STAR TREK (R)

THE GREAT STARSHIP RACE

PROLOGUE

Aboard the Romulan

Cruiser Scorah

"Valdus, you are a coward. I vomit on

cowards. Cowards should be cooked and eaten. No--

not cooked. And not swallowed. They should be chewed

raw, then spat out. When we return to the

homeworlds, you, your face, your body, your

uniform, your helmet, your smell ... will be

removed from my Swarm, walked off this ship and

stripped of rank. I never again want even to see

you or any sons you may unexpectedly sire.

If I had another pilot, you would be off the

bridge already. Take your post and turn your

eyes away from me. Anyone else who freezes

at the controls will be put outside the ship and

dragged home on a tether. Someone other than this

worm step up here and give me a report on that

vessel out there. And someone clear this smoke from

here!"

The scorn in Primus Oran's voice was

almost enough to move the smoke aside by itself.

Behind him, the object of that scorn,

Subcenturion Valdus Ionis Zorokove,

stepped away, actually stepped backward, and was

particular about keeping his eyes down even after he

turned to his helm. The Primus's blue

jacket and the red fur up the right arm seared his

memory instantly.

Smoke obscured sight of his own feet, andfor

an instant he was disoriented. Malfunctions,

malfunctions. Living and mechanical.

He maneuvered by simple habit through the

cramped bridge--low ceiling, subdued light,

shadows designed in, everything the colors of the

smoke, bulkheads angled to make the crew always

feel as if they were crawling about the underside of a

giant insect. His comrades turned away as he

squirmed past, partly for his benefit, partly for

theirs.

For some reason he kept hearing his own name over

and over in his mind. Before ten minutes ago, he

had been the pride of his family. Suddenly he

wanted to be anyone else, anywhere else.

The Primus is right. Cowardice endangers

all. And I am a coward. I am the

day's disease. Perhaps if I concentrate, I can

find a way to go home in even more humiliation.

Already he had accumulated a demotion, on

top of sitting on his backside in backspace,

in the back of a patrol vessel, doing

exploratory mapping work while the great war between

the Empire and the Federation raged. There would be no

guarding borders or putting down uprisings for this

lucky Imperial Swarm. The wars would

probably be over before the Scorah and its crew

finished drawing pictures of the stars out here.

Valdus didn't understand it, but the war with the

Federation planets was sucking the Empire dry.

Conquest had seemed guaranteed against this

foolishly openhanded, eager fledgling assembly

of planets that didn't even have a dominant

race among them. Surely, at first strike they

would crumble, and the Empire would have control over

vastly more space and resources.

But that's not what had happened. At the

Empire's first strike on an outpost, the

Federation had pulled together with an indignation never

expected, and began to fight back. The Empire

had attempted to skin a sleeping animal. Soft

and slothful while dozing, the beast had awakened at

first cut, ready to fight to the death.

"Unidentified ship is approaching," Commander

Rioc reported. "A very old and simple

design. Low warp capability only. No

response to any hails."

"Move us closer," Oran said. "They could be

a hostile ship in disguise."

Valdus chewed on his lip, and eased the

Scorah forward. He felt the coldness of his

fellow crewmen toward him. Somehow they were

expected to work with him for a few more days without having

anything to do with him.

Mutterings, orders, responses rumbled like

thunder in the distance, but for several seconds

Valdus could make no sense of it past the cloud

of his personal shame. He dreamed of turning to the

Primus, announcing how much he wished to leave

duty on board the Scorah now. Almost as much

as Primus Oran wanted him off. Alm.

But even after the Primus's condemnation and

sentencing, he still didn't have the courage to do it.

Valdus started plotting possible pivoting

maneuvers, just to be ready. In his mind Valdus

saw the Primus's large sunken eyes and

angular beard, and listened.

"Condition of our Swarm ships?" the Primus

asked. "And distance--"

Then Oran tripped and fell onto his side

against a support strut.

Valdus quickly turned away, like a dog that

had been slapped. The other four crewmen

occupying the small bridge paused, but no one

moved to help. Even Tarn--theirthe bold, dark,

intuitive centurion who everyone said would command the

sky some day--stayed back in the corner near

engineering access. Along with cowards, the Primus

had clarified to the crew that he loathed assistance

for old wounds. He barely tolerated help for

new ones.

Valdus gritted his teeth. And I will

give no help.

Only Rioc approached the fallen fleet

leader, but even he made no attempt to assist.

"Burn this foot," Oran grunted. "I should

have had it cut off." He forced himself up onto an

elbow, then over onto his knees, and managed

somehow to grip the support strut and rise to his

feet. "Condition?"

"All ships are on alert, ready to assist."

"Distance of the nearest ship? Don't make me

bark, Rioc."

The commander gazed at him, and coughed on the

smoke that was barely starting to clear despite the

whine of ventilators. "Worshipper and Whip

Hand are nearest, Primus. They can each be here

in one-third day."

As he straightened, Oran glanced at the

small sensor screens. "Alert to be ready."

The snapping, inaccurate, hard-to-read

screens were near Valdus, who had to fight not

to lean in the other direction, away from Oran.

He felt the Primus's glare sliding past him

like a creature of the deep caves.

The ventilators choked, and the smoke swirled

around them again, antagonizing everyone.

Improvement came slowly in the Empire.

Too often their brightest engineers were penalized,

demoted, even executed for failures in

experimentation, so there was less and less

experimentation. All that was left were the worst

engineers, the timid ones.

Someday we will have better, Valdus thought,

or we will go out and take better.

Shabby engineering. Poor manufacturing.

Eccentric controls. Officers who were ...

"I have more detail on that ship," Commander

Rioc reported. "Not a ship, precisely.

More like a long-.tance, long-term capsule.

Minimized living space, primary area is

storage. Presumably food, possibly

medicine. Three life-forms. Correction ...

four."

"Five, sir," the centurion corrected

again. "This blip in the corner--"

"Very well, five."

Bluntly, Oran interrupted, "Dock with

them."

Tightening his elbows against his ribs, Valdus

blinked and bit the inside of his lip. Yes,

dock with them. Give no consideration to caution, no

rein to the advance. That was the reputation of the

Primus Oran. He was famous for this trait.

He had won battles with it. His name was known in

the Tricameron for it.

Valdus lowered his eyes and forced a swallow.

I will never again be cautious.

Roaring, the Primus demanded, "Do I have

to say it again?"

"Prepare to dock," the commander related to his

crew in a subdued tone, for they could not move on

the Primus's command alone unless the order

affected the entire six-ship patrol Swarm.

Rioc looked at Oran as though waiting for

something else. Some clarification or

meticulousness.

None came.

The bridge manipulation officer said,

"Universal cowl ready, Commander."

Rioc nodded. "We are ready to dock,

Primus."

"Have I gone deaf, Rioc?"

Rioc sighed and gestured a silent order

to begin docking.

The procedure was awkward and irritating. They

had to abort and approach again four separate

times. Each time the Primus's face grew a

shade grayer, until at last the crew was ready

to crawl outside and force the cowl to fit.

Finally, by tilting their own ship until the

thrusters whined, they were able to link up and make the

"leakage" lights go off.

"Open the hatchway," the Primus snapped

instantly. No sensor checks, no tests of

any kind.

"What if their air is poisonous?"

Rioc asked.

Now Valdus did look up, and so did

everyone else. Poison?

The Primus snapped, "Then we hold our

breath. Or shall we all be as priggish as you are,

Rioc? I can send you to your quarters, where you will have

more time to build those little replicas of ships you have

battled. All those pointless Federation

duplicates you have dangling from your private

ceiling, as though you conquered them alone. Now, the

hatch."

Commander Rioc seemed to shrug without moving.

He gestured again for the crew to act, for the hatch

to be cranked open.

Then Valdus heard Rioc quietly utter

to the centurion, "Put the translator on

line. Prepare to turn it off whenever I look

at you. No more than a look, do you understand?"

"Yes, Commander, I understand exactly," the

centurion murmured back.

"Hands on disruptors."

So the commander and the centurion would commit caution

on the Primus's behalf.

The centurion motioned three of the bridge

crew to back away, in case the foremost were

attacked or struck down when the hatch opened.

Valdus was one of them. He moved back without a

^w because now he knew what he was. Cowards

always moved back.

His disruptor was cold, unassuring against his

palm. He looked for fear in his mind, his chest,

his limbs, but felt none. Perhaps it had been

pushed aside by humiliation.

The hatch slid open, to the side, then upward,

out of the way. Five faces s tared at them, piled

up like victims of a crash. Faces from yellow

to copper, all with large wide eyes, innocuous,

gawking, flat brows up, mouths open--how could

five creatures all have the same expression?

Primus Oran huffed, relaxed visibly,

turned to the commander, but swallowed a comment.

The visitors were already climbing through the hatch--

And the first one through plunged at the Primus and

took him in a body embrace that pitched them

both backward into Rioc, then all three against the

pilot console.

Startled, Valdus also flailed away and

bumped the bulkhead, and two others drew their

disruptors.

"No!" Rioc blurted. "Wait."

Slowly Valdus realized that this was no

attack. In fact, if it wasn't pure

delight, it was pure stupidity.

Both, he decided as he regained his balance.

"Translator," the Primus grunted,

canting his eyes toward Rioc.

Primus Oran didn't even push the

visitor off. The visitor was just hanging there

around the Primus's neck like a big decoration,

giggling and babbling in a language Valdus

didn't recognize. Nor, apparently, did

the senior officers, who had been much farther and

wider in their experiences than Valdus.

The other four visitors were through now, not even

one staying behind for safety. No caution here either.

They came through, also babbling, grinning, and

grasping hands with the Scorah's bridge crew.

Their clothing, a very basic space survival

suit with hook-up accesses for ... anyone's

guess. Valdus hadn't seen a suit like that

since early training, andfora few moments it stole

his attention.

When he roused himself from this bout of curious

nostalgia, the hatch was closed, Primus

Oran was free from his manacle, and a bizarre

standoff had begun.

The centurion held a medical unit up

near the five big-eyed strangers, but only

scowled at what he saw. An unimpressed

kind of scowl.

"Weak," he said quietly, toward the

Primus.

"I can see that. Is the translator on line

yet?"

Rioc didn't answer or even nod. He

touched the panel he had been preparing.

""Happy"' ... ".tance"' ...

"wait"' or "waiting"' ... "population"'

or "p"' ... "alone"' ...

"astrotelemetry"' ... "quasi-stellar"'

... "galactic voice"' or "noise"'

... "hopeful"' ... "lost hope"' ...

"foreign search"' ... "think"' or "thought"'

... "unproductive"' or "fruitless"'--"

The computer translated the foreigners' ^ws,

at least key parts of sentences, halting along in

a grim, utilitarian monotone completely

opposite to the motions and expressions of the people

talking. It was entertaining, had Primus Oran

been the type to be entertained.

Rioc glanced at the centurion, then at

Oran as the translator snapped off.

"Can you get anything from that?" the Primus

drawled.

"They've been looking for something and didn't

find it," the centurion supplied from a shadow.

"They were looking in space," the engineer offered.

"The computer is confused," Rioc said. "Too

many of them talking. Which is the leader? All their

uniform markings are the same. They all look

hungry."

"Engineering report," Oran requested.

The engineer leaned past a strut. "Their ship

is basic early interstellar exploratory

vessel, all equipment of a picture-taking or

measuring nature. They have very weak sensor

capability, no defenses, no weapons, only

primary light speed and limited maneuvering

capabilities at sublight."

The visitors were touching and laughing again, in

fact almost dancing with delight.

Valdus smiled. His muscles had been

welded by the Primus's excoriations, and now he

was suddenly smiling.

But so was everyone else ... was Oran smiling?

A man who'd had those muscles surgically

removed with his first promotion?

"Get them basic drawing materials,"

Oran said. His voice was lilting as he clasped

the hand of the next shaggy-haired visitor who

approached him. "Prepare a holographic star

map. Get them to show where they are from. Location of

their--" As he was engulfed in another embrace

... his--engaging, resourceful little planet."

Several Empire officers smiled and bounced

to action, backslapping each other in a manner

reserved for weddings and only among clan members

who trusted each other. Suddenly men who had never

trusted each other were standing side by side. Tensions

melted away. The joy of these idiotically

naive visitors was infectious.

We're going to get credit for finding them!

Valdus drew in a refreshing breath. He

knew what was happening. The Primus would get that

information, and this ship ... would suddenly be crewed

by heroes.

An unexploited planet. A rare prize

with sufficient resources to support a culture

intelligent enough to be turned into a workforce. A

whole planet to be mined, milled,

to provide materials and a reasonably skilled

herd of people who could be taught to manufacture

whatever the Empire needed in its war with the

Federation. Advanced enough to be useful, primitive

enough to offer no resistance.

An Imperial dream. A planet of

slaves.

"Maps, maps," Primus Oran chanted,

"this sector."

"Coming," the commander said.

An electrical fizz hurt their ears, then

a pop, and abruptly a wall-size

holographic star chart of this portion of deep

space filled the center of the bridge. Rioc and

two other crewmen were briefly awash in primary

colors as they stepped through it to get out of the way.

