams: the great wars he must fight; the tragic loves he must leave behind; the wit and daring of his every word and move…" Hof stepped forward into the center of his cage, as if upon on a noble stage, in a spotlight purest white. His hands seemed to tear open his very heart within his chest. "And every year, all the master keepers bow down in gratitude, and bestow upon me, their highest honor," he said, holding out both paws, trembling, as if to take a golden trophy.
"Did you," Kirk began, before remembering to couch the question in an amenable manner, "as a military leader, did you know another prisoner here? A Captain Christopher Pike?"
Hof looked over Kirk's head, from his vantage point a step above, in the proscenium of the exhibit, thinking of the other captain's name, and then shook his head.
"No. And I am not a prisoner!" the Tellarite added, raising a crude fist to the glass, before pounding it on his chest.
"How did you …end up here?"
"It was a great space battle. Surely you must have heard," Hof said, and he turned a bit, seeming to hear the sound of a distant call to war, from a haunting alien shofar.
Kirk simply waited, as if the bubble, inevitably, had to burst.
"I have been loyal," Hof harrumphed, "to my command. I have been loyal to my troops," he said, his articulated paw coming up in a quivering salute. "I have met every challenge with fierce commitment, and unquestioning resolve…"
Kirk bowed his head in deference, but glanced up warily, dreading the moment when Hof finally awoke from his sleepwalking.
"I have marched in great victory parades," he insisted, "I have climbed the speaker's stand. I have pounded my fist and raised fearful thousands to courage and passion!"
Hof's gaze swept over Kirk's head again, nodding to the thunderous chants of the unseen hordes. His fur-covered arms finally rose up, as well. He almost seemed to settle his piggy eyes on the starship captain, but he looked back over the dream-crowd again, as the power of illusion overcame him.
Kirk couldn't have been contemptuous or sarcastic, seeing the Tellarite in these depths of neglect, abandoned by his keepers. Every other member of Hof's species that he'd ever met had weighed at least a hundred kilos, and this one was down much closer to seventy. It was almost a miracle the "general" was still standing at all.
"Fascinating," Spock said, at last. "He imagines a sort of acting awards ceremony, which he always wins." Kirk tried to keep his face impassively blank, but he was inwardly horrified. Was this to be the fate of the entire galaxy, in the hands of the oncoming keepers? To make every man a raving egomaniac, a slave to dreams? To the most outrageous vanities, even while they lay impoverished in bondage and in squalor?
"General," Kirk said, as if the Tellarite's outburst had not really happened at all. "We'd like to take you home now. You've had a long and illustrious career, but your home world needs you, and misses you." The words, far from being sarcastic, touched something in Kirk himself, a kind of home-sickness borne of years' travelling in uncharted space.
The Tellarite seemed affected too, and began to snuffle quietly. He turned away, as if in shame.
"This is just another trick. Be gone!"
Kirk stepped back again, and drew his phaser. He adjusted a little dial on top, and leveled the pistol-like device to one side of the thick glass. He pulled the trigger, and a searing red beam of leapt out, slowly melting a hole large enough for a man to climb through.
On the other side, the Tellarite had stumbled backward, raising his furry arms as if against a burning building, so horrified was he, and so shocked by the powerful burst of light. Kirk holstered the weapon again, and calmly stretched forth a hand to help the boar-man through the smoking melted scar. But the general wouldn't budge. Kirk looked back at the Vulcan, with an air of disbelief.
Then, the Tellarite blinked hard, and Jim Kirk climbed into the cage. As he approached, Hof snorted enigmatically, perhaps in a warning, and his body trembled with excitement.
"Well, it's been a great day," Kirk said, on sudden inspiration, raising Hof's arm like the winner of a fight, right after a boxing match, as if Hof stood over some beaten and bloody opponent on the canvas. For a moment, man and Tellarite looked as if they could both truly hear the endless crowds of cheering thousands, stretching out to some imaginary horizon. And then, gently, he marched the general off to the phaser hole like a light-weight boxing champ, to squeeze through the imaginary ropes on the outer edge. The good news was that, in his present condition, Hof simply slipped through the burn hole with very little extra effort. They stood with Spock now, out in the long corridor.
"General," the Vulcan inquired calmly, "may I ask how long you have been on this planet?" The Tellarite paused, slowly growing aware of a steady light breeze sweeping through the tunnel, a breeze he didn't seem to remember ever feeling before. He looked confused.
"A very long time," Hof said, shaking once, like an old dog that had escaped a tangled fence: surprised and even a bit happy, to suddenly be free. It was as if his whole psychological perspective had changed in a minute, simply by crossing the barrier.
"And what became of the keepers?" Kirk had to restrain himself from shaking Hof out of what was left of his sleep.
The general paused, and thought hard for a moment, eyes downcast. Finally, he shook his head, without speaking.
"But they're not all gone," Kirk insisted, still aghast at all the years he'd just spent, in a Stalinist prison cell, when they'd first arrived.
"Perhaps," Hof said, now very confused. "Everything else was gone, every food, every water. And the keepers with it. Now it's only the ghosts, and the dreams that never die." It made Kirk wonder if that was all it was, that swallowed him up when they came down on the elevator pad, from the surface: the echo of someone else's dying nightmare.
"How did you survive," the captain asked, though no man ever really wants to know the full answer.
Hof looked up suddenly, as if he might rush at the captain again, out of helpless fury. "I used to be three times this size!" he bellowed, at last, lamenting his diminished state. A moment passed, as the human looked around one last time, at this stretch of tunnels and empty cells.