Silence fell on the bridge. All gazed

at glowing stars, hovering nebulae, streaking

comets, overlaid by thin red navigational beams.

The newcomers paused, and the one who had first come

through the hatch frowned at the holograph. He

glanced at his shipmates, conversed briefly, but

they were clearly confused. Not by what they were

supposed to do, but by the picture they saw.

"They see nothing familiar here," Commander

Rioc said.

Oran nodded. "Expand the grid."

The holograph swelled, grew more

intimidating, demanding attention.

The visitors fell suddenly silent--

startled. They blinked their large light-catching

eyes and retreated nervously toward each other.

The mood of joy began to slip.

Valdus felt his own smile fall away, and

held very still.

Primus Oran motioned to the aliens, then at

the holographic star map. "Well? Show us."

The visitors flinched, drew their shoulders

inward at his tone. A steady tone, yes, but with a

huff of threat.

They want to show us, Valdus realized,

but they don't know how to read the map. Have they

ever seen a picture of space? Primus

Oran wants that planet--

"Can the computer explain," Oran said with his

teeth tight, "in their language?"

The centurion leaned over a screen.

"Insufficient primary vocabulary. Doubtful

accuracy as yet."

"Don't we have a linguist on board?"

"No, Primus, there is not a linguist on

board anywhere in the Swarm, and you know no one

puts a linguist on any Empire ship that is not

a diplomatic ship, and that in the current

circumstances we have no diplomatic ships

either."

Valdus stared at the centurion, who continued

to stare at the small screen without apology.

Reaching out with one hand in a motion he hoped was

unthreatening, Valdus caught the arm of the first

visitor and pulled him toward the humming star

map, pointed at the visitor's chest, then at the

map.

Gaping at him, the visitor seemed to want

to comply and moved forward again toward the star map,

frowning and looking for a point of reference--

Then fate turned against them. The visitor's

clumsy boot came down on Oran's old

injury, and because of the thickness of the old-style

space boot, the visitor didn't realize

until too late that he was standing on his host's

foot. Didn't realize--until Oran choked

in pain and lashed out. His knuckles crashed across

the alien's cheekbone.

Apprehension burst over the well-bbing. Thunder

broke on the bridge. The alien flew

backward and landed among his own kind like a

gamepiece in some arena contest, and they all went

down. The aliens sank back in fear.

In the corner, Valdus felt his senses

blur. Distrust welled inside him.

"I want your planet!" Oran shouted,

bearing down on them. "I will boil your hearts

to get what I want!"

Rioc slammed into him, pushing him away from the

aliens and on top of Valdus, who did all

he could to push back while the officers shouted over

him.

"What are you doing!" Rioc demanded.

Oran struggled. "I'm interrogating them!"

"Not very well!"

"Will it be your heart I boil, Rioc?"

Paranoia washed over Valdus. He looked

at the faces of shipmates with whom he had served

for two seasons, and those faces became enemies

before his very eyes. Enemies, enemies. He had

to get out from beneath them, had to get out of this trap--th

deathtrap--

Suddenly the engineer pushed at his assistant.

The assistant lashed out with the side of his

disruptor--when had weapons been drawn?

A bright reed of energy pierced the bridge

headers, cutting downward into the controls, and

sliced one of the visitors cleanly in half.

Suddenly everyone was fighting, arguing, defensive.

What moments ago had been a crew in harmony

now suddenly was a tangle of vulgarities.

Slipping on the mutilated visitor's

blood as it pooled, Valdus pushed past his

crewmates. He had to get away from here.

Away from all these who were against him.

I can't breathe--they'll kill me by stopping

me from breathing--

Even as Oran was propelled into a support

strut, he bellowed, "It is the natural way

to conquer or be conquered! I will not perpetrate

immorality by failing to take advantage of this

natural treasure!"

"Not me," Valdus gasped. "Not me !"

Terror spread through him. In a corner, the

aliens crouched together. Valdus saw them as the

horror they were. Their faces were pinched, pale,

their eyes contracted. His hands turned cold.

He felt his face pale to ash, saw his

comrades' faces go gray too.

But there was horror too in his crewmates--

all this time they had been enemies, and he had been

duped into working with them. His chest grew tighter,

tighter--

He pressed his shoulder blades against the

bulkhead and tried to breathe within the cloud of ghoulish

discomfort--ghoulish because it came from within himself. This

grisly sense of dread--his life in danger.

He pushed away from Rioc and Oran as they

shouted at each other, but not soon enough.

Not quickly enough to avoid being splattered by blood

as Oran drew a utility blade and slashed

Rioc across the throat.

Rioc gagged, twisted away, snatched at his

exposed windpipe with one hand and at Valdus with the

other, then crumpled against Valdus, forcing him

to trip.

Valdus choked with sudden savage terror,

trying to pull away from the clawing corpse.

Oran spun on the visitors, his knife

dripping. The aliens shrieked and huddled, faces

filled with doom as they realized what would happen

to them now.

Oran plunged at them, and in the span of a

gasp two aliens were sliced to death,

gushing dark red blood all over the others. Then

the centurion attacked Oran, the engineer

attacked the centurion, the sensor officer and the

guards all turned on each other, and Valdus

saw it spreading before him ...

A clear path toward the engineering corridor.

While slaughter erupted behind him, Valdus

ran. He wanted to get away from the enemies

all around him. He drew his disruptor and ran

through the tight corridors.

A sudden explosion threw him against the wall.

He struggled up and looked back the way he had

come. Crackling electrical fire chewed at the

ceiling.

Explosions in engineering!

So there were enemies there, too--somehow they had

infiltrated the ship--somehow they were everywhere.

If enemies had control of engineering, then the

ship was being hulled and all would die.

"I will make them all die," Valdus

spat. "I will make you all die! All my

enemies will die!"

He crouched and fired his disruptor down the

narrow open corridor, in wide circles,

until there was nothing but sizzling fire and the access

panels were exploding. One enemy who jumped out

a hatch lay twisting in flames on the deck.

"Burn, burn!" Valdus choked. His hands

shook so hard that the muzzle of the disruptor waggled

and cut across the wall when he opened fire again.

"You can't follow me now!"

Down through the Scorah he crawled, shooting

wildly into each section behind him until its

conduits exploded, then going on, locking

hatches so he couldn't be followed.

Barely in control, Valdus slid into the

long, thin access tube to the life pod, and was

automatically dropped into the pod.

He smashed his palm against the controls. How

did they work? Which control would launch the pod?

Why couldn't he remember?

Finally he reversed his disruptor and smashed the

panel with the weapon's handle until the pod began

to buzz around him, bumped, and launched.

Alone in a pod meant for three, Valdus

gasped for breath as though just coming up from under water.

He crawled to the sensor screen and poked at it

until the visual snapped on and provided a

view of near space, of the Scorah.

As Valdus watched, the bird-winged

patrol vessel shrank away, farther away, a

metal button on the black canopy around him

...

Andwith distance, the paranoia began to retreat from his

mind. His thoughts began to clear, filter back

to what they were before those aliens had been brought on

board.

Crew ... the ship ... Commander Rioc ...

those aliens--

Those aliens ...

The Scorah heaved like an animal in its

death throes. Blue flame belched from the aft

sections.

Before his eyes, the ship that minutes ago had

been his home cracked and fell apart. Then the

two halves tore themselves to bits in tandem

explosions. First one, then the other.

Bodies appeared, spinning through the vacuum of

space.

Valdus watched, his hands shaking, his mind

clearing.

He pushed himself up onto his knees, still staring

at the screen.

And he rasped, "What did we do ..."

Seventy-four Years Later

The Last Whistling Post

"Asteroid! Collision course!"

The technician's cracking voice woke the

senior scientist out of a good snooze so

abruptly that she thought she was still dreaming.

"Look at the size of it!" Halfway out of

his chair, the technician was pointing at the row of

screens monitoring the solar system and as much

space outside it as possible. One clearly

showed a streaking yellow-green line and a blip

moving from left to right at hideous speed. "It's

almost a fifth the size of the planet!"

The senior scientist stumbled from her chair and

pressed against her colleague's shoulder, deciding

with every step that he was wrong, looking at the wrong

screen, leaning on a dial--but he wasn't

wrong.

A projectile was coming in, and coming in fast.

Dead on course, right toward their planet.

"Beneon, what should we do!" her technician

belched. "What--what--"

Terror spread across his ruddy cheeks, and his

eyes contracted as he realized what he

was seeing.

Beneon pressed her long unkempt nut

brown hair out of her own eyes, thought for a painful

instant how long it had been since she had made

herself presentable--no one needed to be presentable

on a moon station--and checked to be sure the garish

yellow-green line was not a malfunction.

It wasn't. Out of nothing and nowhere, she was

staring at her planet's death.

"Vorry, check ... check the ..."

"I did!" Vorry wailed. "I checked!

Look at it!"

"Why didn't we see it sooner?"

"I don't know! It just dropped out of nowhere

at us! How can that happen? How can it happen?"

He dissolved into sobs, tears streaming down his

blotched cheeks.

"Whistling Post, Whistling Post, this is

Planetside Assembly, do you read?"

Beneon forced her hand to move, to touch the

communications panel. "I read."

"Dr. Beneon, do you see it? Are you

tracking it?"

"Yes," she admitted, "we see it."

"We can't confirm the size ... readings are

fluctuating! How can it move that fast? Can we

deflect it?"

Their request, and all their hopes, rested on

her shoulders. For a second, it almost pulled her

down.

"We have nothing that can deflect it,

Assembly," she said.

The yellowish line grew longer, closer.

"Did you ... not see it earlier?"

She almost choked. "We picked it up just as you

did. At the same time."

"How can that be?"

"I don't know. I don't know how ..."

Her voice petered out. There was nothing left

to say.

Apparently Planetside comprehended that. The

channel remained open, but no one spoke again.

They were watching the yellow line, too, and they

knew the ^ws of their culture were about to come to an

end. No point scraping up a few more.

As Vorry dropped into his chair and clawed

at his controls, Beneon drifted back to her own

chair, sank into it, and stared at the yellow moving

line until her eyes hurt.

Above the row of screens that so cleanly

documented their death dangled a lovely

handwritten note, and rather than staring at the terrible

glowing line, she ended up staring at the note.

The long-range manned exploration program

will not be reinstated due to diminished interest, past

cost of lives and resources, and diminished hope

of success. Thank you for your suggestion, but the

Science Assembly's decision will have to stand. We

are sorry. We are very, very sorry.

"I'm sorry, too," Beneon murmured.

Behind her own voice she heard Vorry's

sobbing. She wanted to go over there, comfort him

somehow, but the yellow line ...

"What more could we ask of them?" she uttered.

"We tend to draw back at first trouble. The best

way to survive is to not do the dangerous thing.

"If everyone who goes into the valley gets

eaten, then don't go into the valley."' But we

had hope ... we wanted to find someone out there in

the black wilderness ... we wanted to be

neighbors with the galaxy. We wanted to find out

we weren't the only intelligent life in the

galaxy. Seventy-five, eighty, ninety

years of long-range probing ... good people, good

ships, resources, donations, time ... just

to celebrate our centennial by shutting it all

down ... because we were listening to the silence in our own

tomb. Because there is no one out there."

Beneath her narrow hips the seat was cold. It

stayed cold somehow. No warmth in her body

to affect it, probably.

She looked at Vorry, broken and miserable,

horrified and sobbing. The yellow line had

completed one screen and had branched over to the

next screen.

Inside the solar system.

She was sobbing too, inside. She was just too

wrapped with hopelessness to release what she was

feeling. So she sat on the cold chair, feeling

every bone in her pelvis and remembering the

childhood lessons about evolution that built those

bones over millions of years, and she felt every

muscle in her thighs and her hands, resisting every

impulse she had to run.

There was nowhere to run.

I wish we had found someone ... this would be so

much easier. Can this be all? We come out of the

slime, live for a million years, and

now we die. Without the support of the planet, the

colonies will never survive. Is this all the

galaxy has to whisper to us? That intelligent

life might have been a mistake all along?

Sobs wracked inside her, not coming out, until

she thought she would suffocate on her own fear.

The two of them were alone, the last two

Whistlers. The ones who hadn't given up. The

last two.

"The last," she murmured. "And now we have

to be the first to see that ..."

t. The slaughter of their culture. A

comet, asteroid, something big enough to decimate the

planet, coming directly at them at almost the

speed of light.

Plenty of size, plenty of speed.

The yellow line daggered toward the center of the

second screen. When it got all the way

across--

Something happened to the screen. The line began

to falter.

Vorry gasped, "It's slowing down!"

Beneon licked her cracked lips.

"Something's wrong with the tracker."

"I read a change of mass," Vorry said.

"It's disintegrating!"

They watched their screens and listened to the pounding

of their own hearts.

Mopping his wet face with one hand, Vorry

slumped forward across his panel and fingered his

controls. "No ... it's slowing down! How can it

slow down?"

Pushing to her feet and moving on legs that almost

folded beneath her, Beneon checked the controls herself

before her assistant blew himself into a dozen

frantic pieces.

"It can't slow down," she said.

How clumsy--reassuring him that they were

definitely going to die and that there were no

miracles.

"Whistling Po/! Did it slow down?"

She struck communications. "Do you read that it

slowed down also?"

"allyes! How can it slow down?"

Beneon grabbed the messy braids hanging

down her chest and pulled her hair to be sure she

was still alive and this wasn't some bizarre afterlife

delusion, even though she didn't believe in such

things. She also didn't believe asteroids could

stop in flight.

"It can't," she said. "It didn't

disintegrate either ..."

"But we read that it's shrinking!"

"We never adjusted our instruments to read

apparent mass at near light-speed. Why would

we? Nothing moves that fast ... nothing other than

light ... no mass does ... Vorry, what

have you got now?"

Her poor technician had his fingernails

deep in the foam cover of the control panel, which was

chipped and torn from their months of picking at it

during their isolation.

"Only three hundred thousand tons now," he

rasped. "More or less. But how can it slow

down?"

Beneon twisted sharply, stumbled across the lab

toward the broadcaststreception center, tripped

on her own panic and slammed to the floor,

staggered up, pushed the crated equipment out of her

way so violently she was bleeding when she got to the

auriscopes and crossover coils. As her hands

clutched at the close-range broadcasters, she

could barely remember how to turn it on.

"Turn it on, turn--turn--turn it

on--" she gasped.

"The tape!" Vorry spat from across the lab.

"Put the tape in!"

"Yes, I know, tape, yes, tape, tape

..."

She dropped it twice.

Somehow she finally crammed the prerecorded

information tape about her planet, her race, her

history, her culture, and rudimentary

language into the slot.

"Work! Workffwas She pounded it with her fist.

Vorry gulped, "The switches! Turn it

on! I'll--I'll help--"

But he couldn't even move.

Half blind with shock, Beneon knew she would have

to do it by herself. She jabbed at the controls until

the lights came on and the steady flashes told her

the message was broadcasting.

Sending ...

And then, receiveg.

The computer didn't have much of a voice, but it

could have been singing to these lonely listeners.

They flinched at the sound.

"Attention ... sending culture ... this the

hood ... want to meet ... do welcome us?"

Beneon stared at the receiver. A

computer's voice. The voice of the galaxy. The

tomb wasn't empty.

Begging to believe, she murmured, "The

"Hood"' ..."

"The "Hoodea"'" Vorry whispered.

They looked at each other.

Suddenly the scientist and her technician

broke into cheering, screaming, jumping up and down so

hard andfor so long they forgot they'd just been asked the

most important question in the history of their world.

"Ans--ans--!" Vorry was gasping, his

voice on a high pitch of panic.

Beneon shoved him away, stumbled to the

broadcast keyboard and typed in permission for the

computer to translate any incoming messages and

respond to them. Her fingers were frozen and tangled

up. She had to type the commands three times--four

times--

Her chest constricted. Frustration was a stupid

way to die. She took deep breaths and forced

herself to do the work, symbol by symbol, digit

by digit.

"Wait ... don't leave ... please wait

... please don't leave us ..."

Somehow Beneon finished the order, somehow

committed it, and pushed back.

The computer worked silently, except for a few

crackles left over from poor repairs and

antique parts. It worked hard, for a machine.

A moment later--

"We would ... speak together to faces ... shall

we visit you?"

Vorry's fingers dug into Beneon's arm. Her

fingers dug right back.

Just like that, after a million years of nothing but

past, suddenly--they had a future.

Beneon tapped out another ^w, and committed it.

Yes.

The computer swallowed the order, and winked and

blinked pathetically, without the simplest idea of the

cruciality of what it was doing.

Drawn-out seconds later, a message

came through in the computer's voice.

"Thank you ... we will be there in one

minute."

Vorry almost collapsed.

Out of habit and a sense of responsibility,

Beneon clasped his arm and said, "It can't be.

Must be miscommunication. The computer's

translator is too old, Vorry.

They'll need time to listen to the tapes ... to learn

about us ... learn our basic vocabulary."

"I think I'm going to throw up," Vorry

said.

Beneon shuddered through a smile. "How would that

look to them? We should occupy ourselves while we

wait ... we should make ourselves presentable.

Change suits or--"

An electrical whine pinched her ears. She

and Vorry both winced, and glanced around for the

source. What was happening? [ they being

attacked?

The whine grew louder, and the room started

to shimmer as though lightning was striking.

Beneon stared at the lights, and Vorry had

to yank her back, try to protect her--

As the lights began to take shape.

Shape!

Elongated oval shapes--then the shapes of

living beings!

Beneon almost dropped to her knees, but

Vorry held her up somehow. They both stared

impotently.

The lights settled and began to fade. In their

place, they left four beings. Four people.

Two eyes, two ears, hair cut short,

two legs, two arms--

Like us, Beneon thought distantly, but not

exactly. More like the birds in the hills. Sharp,

quick, aware.

The creatures didn't approach or make

any threatening movements. In fact, their

expressions were cautiously hospitable. They

wore clothing that was exactly alike except for the

bright solid colors. Their faces were different

too, Beneon saw instantly. Small eyes,

different shapes. All the fiction described

aliens as nearly duplicates of one another.

Imagine all the fiction being wrong ...

Two of them held small boxlike tools that

hummed and beeped.

The one in front nodded--a simple gesture.

His eyes seemed small to her, but all the

newcomers were like that. His hair was short and

black, his face lighter than hers, and he

seemed too young to be in front.

He fixed his eyes on Beneon and Vorry,

as though they were his sole purpose. He held up

a silver mechanism to his mouth, and he stepped

slowly toward them.

His lips made a different movement from the sound

that came out, and Beneon understood that the mechanism

was some kind of general translator--mch more

advanced than anything she could have anticipated--and

even his translator had a friendly voice.

"I bring greetings to your people," he said, "from the

United Federation of Planets. I am

Captain Kenneth Dodge, commander of the Starship

Hood."

THE CAPTAINS' MEETING

Chapter One

Twelve Years Later

Starbase 10

"It's not fair. There's nothing fair about it."

"If you want fair, don't enter races."

The room was full, decorated with ship's

pennants and flags, and very bright. The restaurant

at one of the Federation's farthest reaching starbases.

Uneasily situated between the two people snapping

at each other, Starship Chief Surgeon

Leonard McCoy felt fundamentally out of

place. He was the only person in the room who

wasn't a ship's master, or a line officer.

He crushed his hand into a fist to keep from reaching

over, restraining his captain's arm, and whispering a

phrase of caution.

"Don't enter races?" What kind of thing

is that to say at a time like this?

Usually the doctor didn't hesitate to tag

along behind his captain into command briefings. No

matter the glares he got, he was used to glaring

back and knew nobody would have the gumption

to tell the captain of the U.S.So.

Enterprise he couldn't have his doctor, his

dentist, his favorite carpenter, or his dog

groomer at his side if he wanted to,

security clearance or not. And Leonard

McCoy was known as a man who could glare as good

as he got.

But this was the first time McCoy had been among

shipmasters who weren't all dressed in uniforms

of the Fleet and who didn't have to abide by the same

regulations he did. Or any regulations. After

a twenty-year career in Starfleet, he realized

how awkward it might be for him to step outside again

someday. He who had always claimed to be out of

place in the Fleet ...

Captains, captains e verywhere, but only four

of them from Starfleet. Merchant captains, alien

captains, privateers, yachtsmen, and any other

description of ship's master he could come up

with--and looking at this crowd, he could come up with quite

a few.

So McCoy was still out of place, even at this

time of bright conviviality, with captains of every

stripe gathered over fruit and doughnuts, winking

and beaming at each other as though they had a

secret. At least half of them had spoken

to him, but even so, he got the feeling he was just being

tolerated.

Interrupting from a table on the other side of the

dining area, near the huge windows, backdropped

by docked spacecraft and floating workbees,

Captain Buck Ames leaned his bulky frame

forward, and spoke.

"Look, fellas," he boomed, his heavy

voice filled with zest and anticipation,

"apparently some of you don't feel this way, but

I for one am tickled pink about racing against all

these vessels, including whatever Starfleet can

throw at us."

He pointed boldly at the three uniformed men

and one Vulcan woman. The Vulcan's eyes

--only her eyes--grinned at him in amusement.

She was elegant, yes, subdued, yes, but still

she was amused. The human Starfleet captains

were trying to be gallant and restrained, but the

Vulcan lady was canting an alm-grin at

Ames.

McCoy knew that look.

No feelings, my backside.

Somebody else made a crack about not

really wanting to tickle Buck Ames pink, and the

other captains smiled collectively.

Most laughed when somebody added, "Or any

other color."

Captain Nancy Ransom didn't. "It's

supposed to be a sport, but how can it be with them

here?" she snapped in a deep southern accent.

"Those Starfleet ships change the whole

texture of this race. They've got heavy

shielding, reinforced framing, automatic reaction

control, combat-trained crews--"

McCoy frowned. Ames sat back again and

shoveled himself a handful of complimentary

chocolate-covered raisins. "Consider it a

challenge, babe."

Ransom glared. "Build a successful

corporation without government help. Then you can

"babe"' me, porky."

Grumbling threaded with laughter throughout the room,

and even Buck Ames chuckled, "Got a

point, babe."

Everybody laughed, and Nancy sat down.

A six-foot-four man in a baseball cap

with a dark beard and cheerful narrow eyes

proclaimed in a Virginia accent, "Now,

darlin', I'm glad they're here. I'm looking

to show 'em up."

Somehow Pete Hall's "darlin'" wasn't as

compromising as Buck Ames's "babe."

McCoy felt a sense of agreement ripple

across the room. Captain Ken Dodge of the

Hood pointed at Pete and said, "Somebody

shake him. He's dreaming."

At the front of the room a broad-chested man

in his forties, with black hair, bright eyes and a

salt-and-pepper mustache, stood and waved both

hands in the air for attention.

"Okay, Captains, let's keep this on a

gentlemanly plane, all right? As most of you

already know, I'm John Orland, chairman of the

Race Committee. I'm here to pass out some

information and answer your questions. Sure, this race is

public relations, entertainment, whatever else you

want to call it, mostly a way for our hosts

to drag some attention out to that black tundra where

they live--"

The gathering of captains, shipmasters of every

description, and one uneasy doctor, chuckled

again, but kept listening.

Orland smiled like a salesman and

shrugged. "This is the first real exchange of

culture, a kind of coming-out party for the Rey. Before

twelve years ago, when Ken Dodge and the

Hood answered a little blip out in the middle of

nowhere, the Rey were all alone. Not that they were

lonely, mind you. Population's over five

billion, and every one of those is friendly. Captain

Dodge can tell you--y never saw such hospitable

people, people so excited about becoming part of the Federation.

Up until now only diplomats, a few

natural and medical scientists, and cultural

transition teams have interacted with these people, hoping

to prevent the usual future shock that can happen

when a new race rushes too quickly into the

Federation. But these people," he laughed, "we had

to hold 'em back for their own good. I swear

they've organized this race just to get the Federation

to hurry up letting 'em in."

Sudden warmth and an extra measure of

eagerness touched each face. Orland seemed

to notice that, and got a little more serious.

"But it's also a real race. Don't forget

that. Like the Interstellar Olympics, the New

Braemar Highland Games, the Pentathlon of

Alpha Centauri, the Rigel Passage

do'Arms, the Triple Crown, the Grand

National, the America's Cup, the Great Tea

Race between the clippers Ariel and Taeping, the

Grand Prix ... it's a strict and real

competition. There's going to be a winner, and the first

winner of the Great Starship Race will be remembered

forever, ladies and gentlemen." He paused,

scanned the room, and said, "The acceptance of

Gullrey, and its associated colonies, into the

United Federation of Planets almost doubles our

perimeters."

He opened his mouth to say something else, but was

blasted down by applause--a solemn

applause, not the sports-event rattle from before.

The captains were absorbing the scope of what they

were doing in the next couple days--and what they had

done in the past twenty-five years.

Orland took advantage of the pause to hand

stacks of red leather folders to three stewards,

who began distributing them to the tables.

"In these packets you'll find a list of

ships participating, their flaggings and captains.

You all know by now that any ship within specified

gross tonnage and thrust brackets can join the

race. We might get a few more coming in

at the last minute, but I don't think that's going

to be very many. We'll have some non-Federation

entries meeting us out at the starting line at

Starbase 16, but we pretty much know who they

are. A Tholian entry, a couple from Federation

protectorates, and candidate members like

Sigma Iotia, and a few others who didn't

want to make the trip all the way here

to Starbase 10 just to turn around and go back

to 16. Also, I know some of you have a problem with

gambling, but there's nothing we can do to stop it. The

area between Starbase 16 and Gullrey isn't

officially Federation space yet. If you have some

moral objection to gambling, better get out of the

race here and now."

Coffee cups clinked and shoulders shifted, but

nobody got up and left. McCoy knew that in

this crowd, they would if they wanted to. Orland

moved his eyes from side to side, then relaxed.

"Okay, good," he sighed. "Had to ask."

He squinted toward the right side of the room, where

the Starfleet captains--and McCoy--had

gathered. "The rules of communication for this race

are going to be basic Maritime Standard. That'll be

comfortable for the civilian vessels, but you

Starfleet people will have to do some adjusting."