"Let's go," Kirk said. Spock pointed down the rough rocky corridor again, and on they went, Kirk supporting the Tellarite, holding him gently by the elbow.
They passed another dozen or so cages, all empty, till they finally came to one that already had a phaser hole burned through it, from years ago. And, all alone, inside sat a cube-like wheelchair. And on top of that, like the crumbled bust of some ancient stone-carver, the slumped head and shoulders of the late Christopher Pike, his brown wiry hair now thin and white and long.
He didn't want to stare, but could tell at a glance that Pike had been dead for some months, at least. The scars that ravaged the older captain's face had worn away, revealing the usual ligament and bone underneath, and sunken gray swamps where the eyes had been.
Spock, for many years his faithful lieutenant, climbed through the open phaser-hole, into the "human exhibit" where Pike and a female Earth scientist had spent their last few years together. The Vulcan's eyes barely left the polished stone floor as he approached the medi-cube. He also barely glanced at the tricorder, even as his orange-tinged fingers made the appropriate maneuvers around the little control panel, and it seemed that he was in some kind of a trance between hard realities, as if he finally came to understand the meaning of all fictions: to escape the hopelessness, and the finality, of the grave.
Kirk backed away, out in the corridor, a half step or so, and saw General Hof standing with his furry arms folded across his equally furry belly. He, too, noticed Spock had seemingly frozen: his back to them, inside the cage, as the two non-Vulcans stood waiting patiently. But, after a few moments, Hof struck out impatiently, swinging his arms, and walking till he was seen no longer, marching as if with great purpose. Just then, Kirk realized, there had been no sign of the Earth woman.
Spock down-loaded the medical information from the computer that was built-in to the chair, about his mentor's inevitable decline and death. The high-pitched whir of his tricorder laid down a sort of meditative, warbling song, as if all of this was simply the way of the Universe, and no need to cry. Though it seemed to Spock, in a strange way, he had come to the very edge of the Universe, and now teetered right there on the dizzying brink, as if looking for his old commander, who'd finally stepped off. And no life-support contrivance, such as the medi-cube, could record any steps beyond that.
The science officer was vaguely aware of his own reflection, and Captain Pike's, in the big glass barrier along the tunnel, out of the corner of his eye. And he had the unavoidable recollection of some old entertainment screen, for home viewing: as if Pike had simply retired from exploring the galaxy, and decided to relax in his favorite chair, and watch the life go by till he fell asleep. His pose, facing out, suggested he had finally turned the tables on the actual watchers, though there were none left to see.
Jim Kirk noted a little gold fragment of cloth lay on a shelf across Captain Pike's chest, on the life-support wheelchair. And as Spock fully turned around, Kirk realized it was the Enterprise science and engineering insignia, torn from the officer's blue tunic, several inches above his alien heart, on the left. Now the golden nebula lay there, like a pebble on a tombstone.
Just as well, Kirk told himself: if they were unsuccessful in rounding up thousands of Talosians somehow spread across the galaxy or beyond, each of their commissions were as good as gone. And Christopher Pike's own knowledge and curiosity, which helped knit the whole galaxy together, might now be its undoing as well.
Kirk realized he'd stopped checking for any glimpse of the frail little alien humanoids, with their three-times human-sized brains, mincing through the tunnels like grim, hairless geisha girls. And none had shown up yet on Spock's tricorder. Had they simply lost interest in their few remaining captives?
He looked around beyond the little stage before him, where all Pike's uncounted fantasies had been played out. No Vina. Just a dead old man, and a hole in the glass: as if his soul had burst right through, upon his death. And somewhere down that way, a hairy half-boar, half-man, who seemed perfectly content to go on as a slave to dreams. But where was the beautiful woman?
After several minutes passed, Spock turned away from the body and wiped his eyes. This simple gesture threw Jim Kirk into a pit of despair, too, for a moment. But he had to shake it off to lend a hand as the half-Vulcan climbed through the phaser hole. Instinctively, Spock looked up and down the corridor as his boots touched the floor.
Kirk spoke. "I think we may have made a mistake."
"In releasing the Tellarite?" Spock had seemingly composed himself again, and slung the tricorder's long black strap over his shoulder.
"Yes," Kirk said quietly. "If we were subject to their power, when we first got here, even one of these creatures on the loose could still cause a lot of trouble, if he came under their power again."
"We could beam him over to the ship," Spock suggested, as they slowly began walking after the general.
"Well," Kirk said, with an almost casual air, "let's wait and see what happens."
Spock opened his scanner again, and located General Hof down the hall.
More empty cages, on the left and right. Watching the little screen on the slim black box in his hands, Spock ventured toward each rough oval pane of unbreakable transparency, as if the bodies of more shipwreck victims might lie on the other side.
"I'm not sure," Kirks aid, "but it looks like General Hof may have been the first Federation being, besides a human, in this… zoo. Before Vina, as well."
"The wrong part of space. Fortunately for us," Spock said, distracted by something on the hand-held scanner.
"You said a mouthful." That was the one nice thing you could say about Talos IV: it was tucked-away in a very remote part of the galaxy. Far from Earth, and even farther from Rigel, so that whatever naïve travelers they did manage to lure in with a false distress signal would most likely be from parts unknown. Or, from the Starship Enterprise.
"I am picking up fragmentary evidence of DNA in some of these cages," Spock said. "Species we've not yet encountered in our exploration."
"Where did they go?" Then, after a pause, the inevitable question, "where did she go?"
"No other human readings within sensor range," Spock said.
They walked a hundred meters or so, before finding General Hof slumped against the rocky tunnel wall, sound asleep, in his first hour of freedom.