From McCoy's right, Kirk spoke up

"We'll adjust."

Three tables over, a robust dark-haired

man of fifty with a black beard winked and said,

"You're a wolf, Jimmy."

McCoy blinked at Ben Shamirian.

Just like that. We'll adjust. Snap a finger

and undo years of training in our people. Start talking

like barge drivers.

"We'll have no problem," Ken Dodge added.

Dodge was still as dark-haired and pink-faced as he

had been when McCoy had first met him eight or

so years ago.

"There won't be any Starfleet channel,"

Kirk said. "No one has to feel intimidated

when talking to any of our ships."

"Don't intimidate me none, spud,"

Buck Ames's deep voice announced from behind.

Eyes shifting, James Kirk turned and

resettled himself so he could look back there and

rest one arm across the back of his seat.

"We've made it a Starfleet Academy

tactical exam to devise something that does

intimidate you, Buck," he said.

"That's why Starfleet's in the race,"

Captain Dodge said. "To intimidate

Buck."

As the room's laughter cushioned him,

McCoy sank back against the soft chair. He

wasn't used to this kind of frivolity coming from lone

wolf captains--and all captains were lone

wolves in their ways. That much he was sure of.

"And right here," John Orland continued, "is a

copy of the rules."

As attention floated back to the front of the

dining room, he held out a piece of paper. It

was blank. He turned it around for them to look

at, and held it high.

Also blank.

"As you can see, there's nothing on it," he

pointed out. "That's because there aren't any rules you

don't already know. Just basic, run-of-the-mill

maritime rules of the road. This race is taking

place outside of Federation space, so there

isn't even any law that applies across the

board. I mean, you can't take potshots at

each other to disable a contestant or anything, but this

is like one of those strongest-survive field

tests. Whoever comes out first ... wins."

Someone from the other side of the room asked,

"When are we going to get some details about this

"host"' planet?"

A high-pitched elderly voice toward the

front of the room demanded, "Do they have any

laws we can apply out there?"

"A background of these people is in the command

packets. They don't have any interstellar laws

because they hardly have interstellar travel, never mind

regulations about it." He pointed at Captain

Dodge. "Hell, when Ken Dodge first

contacted these people, they were shutting down their space

programs and just sending signals. Lucky for them

we caught them when we did. Maybe you can

corner Ken on the way out, but don't bug me

about it. If he's gonna be the guest of honor,

he oughta pay."

All eyes brushed briefly over the man who

had started it all by answering a faint blip

twelve years ago.

"I'll get you for this, John," Dodge

promised.

A surly-looking, overweight red-headed young

man with a short beard suggested, "Sneeze on his

lunch."

Through the laughter somebody else added,

"Class act, Ian."

"Look," Orland said, "I'm just up here so

I don't have to drink that coffee."

More laughter allowed for a pause while stewards

milled around filling coffee mugs and offering

trays of fresh doughnuts.

Orland looked at a list, nodded to himself, then

chose a subject, and continued.

"Oh, there's no cargo transporting

allowed."

A very young, dirty-looking captain in a

patchwork jacket moaned, "Aw, what's that for?

I'm carting textbooks."

"Can't do it. Can't take any chances of

contraband or border disputes. You'll have

to present your ship's bill of stores to the Consul

of Foreign Ports for holding until the end of the

race. Any cargo being carried will be stored in a

bonded warehouse on Starbase 16, which is as

far out as Federation jurisdiction goes to this new

system."

"Just how far out is it?" Nancy Ransom

persisted.

"Trust me," Orland said. "It's far. Now,

as I said, there aren't any rules, but I'm going

to impose one here and now." He widened his eyes

in a manner more amusing than threatening, but no one

chuckled this time. He was serious. "When there's

any vessel dead ahead of you, the following

vessel must either alter course or power back

to adjust for ahead reach. We don't want

anybody cramming into the back of the ship in front

of you, got it? Anybody not understand that?"

McCoy almost raised his hand out of natural

bullheadedness, but stopped himself. He tried

to glance around without moving his head. Everybody

else seemed to know what all that meant. He'd have

to choke an explanation out of a junior engineer

later.

"There are beacons and buoys placed throughout the

sector to mark dangerous areas," Orland went

on, "and don't forget there are plenty of those.

Don't go around hawking, "I know this space,"'

because you don't. Nobody does. Globe

topmarks are for gravitational anomalies,

diamonds are electrical clouds,

triangles are sensor blind spots, and flashers

mark storms. All of these are as close as

possible, but we're not infallible. These

suckers move around. Starfleet patrols

double-checked the markers yesterday and already had

to move five of them. Now, these are not coasting

markers!"

The room heaved with collective laughter.

McCoy grinned like a cat and pretended he had

some idea what Orland meant.

"Please do not," Orland added, "attempt

to follow these things from point to point! Or

somebody's gonna have to throw a big chain into some

goddamned twister and pull you out, okay?"

More chuckling.

A movement at McCoy's side made him

flinch. Jim Kirk's hand was up.

"What's the distress frequency?"

Orland nodded and pointed at him. "Good!

Thanks. Damn, I knew there was something I'd

forget. The distress frequency is five thousand

megacycles subspace. Just having your

equipment on that channel will constitute SOS, so

if you leave your lights on, even by mistake,

don't be surprised if somebody knocks."

Apparently Kirk wasn't satisfied, because

he pursued, "No safety ships or

draggers?"

"Aren't any. The only vessels who can

respond to trouble will be your fellow competitors

or the spectator ships that will be dotting the

routes here and there. But those are big, clunky

cruise ships and I wouldn't hold my breath.

If you get in trouble, just put yourself on the

distress frequency, as Jim pointed out, and

we'll try to determine your EP and come get

you."

McCoy watched his captain intuitively.

He knew what the problem was.

Race or not, competition, sport, fun and

games or not, the lack of official safety

nets meant that the Starfleet ships would be the

lifeguards unofficially. Everyone would expect

that.

Seeing the way Dodge and Kirk looked at

each other and at the other two Starfleet

captains, McCoy realized the raw joy of

sport had just slipped an inch for these commanders, and the

tempting danger just hiked up. He couldn't tell

which of those two they would rather have--but he had a

suspicion.

Then Nancy Ransom stood up.

"I still protest the participation of

Starfleet," she insisted. "We were told this was a

general public competition. Why weren't we

told these enforcers were going to get to run the race?"

Suddenly uneasy, Orland shifted back and

forth and rubbed his hands on his thighs, then held them

out in a pacifying manner.

"Look, Nancy," he began, "even at this

moment the Starfleet ships are being handicapped for

just the reasons you're concerned about. They're in

spacedock or box docks, being mechanically

deprived of hardware advantages and having their

power reduced across the board by twenty percent.

They're big ships, but they'll have to swim with their

legs tied. Don't know what more we can do for you."

"I do," she said bluntly. "It's not fair

for us to have to go up against spacehawks like him."

She turned and thrust a pointed finger toward

Jim Kirk.

Kirk's face took on the demeanor of the

hawk she accused him of being. He shoved his command

packet into McCoy's hands and stood up to face

her.

"I'll be a good sport and shed my bars when

my ship crosses the starting line," he said, "but

until then, you watch your sportsmanship.

Fairness doesn't get anybody anywhere. Every

running river knows that. Some rocks get washed

away. Some hold their ground and eventually they

turn the river. Why run a race where everything's

"fair"'? You'll never know how you really did."

The room fell silent.

There was ^wless applause in the eyes of not just his

Starfleet comrades, but in the eyes of other

captains as well, who understood what he meant.

McCoy knew from past experience there was either

adoration for James Kirk or hatred, but no

middle ground.

And Nancy Ransom wasn't in the middle.

"I still think the starships shouldn't try to win,"

she barked.

Kirk's eyebrows flared.

"What you think," he snapped, "is your

problem, Captain. I've got advantages,

but so do you. You've got full power. This is a

test of smarts as much as it's a test of ships.

And it's supposed to be sport. The losers

won't get executed, the winners won't gain

ultimate power, so relax and get ready for a good

hard game we'll all remember for the rest of our

lives." He leaned forward on the table and

spoke to her as though they were alone in the room.

"Or withdraw now. Because I don't enter any

race not to win."

Officers' Lounge

A vital place, somehow.

Carpeted, soundproofed, trimmed with cherry

molding and rough-hewn ceiling beams, decorated

with paintings--not pictures--of ships through the

ages, from Federation planets far and wide.

But in spite of the heartwarming decor, it was the

big viewing wall, a great clear wall divided

only by the smallest and fewest possible support

threads, which was the real attraction of the place.

McCoy strode in slowly, scanned the

lounge, found what he was looking for, then crossed

the spongy carpet and sat down in the lounge chair

near the viewing windows.

In the chair beside him, feet up on the low

window ledge, Captain James Kirk didn't

move, glance, sigh, or in any way acknowledge

that he wasn't alone anymore. He just kept

gazing out the viewport, at the busy black

canopy of open space. Gazing and grinning.

This wasn't like the dining room viewing windows that

looked inward at the core of the starbase, the

"inside", where ships were docked for tours and

interior maintenance. This was the outer rim of the

starbase, where the view outside was a view of

space. This view stirred a cathedral reverence

and a certain library quiet in the lounge.

Kind of like the difference between looking at a

swimming pool and looking at an ocean.

Jim Kirk was looking at an ocean. A young

man with electricity in his eyes. One side of

his mouth was pulled up in that grin.

McCoy gazed briefly at the few other people

milling quietly around the lounge, some also just

sitting and looking out.

Some were captains. Some were people trying to get

away from captains.

"So," he bridged, "what're you doing?

Waiting to see a green flash?"

Kirk didn't move a muscle. He was

looking up, out, and slightly to the left.

McCoy sat down next to him, pivoted in his

chair, and followed Kirk's gaze. Together, they

looked.

"That's how she was the first time I saw

her," Kirk said. "Hovering in a box of

lit-up red girders like some kind of living thing.

Not a machine at all, Bones."

McCoy nodded. From below, the ship had a

stirring effect upon the men who served her, who

relied upon her, and who time after time had insisted she

press on through the hell of space. A kind of

courage seemed to glow from her white plates, with

strips of shadow lying across her underside cast from the

box dock's hexagonal struts. She looked

as though she was almost breathing.

"How did it go in there after I left?" Kirk

asked.

McCoy blinked at the sound of his captain's

voice. "Hmm? Oh ... you mean after you strode

out, leaving your handprint on Nancy Ransom's

face? What is it with you and her anyway?"

"She hates me."

McCoy crossed his legs and scowled.

"Does anybody besides us like you?" he drawled.

"How far do we have to go into space before we find

somebody whose eggs you haven't cracked?"

Kirk shrugged. "She washed out of the

Academy. She was in my command competition team.

Blamed me for bad leadership."

"Was she right?"

The captain smiled devilishly. "Who knows?

Not even the Academy can replace hard

experience. I might've been "perfect"'

back then, by the book, but I wasn't "gd."'

A few years ago, I told Ransom that. But

it didn't help. She hates my guts, and

she's not going to stop. So if that's how she wants

to play the game, that's how I'll play it."

He sounded casual, and a lot more indestructible

than McCoy knew he was.

"Don't worry, Bones," he said, "It's

just a race."

The doctor didn't buy it. "It is when you

say it fast."

Without looking at him, Kirk said, "Ships have

been racing for centuries. It's a tradition.

That's what made me accept the invitation. Even

the fishing vessels out of Gloucester or

Portugal had to race. They raced to be the first

back to port. It wasn't the fullest ship that

got the best price--it was the fastest."

"Want me to find you a pipe to smoke?

Take your boots off. That story would sound

better if you had bare feet."

Kirk chuckled. "I can see myself whittling

on the corncob pipe now. Open that folder,"

he said, "and see if there's a manifest of ships

and masters."

"It's right on top." The doctor dug into the

leather packet, and handed the paper toward Kirk.

But the captain didn't move, didn't look

away from his ship. He leaned back and sipped a

drink. Looked like ice water.

"You still on duty?" McCoy asked.

"Until fourteen hundred. Read the list off

to me."

"Oh." McCoy sat back awkwardly.

"Well, all right, let's see here. It starts

with Helmut Appenfeller commanding the

Drachenfels, flagged for Colony

Drachenfels--I remember when that ship was

launched. It's a German legend or

Norwegian. Means "Where the dragon

fell."' Somebody killed a dragon, and that's

where they built a town or dug a hole or

something. Course, if there was a dead dragon lying

there, I'd dig a hole too."

"So would I," the captain chuckled. "Read,

man, read."

"I'm reading, Jim, don't be a

midshipman. Buck Ames, Haunted

Forest, a private yacht ... Hunter,

Dominion of Proxima from Proxima Beta

... Sue Hardee on Thomas Jefferson.

Federation Museum Ship ... Lar--Legarr

... Leg-something in command of Orion Union

... Nancy Ransom, Ransom Castle,

from Ransom Carnvale Interstellar Mining

Company ... Ben Shamirian, Gavelan

Star, private explorer ..."

"Yes," Kirk said. "Good to have friends in the

line-up."

"Yup, nothing like beating the drawers off an

old friend. What else've we got here ...

Leo Blaine--isn't he Starfleet

retired?"

"If so, it's before my time."

"You're only thirty-six. Everything is before

your time. I think he retired as a decorated

captain. They offered him a starship, but he

turned it down and went off on this thing he

calls--"

"Cynthia Blaine. Named after his mother.

Flagged for the company she started."

"Why did you ask me to read you this list if you

already memorized it?"

The captain grinned. "I like the sound of your

voice."

"Who's this Ian Blackington? Says

"private."' Must be a yacht."

"No yacht," Kirk said, sounding slightly

offended. "Working ship. Merchantman. At least,

that's the legal term for what he does."

"What's the illegal term?"

"Pirate."

McCoy cleared his throat, then found out he

probably shouldn't make a comment on that, and

retreated to the list. "Alexandria, Captain

Pete Hall ... I met him once."

"He's kind and capable," Kirk said. "Has

a lot of finesse."

"Irimlo Si, from Zeon, Captain

Loracon ... Bluenose IV, Captain

Mitchell Rowan, Earth ... oh, this is

interesting--I'd like to see this one myself. The

Hospital Ship Brother's Keeper under

Surgeon General Christoff Gogine. I

didn't know that General Gogine was a licensed

captain."

"He's not." Kirk leaned forward and peered

suspiciously at a work pod as it approached and

attached itself to the engineering section of the starship.

"He's got a flight master who does the

actual maneuvering. Gogine just gets the

credit. That's one thing you'll find out, Bones.

Credit is negotiable ... blame isn't."

McCoy looked up.

"Now, where did that come from all of a sudden?"

The captain's expression suddenly changed as

he eyed his ship. "Look at that ship, Bones.

Look at her. Only twelve of those in the

Fleet, only twelve people in the galaxy who

get to drive them ... and this time I get a chance

to show her off. Win or lose, the Enterprise

is going to be seen by people who only hear about her.

The people who paid for her."

The doctor felt as though a curtain had parted

and the mystery dropped away. In spite of the

swaggering that went on when more than one ship's commander

was in a confined space, in spite of having been

dragged off patrol for what seemed at first to be

a silly public relations game, Jim Kirk

was looking forward to showing off his favorite girl.

All at once McCoy understood the

captain's eagerness to participate, to seeing old

friends, dressing the ship in rainbow fashion,

soaking up a little appreciation and drenching the crew

in some well-deserved merrymaking while somebody

else faced off with the unknown for a while.

Kirk was looking forward to this. The best leave--

a leave when he could enjoy the ship. No

planets, no music, no women--well,

maybe women. But most of all, the ship. Out in

space where the public followed for a change, where

attention of the Federation was focused on the starship,

with tourists flocking by the boatload to have a look,

the captain could do something very rare. He could puff

up and show off, and nobody would expect anything

else.

A ruddy pride flushed in the captain's

face, and in his eyes too.

"Have'm," the doctor sighed and went on

skimming the list. "That's a relief ... deep

space can do without us for a while. I could use a

break from roughhousing with the warring Birdbathians as

they clash with the Knobheads of New Wherever.

Jim, look at this--seems a lot of these are

ships representing systems or planets that I

know for a fact don't have any spacefaring

technology of the required tonnage and thrust

yet."

"They're flagged for those systems. Like

Argelius," Kirk pointed out. "They want

to participate, so they hire a ship, muster a

crew and captain, and put their flag on it. The

Tellarites aren't coming at all, in spite of

their insistence upon joining the Federation."

"Snubbing us, are they?" McCoy drawled.

"Well, they've got the faces for it."

"The Klingons don't want anything to do with it

either. They say competition without solid reward is

a waste of time."

"Gosh, I'll miss them. Look at

this--Charles Goodyear the Ninth with a ship he

calls The Blimp. Better be a fat

ship." The doctor let the list drop into his

lap and rubbed his eyes. "You know, I'm beginning

to think there's nothing somebody won't name a ship."

"No one's done the S.S. Rest in

Peace," Kirk tossed back. "Guess that's

yours."

"No one's done the S.S. Butter

Cookie either, but I wouldn't go scanning

manifests. Jim, take your eyes off

that ship before you go blind!"

The captain sighed and said, "I don't get

to see her much, Bones. We spend all our time

trying to get from here to there and live to tell it."

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his

knees. "She's my ship ... but I never get

to see her from the outside."

"Never thought of that," McCoy admitted.

In contemplation they sat together for many seconds

in silence, gazing at the starship, its shadows and

its lights.

Then the captain said, "That's because you're not a

sailor."

* * *

"Welcome back, everybody. We'll try

to keep this session short. Lord knows I don't

want to look at this collection of faces any

longer than I have to."

John Orland pawed through his Race Committee

information and huffed impatiently while a steward

set up a computer access panel next to him.

Once again sitting beside Jim Kirk, Dr.

McCoy ducked as two more stewards bumped past

him, carrying a computer screen the size of a

tabletop. They set up the screen while the last

few captains settled back into chairs and the

room calmed down again.

"Okay," Orland said, and clicked it on.

"Take a look at this."

The screen came alive with a beautiful

schematic of simulated open space. He

clicked his panel a couple times until the

picture was overlaid with pulsing lights in a

jagged formation that only in a child's imagination could be

called a line, and only because they started in one

place and generally ended across the screen from there.

"This is a Klingon's-eye view of the

racecourse," he said. "Now, it's just a

representation! Don't go out there and start saying

to your crew, "Hey, on the picture the course

went in that direction,"' because this thing on the screen

is just intended to give you a general idea! I

mean, if we showed you what the actual course

looked like, there wouldn't be any game here, right?"

He scanned the room with a schoolteacher glare

until he got nods from most of the captains, but

still didn't look satisfied when he jabbed a

finger at the screen again.

"The point here is Starbase 16, where the

starting line is." He indicated the only

dot that wasn't blinking. "These other blinking

lights are beacons put in place by Starfleet

and the Race Committee. Basically, they spiral

out from the starting line."

An old man with muttonchop whiskers and bright

red cheeks laughed and rasped, "Bet them

beacons ain't sittin' on lightships, right?"

"Hell, no!" Orland boomed. "They go right

through the middle of all this trouble and strife. Real

tricky space, most of this, and the course is

laid out to make use of all the tricks. There

are twelve beacons alt. Each one has a

different frequency. At the starting gun, we'll

give you the frequency of only the first beacon.

When you're within a hundred thousand kilometers of

it, you broadcast your ship's recognition code,

and the beacon will log your arrival and transmit the

frequency for beacon number two. When you're

within a hundred thousand kilometers of beacon

two, you'll get the frequency of beacon three,

and so on. So don't try to skip a beacon, or

you'll be totally lost, not to mention disqualified.

We've done all we could to tricky-up finding the

beacons. It's gonna be like being in a canyon and

somebody rings a bell. You'll have to decide which

is the echo and which is the real sound. The faster you go

into warp speed, the more the distortion. The course

goes in a spiral that bends way out, then comes

back to the finish line, so don't assume you can just

head for the finish line and win. You can follow

somebody else, but there's no guarantee that guy

won't be on a wild-goose chase himself.

You're gonna have to use crazy thinking, wild

guesses, deceit, subterfuge, lies,

witchcraft, and my mother's knitting patterns

to get those signals."

his'Scuse me, John?"

"Yes, Ian?"

Everybody looked at Ian Blackington as

he asked, "What if nobody can find every

beacon?"

Orland shrugged. "Let's just hope we

didn't make it that hard!"

A sporting roar of camaraderie lifted across

the room. Bantering threats and jokes rippled in

a dozen directions.

"Hey, it's the first time we've done this,"

Orland said. "Maybe it'll be perfect at the

next starship race, right?"

More laughter.

McCoy took the moment to glance at Kirk,

but the captain gave him a bastard wink and

didn't say anything.

"After beacon number twelve," Orland went

on, "head straight for Gullrey. The finish

line is between two committee markers. First ship

between them wins," he said, pointing at the far right of the

screen.

He scanned the faces of the captains.

A pale woman in a bright red robe grinned

cattily and asked, "What do we win?"

"You get to be Byorn's bosun for a week,"

Ken Dodge said, flashing a grin at a

Norwegian man in back, who shook a fist and

grinned back at him.

"His personal bosun," the woman

accepted, and waved at the Norwegian.

McCoy leaned to his side. "Who's that

woman?"

"No idea," Kirk responded. "Look

at the list."

Trying to be subtle, the doctor scanned the

list, but was confounded by aliens' names. "Zeon,

maybe?" he whispered. "Or Lauru ifan

Ta from New Malura."

"Not Zeon," Kirk said. "Zeon's in the

far corner. Gray uniform."

"What about Eliior--Eminiar. Say,

weren't we there once?"

"Shh," the captain snapped.

They fell silent as John Orland raised his

hand. There was something between his thumb and forefinger.

"You get this," he said.

He held the small item up before them for a

moment, then brought it down to be scanned by the

computer panel, and the screen changed abruptly.

Now it showed a fairly accurate picture of his

hand holding a gold coin with rough edges, a

royal crest on one side, and a bird on the

other.

"A little chunk of gold?" Ian Blackington

boomed. "I wouldn't cross my bathtub to sell

that!"

Orland smiled and waited for the chuckling to stop.

"You don't sell it, flybrain, your sponsor

possesses it. Until the next race."

"When's that?" Kirk spoke up.

"We don't know yet. A year, five years

--depends how this race goes."

"Well, what is that thing?"

Blackington pursued.

"This," Orland said, "is a doubloon. It was

part of the treasure found aboard the galleon El

Sol, sunk off Spanish Wells in the

Abaco Islands of the Bahamas just as it left for

Spain. Spanish Wells, the last place where

the Conquistadors could get fresh water before

crossing the Atlantic. It's theorized that their

heavy coffers of water contributed to the ship's

turning over in a storm. Possibly a white

squall that they didn't see coming, because according to the

way the spars were arranged, there's evidence that the

vessel went down in full sail. Apparently

they didn't see trouble coming. They didn't reef

in at all. For the benefit of you non-Earth people, that

means pull their sails in part way," he added,

no.ing at the Andorian, the Orion, and a few

other aliens.

McCoy leaned sideways and grumbled, "As

if all the Earth people know what it means."

"Treasure hunters looked for El Sol

for almost a hundred fifty years, until it was

found nearly a thousand miles from where it was thought to have

gone down. Tales of a great treasure kept the

hunters going decade after decade. Lives were

lost, techniques invented, fortunes risked,

to find this ship ... and they did find it. All that

was recovered other than the ship itself, ladies and

gentlemen, was this single gold doubloon."

Empathic silence fell across the dining room.

Jim Kirk's brows drew into an expression

that could've been anger in another situation.

"Nothing else?"

"Not a thing else."

"That's mighty sad," the old man with the

mutton whiskers said.

"It's sad," the race committeeman agreed.

"They figure the ship was plundered by natives, because

it went down in less than forty feet of water.

Would've been easy to find, if anybody had

been looking there. Nobody did. It's been in

private hands until now, and the team who found it

wanted to do something encouraging with their one little find from

Earth's seafaring age. They didn't want to just

put it in a museum. Didn't seem a fitting

memorial to all those who risked everything to find a

treasure that wasn't there. So here it is. The

purse of the Great Starship Race ... our

doubloon."

He held the gold piece before them for a

moment longer, then placed it in a purple

velvet bag. Then he put the bag into a

magnetically sealed box. A burly Starfleet

guard stepped out of nowhere, and Orland handed the box

to him.

Orland cleared his throat, gazed at the

collection of ship's masters from the far reaches of

space, and nodded as though finally satisfied.

"Good luck, everybody," he said. "Let the

race begin."

THE STARTING GUN

RACE MANIFEST

Note The columns of this table follow each

other in this order VESSEL COMMAND; FLAG.

Drachenfels Helmut Appenfeller;

Colony Drachenfels.

Haunted Forest Buck Ames; Private.

Dominion of Proxima Hunter;

Proxima Beta.

Ytaho Legarratlinya; Orion Union.

Ransom Castle Nancy Ransom;

Ransom Carnvale Int. Mining Co.

Gavelan Star Ben Shamirian;

Private.

Cynthia Blaine Leo Blaine;

BlaineAerospace Inc.

New Pride of Baltimore Miles

Glover X; Baltimore, Maryland,

United States, Earth.

Blackjacket Ian Blackington;

Private.

Irimlo Si Loracon; Zeon.

Bluenose IV Sinclair

Rowan; Canada, Great Britain, Earth.

U.S.So. Hood Cpt. Kenneth

Dodge; Starship, Starfleet.

U.S.So. Enterprise Cpt. James

Kirk; Starship, Starfleet.

U.S.So. Great Lakes Cpt. Hans

Tahl; Frigate, Starfleet.

U.S.So. Intrepid Cpt. T'ationoy;

Starship, Starfleet.

Brother's Keeper Christoff Gogine;

UFP Hospital Ship.

The Blimp Charles Goodyear IX;

Goodyear Inc.

Unpardonable Lauru ifan Ta; New

Malura.

Thomas Jefferson Sue Hardee; UFP

Museum Ship.

Eienven Thais; Andor, Epsilon Indi.

Alexandria Pete Hall; Alexandria,

Virginia, United States, Earth.

Yukon University James Neumark;

Yukon University, Earth.

Specific Im; Melkot Sector.

552-4 Kmmta; Tholus.

Chessie Samuel Li; CandO

Spaceroads Inc.

Valkyrie Bjorn Faargensen; Skol

Brewery, Rigel IV.

River of Will Eliior; Braniian

College, Eminiar.

Forbearant Steve Daunt; Argelius.

Ozcice Sucice Miller; Host entry.

NOTE LIST MAY BE INCOMPLETE.

OTHER ENTRIES EXPECTED. SOME COMMANDS

MAY CHANGE AL. PICK UP FINAL

MANIFEST FROM RACE COMMITTEE AT

STARTING LINE. THANK Y.

Chapter Two

U.S.S. Enterprise

"Welcome aboard, Captain."

The distinguished baritone voice warmed the

bridge and blended so naturally with the blips and

whirrs of the starship's command center that James

Kirk and his ship's surgeon almost forgot

to respond.

Dr. McCoy blinked as the two of

them paused on the quarterdeck and heard the

turbolift doors gasp shut behind them.

Kirk inhaled as though to draw in the aroma of the

bridge, looked at the forward viewscreen's

breathtaking picture of the box dock girders as

they peeled away, then he turned to their right.

"Thank you, Mr. Spock," he said.

"Ship's condition?"

A bit of the night came toward them from the upper

bridge.

First Officer Spock was ten legends in one--

not all from the same planet. Triangular eyes

and upswept black brows, olive complexion,

and ears that came to points, all framed by the

black Starfleet collar and blue Science

Division shirt. Even for McCoy he was an

oasis of familiarity on the bridge.

With a twinge of annoyance, McCoy noted how

incomplete any starship's bridge would seem

to him without a Vulcan hovering about.

A light from the ceiling glowed in a purple band

across Spock's slick black hair as he

approached them with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Leaving spacedock as ordered, sir," he

said. "Preparing to leave the jurisdiction of

Starbase 10 and set course for Starbase 16.

All propulsion and maneuvering systems are down

by nineteen percent. Despite his somewhat understandable

disgruntlement, Engineer Scott is striving for the

extra one percent, as requested by the Race

Committee for Starfleet vessels. Sensors

are reduced to merchant level, as are any other

applicable systems. A complete report is in

your office, ready for review."

"Thank you again," the captain said.

"And the host observers have been beamed aboard and

issued guest quarters."

Kirk's glare sharpened. "The who?"

"Host observers. Every ship has at least one

citizen of Gullrey on board, as specified

by the Federation diplomatic corps."

"Since when?"

Spock frowned as though he didn't understand the

question. His voice had a shrug in it. "Since

twelve hundred thirty hours, sir."

McCoy bit his lip on a snide remark and

waited.

"Who are these individuals?" Kirk asked,

somewhat sharply.

If Spock was disturbed at all by the

tone, it was only with a faint curiosity.

"Their names," he said, "are Royenne,

Osso, and Tom."

"All right, if we have to have them on board, I

want them assigned two yeomen whose duties--"

The captain paused and blinked at him.

""Tom"'?"

"Yes, sir."

"As in Tom Sawyer? Tom Jefferson?"

"Yes, sir," Spock said. "These people were

highly enthusiastic and emotional upon joining the

Federation. Tom took an Earth name several

years ago."

McCoy leaned past the captain's shoulder and

asked, "Why would he do a thing like that?"

Spock raised one eyebrow. "This culture

had to be talked out of changing the name of their

planet. They were debating among "ationew

Earth"', "Earthfarea"' and, I believe,

"Earthvale."'"

"They shouldn't do that!"

"We did succeed in convincing them not to,

Doctor, but only with the intervention of Captain

Dodge, who is highly revered on

Gullrey."

Moving from one band of shadow to another, Jim

Kirk stepped away from them. He trailed his hand

along the red rail that separated the upper bridge

from the command center and gazed at the large forward

screen, at the picture of distant space and the

dozen vehicles peppering the vicinity of

Starbase 10.

"Gullrey," he murmured.

The ^w settled peacefully around the bridge,

and it seemed silly that anyone would want to change

the planet's name from something so melodic.

Spock didn't follow him. "That is the

English equivalent. Phonic only, and

somewhat clumsy. The ^w appears in the Western

alphabet as something quite other."

He stepped to his library computer console and

waved a magician's touch over the controls, then

looked up. A series of letters appeared on one

access screen.

dguibbealeaichaiereuw

"That's the name of their planet?" the captain

commented. "And it's pronounced Gullrey?"

"Call Scotty," McCoy said.

"That looks like Gaelic to me."

"Observant," Spock agreed, "but I

doubt Engineer Scott is any more proficient

in ancient Celtic linguistics than you are in

Middle English."

McCoy pressed his lips. "Spock, you're

the only man who can give a compliment and take it

back in the same breath. What do these people look

like?"

"I have yet to encounter them personally," Spock

said as he cleared the screen. "The developmental

parallels are remarkable regarding the arts and

sciences, though much slower. Their flight and space

programs took nearly seven hundred Earth

years to reach low warp capabilities, while

Earth took less than a century and a half."

"Captain," a resonant voice interrupted

from the back of the bridge. As the three turned,

Lieutenant Uhura's exotic eyes swept

over them from the communications station. "I'm receiveg

coordinates from the Starbase, sir."

"Those are for the starting line-up at Starbase

16, Lieutenant," Kirk said. "Log and

acknowledge."

"Aye-aye, sir, logging."

"Then feed them through to the helm."

"Aye, sir." She played her equipment

lightly, then nodded at the Oriental

lieutenant at the helm. "Mr. Sulu, can you

confirm for me?"

Using his hand like a pointed spade, Sulu

stabbed his controls with the abruptness of a construction

worker. His method was very different from the coaxing touch

of Uhura or the fluidity of Spock, but the

machines happily purred in response.

"Confirmed," he said, "and laid in."

"Clear us with the dockmaster," the captain said.

"Prepare to leave the Starbase area. It's very

crowded around here today, Mr. Sulu, so be aware

of all-points incursion into our drift sphere.

Uhura, broadcast intent on merchant

channels and make sure none of those other ships

are moored in the departure lanes. I don't

want to clip some amateur's tail section as

we pull out."

Sulu barely nodded. "Aye-aye, sir."

Uhura echoed him so closely that the sounds

blended and almost camouflaged the breath of the

turbolift doors as they opened and closed at the

back of the bridge.

The captain turned to Spock and leaned a leg

on the bridge rail.

"Now, Mr. Spock," he said, "why don't

you tell me what happened twelve years ago that

started all this?"

McCoy stood beside the captain and glared at

Spock, hoping the Vulcan would feel on the

spot, but the first officer didn't respond. He

simply gazed between them at the turbolift

vestibule.

Together the captain and the doctor turned, and they

too stared at the back of the bridge at three

beings, not quite human.

"Oh, Captain," one being said, "can't we

tell you?"

Three shadows of humanity's past, gentle

biped ghosts of humanoid ancestry. Clothing of

different styles, complexions and haircuts all

different, but the expressions all alike.

Adulation, anticipation. Joy.

Their most striking characteristic was their eyes--v

large, with almost no whites showing, like the

light-catching eyes of a horse or a deer.

His medical background gurgling with delight,

McCoy noted right away that the bridge lights

didn't seem to bother these newcomers. Of

course, the bridge wasn't all that bright. Still,

he was instantly curious about the evolution

conditions that produced these people.

The one who had spoken had shaggy wheat-blond

hair that licked at his shoulders and made his dark

brown eyes very obvious. His squarish face was

bright and changed expression almost by the second.

Delight bubbled his cheeks and his lips trembled

around a nervous smile. He was moving toward

Kirk as though he thought the bridge would crack

under him.

"Captain," he gasped. "I'm so honored

to be here!"

He put his right hand out easily--ei he'd

been practicing or handshakes had been adopted

on Gullrey along with other Earth habits.

Kirk took the hand. "Welcome aboard,

Mister--"

"I'm Tom. Please call me Tom ...

do you like it? I tried to choose a friendly name."

Feeling as though he'd suddenly opened a

nursery, Kirk stabbed a glance at Spock,

then said, "Yes, I like it very much. It's

what we call an old-fashioned name."

Tom turned rosy with pride and asked,

"What's your name?"

After another pause, Kirk said, "Jim. And

this is my first officer, Commander Spock, and our

ship's surgeon, Leonard McCoy."

Tom didn't grab for Spock's hand, but he

did manage to get ahold of McCoy's.

Only now did McCoy notice that the

Gullrey people were all fairly tall and somewhat

gangly. That and their delight seemed their only

common trait. Tom was the fairest one, while the

other ones had black and chocolate brown hair

respectively, and their clothes were all different.

The two lagging back were wearing some kind of long

shirt--not exactly tunics--andthe black-haired

one had a baggy knitted vest with pockets.

Tom's clothes could have come off the rack at

any wilderness outfitter back on Earth--a

red-and-black buffalo plaid shirt, blue

jeans with suspenders, and moccasins.

He saw McCoy looking at his clothes, and

grinned. "Catalog service. Mountain man

clothes. Did I get it right?"

McCoy laughed and suddenly relaxed. "You

got it right for any mountain I've ever been on,

that's for sure."

"These are my associates," Tom said, and

motioned the other two forward. He gestured first to the

one with black hair and the vest. "This is

Royenne, and that is Osso. We're proud to be

guests on a starship. To be able to ride on a

ship like the one that ended our loneliness--"

"You said you'd like to tell me about that," Kirk

prodded. "Why don't you start now. We'll all

listen."

Tom looked at his two friends, who silently

encouraged him to move forward, start talking. Tom

swallowed a few times, as though the story was too

wonderful and he didn't deserve to be telling

it. Only when he realized the eyes of all were

on him--at least for the moment while departure

arrangements were being cleared--he nodded and forced

himself to speak.

His English was flawless, yet he treated it like

a golden charm discovered in the dark.

"We live far out in space," he said, "in

a lonely sector of the galactic arm, well

past your farthest starbase. We have a very

unimaginative sun, and only lifeless

rocks orbit it. We crawled up through

evolution, then through many halting civilizations to an

age where our science matched our visions of hope,

and we looked into the sky. We reached to the nearest

planets in our system but found they were rocks.

We sent robotic probes into deep space

to see if anyone else was out there and to beg for a

response."

Osso prodded, "Tell them about the stories,

Tom."

"Yes, we wrote stories," Tom said.

"Thousands of tales about space travel and

meeting alien life and what it would be like the first

time. It was the most popular mode of literature

for almost a century. Since first our long-range

telescopes peered into the unthinkable reaches, our

children went to bed with toy spacemen."

If Tom was unsure of himself, he wasn't

unsure of his tale and its quality. His smooth

m aple-sugar face took on a flush of

excitement.

Definitely red blood ...

McCoy found himself smiling at the visitor's

unquenched enthusiasm, and saw the captain smiling

beside him.

And everyone else was smiling too. Even

Spock had a subdued smile on his face and a

glimmer in his eyes as he brought his arms around to the

front and folded them across his chest.

Tom saw the motion and might have been

intimidated, because he paused for a breath before going

on.

"It was all through our culture--in our minds,

in our hopes, our hearts--e day it was with us.

We were so sure there was someone to hear our call that

we spent our work time preparing and our spare time

making fantasy visits in our books and

papers, so we would be ready to participate in

interstellar culture! For decades we reached and

probed and called," he finished on one breath,

"but in nearly two centuries of hope, we saw

... not one sign of life."

The three aliens' big soggy eyes blinked

sadly. The smiles around them faltered.

Tom shook his head. "We had lost many

adventurous crews in the attempt to fly

to nearby stars, but they found ... nothing. After

lifetimes of spinning fabulous tales of space

travel and alien meetings, of straining to unify

our nations in order to be ready, our dream

began to starve."

Now glad to be standing a little behind the captain,

McCoy instinctively battled down a shiver of

empathy and thought he saw Uhura do the same.

Just empathy--j Tom's ability to spin a

story. Beside him, he saw the captain go tense,

and he sensed they were all taking this too hard.

"We mourned heroes lost in the attempt

to reach out," Tom said, "for they had apparently

died for nothing. The sacrifice lost its

nobility and became too much for us to bear.

Literature of space travel died away.

Enrollment in space science fell off. Funding

of ou-system exploration dissolved. Planetwide

disappointment settled over us."

"The story must get better," McCoy

interrupted, desperate to make the cold feeling

go away. "After all, we're here."

Tom's large eyes swept to him. "Yes!

You are here. You came to us and you answered us ...

one day, in the last decade of our interest in

space, when there was only one little outpost left

listening. The last outpost ... they heard an

answer and thought they were imagining what they heard."

He spread his lanky arms and said, "It was a

call from a race calling themselves the Hood."

Decorum folded and laughter broke out on the

bridge.

"The "Hood"'ffwas Sulu repeated.

"I like that!" Ensign Chekov burst from beside him

at navigation.

The three aliens smiled as though they were about

to boil over, and seemed overwhelmed by the welcome

they'd received here.

And the feeling of cold loneliness melted

into sudden community warmth.

"Does that make us the "Enterprise"'?"

Sulu said. "What would you call us?"

Tom fell silent for an instant, then stepped

down to the command deck. With three of his long fingers

he touched the point of the helmsman's shoulder.

"You," he began, "who were devoted to seek out

distant and lonely cultures like ours. You, who

appeared before us in a brilliant white ship ...

who were bold enough, who were confident enough in yourselves

to answer our tiny fading call ... you, who are

generous enough to make the Rey part of yourselves ... what

should we call you?"

Sulu gazed at him uneasily, not moving a

muscle.

Tom's eyes glowed, then creased with smile

lines.

"We call you saviors," he said.

Chapter Three

Approaching the Starting Line

at Starbase 16

"allyellow alert. Yellow alert. All

hands to battle stations. Prepare for emergency

action. All hands to battle stations."

James Kirk skidded around a corner and down

the corridor of his own ship, gratified in this

moment of emergency to see his crew leap to action.

There were times when running was a good idea, if

only to bring the crew to the right mental level for

what they might have to do.

He plunged into the turbolift and the doors

closed behind him. He grasped the control handle and

turned it.

"Bridge," he said.

The lift surged through the veins of the starship, a

ship within a ship, carrying the lifeblood of

decision to the place where he would decide. But for

these few moments, he was the least active person

in his crew of nearly five hundred.

Least active except for his mind. In his mind

he was preparing for the wildest, the most horrid, the

most draining of possibilities, for any of those

might be awaiting him on the bridge. This

turbolift ride would be his last peace, until

events came to an end under his phasers, under his

fists, or by strength of will.

Yellow alert from a Starbase this far out could

mean any of a dozen problems. Structural

breach, terrorist activity--andwitha fleet of

racing vessels pushing for position, last minute

supplies, anything might happen. Collision,

power loss, dispute. Whatever did happen, a

starship in the vicinity had authority over starbase

administration.

That means me. Me and the other Starfleet

masters, if anyone else is here yet.

And a call for battle stations was mystifying, as

much as the mustering of all hands on deck.

Those could only come from Spock.

He could buzz the bridge and get details,

but he stayed his hand from the comm panel and let his

adrenaline build, his senses sharpen, the

tension rise. Whatever was happening, he would never

assume it was nothing, maybe just a mistake,

somebody's bad judgment. Starbases were run

almost as efficiently as starships, but still there was that

added danger--accessibility. Starbases could be

visited with little more than a request. Starships were

private terrain. The captain's terrain.

Anticipation boiled in his chest until his

uniform shirt felt tight around his ribs. When the

turbolift slowed and the doors blew open, he

felt as though he were being shot out of a cannon.

He dropped to the center deck and put his hand

on his command chair. "Status, Mr. Spock?"

"Approaching Starbase 16 at warp factor

four, Captain," the Vulcan said from where he

bent like a vulture over his readouts. "ETA,

twenty-eight minutes current speed. They

report an enemy presence."

"Enemy?" Kirk turned. "We're not at

war, Mr. Spock."

Spock straightened and faced him.

"Apparently there is a vessel of hostile

configuration approaching the starbase at high warp.

Contestant ships and others are scattering. I

requested specification. No response as

yet."

"Go to warp five."

"Warp five, sir," Sulu echoed.

"Revised ETA, thirteen minutes, ten

seconds."

Kirk settled into his chair and gestured over

his shoulder to Uhura. "Broadcast general alert

of our approach and recognition codes,

Lieutenant. Warn off any trouble."

"Aye, sir," she said. A moment later, her

melodic instructions to the starbase provided an

undercurrent to all other sounds on the bridge.

"Scanning the area," Spock said. "Picking

up movement from several vessels."

"Broadcast a regional all-stop. See

if they comply. Give me a visual on the

hostile as soon as you can."

"Yes, sir."

"Identify exhaust emissions of every ship you can

pinpoint. Get me a list of power ratios. I

want to know who's there. Winnow out any

non-Federation presence in the sector."

Spock nodded, this time to Ensign Chekov, who

had been looking at him, knowing at least half of

those orders would be his to fulfill. A

moment later, both of them were hovering over the

science stations on the bridge's starboard side,

struggling to make use of the ship's diminished

sensor capabilities.

Frustrating. Kirk watched them, empathizing.

Still, starship personnel were trained to deal with

whatever they had, even if it was a twenty percent

power down.

He felt the struggle in the ship itself as she

gathered as much power as she could find and funneled it

into the warp-five order. Not quite full speed, and

she was already sweating.

He knew she was ... because he was.

Eying his science specialists, seeing their

frowns and glowers, their shoulders go tense over

instruments that should've had the answers within the first ten

seconds, he tried to think up more for them to do.

Something that would give him a clue about what was going

on in such a way that he wouldn't have to hail the

starbase for answers.

He wanted to know the answers already when he

hailed them. It was one of his tricks. Know the

answer before you're supposed to.

He wanted that answer.

Repressing an urge to get up and go stand behind

them as they worked, Kirk grilled them with a silent

glare--and they felt it, he could see that. The

sounds of the bridge had slightly intensified. The

Rey guests wouldn't have noticed if they'd been

here, but the captain did, and he knew the bridge

crew did, too. That information was being yanked into the

starship's system through reluctant power grids

and a damning distance.

Chekov stepped over to Spock andfora moment their

heads were together over a monitor, then Spock

straightened and snapped an order. Chekov

dropped from the upper deck to stand beside the captain's

chair and brave the expression Kirk could feel

on his own face.

"Sir," the young Russian began,

"twenty-three vessels identified by intermix

exhaust, including twelve capable of thrust above

warp four. No Starfleet vessel identified

as yet," he went on, struggling past his halting

accent, "so Mr. Spock concludes we will be the

only starship present at the moment."

"I'll assume that. Go on."

Chekov looked at Spock.

The Vulcan stepped to the ra il and gazed down.

"Subspace intermix formula readings

suggest several definitions of thrust engineering, and

I have isolated ships that I deem unfamiliar

to Federation emission control. Those would be the

Melkot vessel, the Andorian vessel, the

New Malurians, and two others that I can

pinpoint but not identify. Of vessels now moving

both away from and toward the Starbase, I'm

picking up one level of emission residue that the

computer correlates with an intermix formula

currently being used by the Klingons."

Kirk glowered at him, then at the forward

screen. "Klingons?" In his mind he saw

Starbase 16 dangling out there in the invisible

distance. It made a lovely picture except

for the crane-in-flight ship speeding in from another

place, its wings angled back, its long neck

and the bubble on the front somehow threatening just

by pointing toward the starbase. It angled in without

invitation, to a place where it didn't belong, at

a time when it wasn't wanted. He couldn't see

it yet, but it was out there. He knew, because Spock

told him it was. That was enough to start him stewing.

Spock's steady face bore an untrusting

scowl as he, too, gazed at the forward screen.

Kirk knew they were looking at the same

picture in their two minds.

"Klingon design, Captain," Spock

agreed, "but the emission ratio is eight percent

richer."

James Kirk pushed himself out of his command

chair, and his teeth clenched tight.

"Romulans."

The other side of trouble. As aliens went,

Klingons were temperamental, surface-thinking,

hot-blooded and gruff, and could be outthought and

outfought by someone who kept his cool. Romulans

were stiff, mean, quick on the trigger, but cunning.

They would outlast someone trying to outlast them.

Cool judgment made them formidable.

Suddenly Kirk felt betrayed, his peace and

everyone else's blowtorched. The Great Starship

Race had been robbed of its luster before it even

had a chance to begin.

He glared at the forward screen, pacing back

and forth behind the navigation and helm consoles. He

knew Sulu and Chekov were deliberately not

turning, not looking at him, because the atmosphere

here had become so suddenly tense.

"Red alert," he said. "Maintain

general quarters. Plot an intercept course."

The lights on the bridge changed. Everything

went rosy and more active. Alert panels on the

bulkheads went from amber to red and flashed faster.

Uhura's voice pounded through the vessel.

"Red alert ... all hands maintain

battle stations ... this is not a drill."

Like his ride in the turbolift, the next few

minutes were grilling frustration. Kirk wanted

to be there already, to know what was happening, to stand over

a dangerous situation and demand that it hold itself

together.

"Approaching the vicinity of Starbase 16,

sir," Sulu reported. "Contacting several

vessels vacating the area."

"Enhance magnification, Mr. Sulu."

"Aye, sir. Full magnification."

Race vessels, spectator ships, touring

yachts, cruise ships--vessels of every

purpose and design suddenly shot toward them like

some kind of interstellar boat show. No--z though

somebody had set off a bomb at a boat show.

Kirk read panic in the trajectories of these

ships, heading out toward nothing in particular, just

away from the starbase, shooting past the

Enterprise without even the simplest of

ship-to-ship signals. There should've been an

industrial grandeur here, but in fact, for James

Kirk there was only a sense of overcrowding and a knowledge

that whatever he did, success or mistake, would

involve all these ships.

A situation that could be instantly ugly, dozens

of ships beating for the rear, seeing the starship racing

past them to brace the storm ... a hobbled starship

...

A minute later there were fewer ships, and the

starship was briefly alone.

"Starbase 16 on visual, Captain,"

Sulu said, and adjusted the magnification to show the

beautiful light-dotted spool of the starbase

floating in the middle of nothing.

"Spock, anything?"

"Incoming vessel is unshielded, Captain,

weapons systems off-line. They are broadcasting

interstellar truce. It is your choice, of

course, whether to believe them."

"Confirm shields up."

Sulu glanced down to see what he already knew

was there. "Shields are up, sir."

"Arm phasers."

"Phasers armed, sir."

"Continue intercept course. Lieutenant,"

Kirk said, relying on tone and innate

familiarity with his crew to tell them all which

lieutenant he was talking to. "Demand that they

full-stop immediately, or reverse course. If

they encroach Federation territory any further,

we will open fire."

"Aye, sir," Uhura said. She made the

broadcast with interstellar codes, but they all

knew she was simultaneously sending the same

message in computer translation in the Romulan

language as well as Federation linguists had been

able to piece it together.

"Contact, Captainffwas Sulu said suddenly.

"They're reducing speed ... coming to full-stop,

sir ... there they are."

A Romulan battlecruiser, caught just

close enough to the starbase that both it and the starbase

showed at opposite ends of the big screen. Not the

little bird-of-prey fighter type, but the big,

long-necked design the Romulans had stolen from

the Klingons and redesigned for stealth and bursts of

power.

"Ship to ship, sir?" Uhura asked.

"Not yet."

Kirk prowled his command deck. His eyes never

left the pale green ship hovering on his screen.

He familiarized himself with every line, every running

light wink, every shadow.

He would have felt better if the ship hadn't

been aimed right into the heart of the starbase, as though

it meant to fire up thrusters and ram its way

through.

"Close the distance. Put us between them and the

starbase. Stand them down."

"Closing distance, sir."

The Romulan ship grew larger and centered itself

on the viewscreen like a piece of art in a

frame.

"Come nose to nose with them, Mr. Sulu."

"Aye, sir."

The great sallow green ship angled toward them,

head-on against the black of space. Kirk gazed

at it, considering the present, unlikely

circumstances. Under normal conditions, the

Enterprise could have sent them begging, but powered

down twenty percent, the other ship had any

mechanical advantage it wanted to have.

That meant relying on other

advantages.

"Ship to ship."

Around him he felt the crew putting on their

resolute faces, hiding whatever they might have

been feeling, determined that the Romulans not see

a shudder, a blink, a flinch.

"The Imperial Subcommander, Captain,"

Uhura said, and swiveled to look at the screen

just as it began to waver.

The Klingon-style vessel dissolved, and the

picture formed into a severe face with all the

expected elements, and a few unexpected ones--

drawn angular brows shading carefully governed

eyes, hair blown back and even a little shaggy,

cheeks somewhat pale today.

"I am Subcommander Romar," he said.

"ally have questions for me."

"I'm James t. Kirk, commanding the

U.S.So. Enterprise. What is your

purpose here?"

"We come under the order of my commander, who

wishes to greet you in person, on your starbase.

We have deactivated our weapons, as requested

by your starbase personnel."

"We have no treaty with you," Kirk said

bluntly. "You don't want one. When you do,

then you can start making requests to approach, and not

before. Do you have an emergency?"

"There is no emergency," the Romulan

admitted. "May we approach the starbase and

speak with you personally?"

"Why won't your commander speak with me here and

now?"

The subcommander shrugged. "He has an

arbitrary habit of wanting to look into the eyes of

others. He doesn't like viewers. It's a

habit I must deal with. After all, he is my

commander. Please let us approach, Captain."

Kirk sensed more than tension on the other side.

The subcommander's voice was relaxed, his

posture rounded, a certain yearning in his gaze.

Kirk followed his instinct and said, "Keep your

shields down, your weapons off-line, and your

engines powered down to point five sublight.

Follow us in, and we'll arrange for a mooring.

Our weapons are armed and we won't be taking a

mooring. We'll be ready to act on the

half-second if there are any aggressive or

destructive moves. I want your commander ready

to talk to me within five minutes of my

direct order."

"I will tell him," the Romulan said without

pause. "He will explain our presence."

"That's right. He will. Enterprise out."

The screen faded back to the view of the

Romulan ship, but somehow Kirk had the lingering

sensation that he was still being watched.

"Clear with the dockmaster, Mr. Spock. But

specify that we won't be taking a mooring.

We're at red alert. Lieutenant, hail the

starbase, code five."

"Aye, sir," Uhura responded, but

drumming up such an uncommon code took her

a few seconds longer than usual. The extra

seconds proved she understood what he meant and

would mask the communication with double and triple

guards. If anybody was listening, they wouldn't

hear much more than electrical whistles and coughs.

So listen if you want to, Kirk thought as

he stared at that ship.

"Captain," Uhura said, "Helen

Fogelstein, starbase magistrate, and Mr.

Orland from the Race Committee."

"Visual."

"On visual, sir."

The screen changed so smoothly this time, moving

between compatible systems instead of struggling with two

separate technologies, that for an instant it

looked as though John Orland had a Romulan

ship growing out of his ear. Then it was just Orland and a

very approachable-looking woman i n her fifties with

short black hair and a single worry line across

her brow.

"Captain Kirk," she said, "welcome

to Starbase 16. I wish I could offer you peace

and quiet."

"We'll have peace and quiet, ma'am, if I

have to get it at phaserpoint. What's going on?

Why did you let that ship past your border

outposts?"

"They came in broadcasting interstellar

truce, and since they complied with all weapons

deactivation regulations for approach, I had

to let them come in."

"No, you didn't," Kirk told her

casually. "The Federation isn't a candy store,

Ms. Fogelstein. You have an entire starbase and

three security outposts at your administration.

You might consider reviewing the regulations

manual regarding approach of

non-treaty contacts. You shouldn't have to feel

intimidated by anybody."

"But I didn't have any reason to turn them

down. Part of our purpose for being out here is--"

"Part of the advantage of being out here," Kirk

interrupted, "is the ability to act at your

personal impulse regarding friction in

non-self-governing regions. You've got the

power, Ms. Fogelstein, and you should use it."

The woman blushed, swallowed a couple of

times, sighed, and nodded. "I wish I'd told

them that."

Kirk took a step forward and asked, "Mr.

Orland, what do they want to talk to you about?"

Orland wasn't any more at ease than the

magistrate. He shifted back and forth so

nervously that the screen seemed to be swinging.

"They seem to want to join the race, Captain

Kirk."

"Join the race?" That was their story? A

Romulan heavy cruiser moves across the

neutral zone, and that was the best they could do?

He studied John Orland's face to see

whether or not he bought that story. How offended would

the Race Committee be if he laughed in their

faces?

"Do you want them in the race?"

"ationo, not really."

"Why didn't you say so?" He let them

squirm a few seconds, realizing his bridge

crew was squirming too, with empathy. "Why

didn't anybody speak up before the situation

reached this point? You people shouldn't be waiting for a

Starfleet presence before you drum up the resolve

to act on the power you do possess." Too often

that only leaves Starfleet with a disaster to clean

up, he added silently. Clean-up wasn't the

purpose of a starship as far as he was concerned, and

he didn't like doing it.

The two people on the viewer suddenly dropped their

helpless expressions for one of shame.

"I know that," Orland said. "ally're right,

Captain. But they came in and now we're stuck

with them. I know I'm the big shot from the Race

Committee, but I'm a chemist by trade. What

do I know about these kinds of people? I could give them

a ruling and they'd blast my face off for not offering

them the right interstellar nose-picking ritual or

something. The only reason I'm on the Race

Committee at all is that I run a

youth rally on Rigel 12, and my

brother-in-law is a UFP diplomat, and he

wanted to get me back for not arranging for his kid

to win. I mean, this is his idea of a good-natured

joke, you know? Nobody ever said I'd have to deal

with Romulans. Will you come over here and deal with

them, please?"

"I'm going to have to," Kirk said flatly.

"Tell their commander to meet me in Ms.

Fogelstein's office in ten minutes."

Ms. Fogelstein dropped some of the reddish

terror out of her face, but still looked nervous about

telling the Romulans they'd have to leave their ship

and do the bidding of Starfleet, but she didn't

argue or ask for a different arrangement.

"Thank you!" she gasped. "I'll tell

them!"

The screen dissolved to the view of the Starbase

and the Romulan vessel, and Jim Kirk got a

mental vision of what the Enterprise must look

like to the Romulans. Big, white, armed,

angry, and coming in at high warp--maybe they were

having second thoughts too. Maybe he could

play on that.

Eying the screen, he leaned back toward

Spock and lowered his voice.

"They're not here to run a race," he droned.

"I know that, you know that, and they know it."

Spock only nodded, and also watched the big

intruder hovering there among all those race

contestants.

"Do Romulans have kamikaze missions?"

Sulu speculated from his helm. "All they'd have

to do is open fire, and they'd cut up a dozen

ships and a starbase before we could even blink."

Kirk glanced at him. "I assume that means

you've plotted your firing pattern, Mr.

Sulu."

"Oh--" Sulu blinked and grabbed at his

controls. "Pattern plotted, sir. I'm

sorry, sir."

"Rule number one, Mr. Sulu," Kirk

said. "Never be too fascinated with the enemy."

"Yes, sir. It won't happen again."

Kirk watched for a few moments while the

Romulan ship approached the starbase and was

accepted by the mooring detail in what appeared

to be a series of deceptively ordinary

movements.

"Spock," he began tentatively,

moving to the ship's rail and lowering his voice.

The Vulcan turned in his chair, and Kirk

realized this was the first time today that Spock had sat

down at his controls. Maybe this underlying twinge that

things had been going a little too right and had to snap

wasn't just in Kirk's command imagination.

Maybe Spock felt it too.

"Speculate," Kirk said. "What would

Romulans want in all this open space? I

understand that Starfleet pre-exploration charting

reported almost nothing here worth having, and

certainly not much worth fighting over. These

Gullrey people, and that's about it, correct? No

other notable star systems?"

"Few," Spock confirmed. "If Gullrey

is accepted into the Federation, then the UFP gains

access to an area of open space equal

to eighteen percent of current Federation holdings.

A very large acquisition, even if it is empty

space with very little mining or strategic use. Even

as colonization possibilities, the vastness of the

area between Starbase 16 and Gullrey is

substantial. The Romulans may not covet the

area, but may simply be suspect of Federation

purposes. That alone would be enough to make them wary.

They may simply take our interest in the area as

a reason to covet."

"They don't buy the idea of the Gullreys

wanting to join us for their own betterment and

protection."

"The Rey, sir," Spock corrected

dryly. "And that is true."

Kirk leaned his back on the rail and pressed

it with both hands, again glaring at the forward screen.

He tried to talk himself into what he had just heard

and what he had just said.

"I don't like this. This is piecrust

diplomacy. It's pretty, but it crumbles. The

Romulans aren't that stupid. There's something

else going on. I don't like the fact that they

happen to show up when the Starfleet vessels are

hobbled. We'll be easy pickings if trouble

erupts. Maybe they're looking for a reason

to erupt."

Spock nodded. "This could be an opportunity

for them to get into that sector without going to war with the

Federation over it."

"Which leads me to ask," Kirk said slowly,

"what the Romulans know about this sector that we

don't." He grasped the arm of his command

chair and nailed the comm panel. "Sickbay."

"Sickbay, Nurse Chapel."

"Get me Dr. McCoy."

"allyes, sir, one moment."

That one moment lasted thirty years. By the time it

was over, Kirk was grinding his teeth.

"McCoy here."

"What took you so long?"

"A compound fracture, Captain,"

McCoy responded, sounding irritated at

having to explain himself.

"Interns should be setting broken legs,

Doctor, not you," Kirk barked. "I want an

analysis of our Rey visitors from you.

Physiology, anthropology, history, and

any attraction they might have for Romulans."

"Romulans? What've they got to do with

this?"

"They showed up at Starbase 16."

"Could it have something to do with the race? All those

vessels gathered in one place?"

"I don't know. A race is supposed to be

entertainment. Sportsmanship. Competition. It

just became something else."

"Maybe they just want to be in the race. Use

it as an excuse to have a look at us. Since we

don't have anything to hide, then what's the harm?"

"I don't know," the captain repeated, his

fists sweating at his sides. "But once the

neighborhood bully shows up, you know the game

isn't going to be fun anymore."

He knew the Romulans were here for some other

purpose than curiosity about some competition or

other, and there wasn't any clue yet. Clues

had to be dug for, coaxed, weeded out, sometimes from

between the nerve endings of people who should never have gotten so

close to each other.

The Romulan ship could cut the Enterprise

in half with the present power ratios, and he

assumed they knew that. A spy, a cousin, a

coaxed barmaid--information couldn't be held down,

and no one had made any particular efforts

to keep quiet the fact that the Starfleet ships were

being handicapped for the race.

"Captain?"

"Yes, Mr. Spock?"

Well, he'd been expecting this.

"I do not mean to question your judgment," Spock

began.

"Yes, you do, but go ahead anyway."

"Is it wise to offer them mooring? And I

presume, since you did not decline, that you intend

to meet their request of personal contact with their

commander."

"I'm curious," Kirk admitted.

"And is it possible," the Vulcan added, "that

you are curtailing their arc of movement by bringing them

in?"

Kirk glanced at him, and a smile pulled at

his mouth.

"That's right. Spock, contact our Rey

guests down below and ask Tom if he or his

planet has ever been approached or even

scanned by Imperial ships to the best of his knowledge, and

then I want to know how he thinks his planet will

feel about hostile participation i n the race."

Spock pulled himself away from the view on the

screen with obvious effort.

"I assume you mean participation of

hostiles," he said.

"You know what I mean."

"Yes, sir."

The computer's remote earpiece went in, and the

Vulcan turned to his console. His deep

voice murmured behind the bridge noises, short

questions, terse and complete, efficient. Kirk

watched and read his first officer's posture, as he

had learned to during their years of service, and

noted that Spock wasn't any more satisfied with the

situation than Kirk was.

After not very long at all, the Vulcan

swiveled in his chair and said, "The Rey guests

have absolutely no awareness of any Romulan

interests in their planet, economic,

scientific, sociological, or hostile.

No approaches whatsoever. In fact, Tom

insists he has never heard of Romulans.

However, he does mention that if the Romulans

wish to join the race, the Rey have no compunction

about their planet's open-armed welcome, but will

defer to your judgment."

"Oh, wonderful," Kirk drawled.

"Let's all try to handle the Romulans with

valentine cards. See how well we do."

Spock raised a brow, frowned, and nodded.

"I understand," he said.

Somehow that was comforting. Annoying, but comforting.

Spock felt the same way, or at least knew

what Kirk was feeling.

Just a race. Just an event for fun. For showing

off and making dares. Just a race. That's all.

Now it was suddenly a breakable situation.

He turned to the viewscreen, which showed him the

enormous Romulan ship, with several race

contenders now warily returning to the area.

"I didn't come here as an umpire," he

grumbled, "but I'll hold the scales if I have

to. The Rey have bad judgment. It's unwise

to reject basic caution. Spock, don't you have

any hypothesis about this ... presence?"

"I can only extrapolate on your own

suspicions," he said quietly. "The Rey

are somehow the key. Their advancement into space

travel was suspiciously sudden, given the

slowness of their cultural developments."

Kirk felt his brow tighten. "You mean ...

the Romulans might have tampered with the Rey

already?"

Shifting fluidly from one foot to the other,

Spock drew a long breath.

"Everyone tampers. Many cultures have joined

the Federation and, by doing so, made a leap ahead that

would otherwise have taken generations. Billions of

lives have been saved which would otherwise have been

sacrificed to the normal development of medicine

and science."

Kirk grasped the rail and pivoted himself up

onto the quarterdeck to Spock's side.

"But that's us, Mr. Spock. We're like that.

That's our ... way. We found out a long time

ago that we all profit from it. If I didn't

believe in it, I wouldn't be out here. But the

Romulans--t's not their way. So why are they

here?"

"Is it possible they have something hidden in this

sector that they wish left undiscovered?"

Spock offered.

Kirk grew suddenly speculative and

quiet.

"Anything is possible, Mr. Spock," he

answered finally. "Especially where the Romulans

are concerned."

Tribal masks, pub signs, and whiskey

mirrors decorated Starbase 16's

transporter room walls. Beaming in was like

waking up from a nice neat dream into a travel

brochure.

his--irk, I'm Helen

Fogelstein."

She had her hand out toward him and was speaking even

before the transporter process had cleared enough

to let him hear her start talking.

Kirk stepped off the pad and scanned the

room. "Looks as if somebody's been

exploring."

"My husband and his brother," she said. She

waved her hands as she talked. "They go all

over. My office is right down the hallway.

Mr. Orland is meeting the Romulan captain

and taking him to a waiting room until you can get

to my office. We're going to make him come to you,

instead of the other way around. We thought that was kind of

... would give you a psychological

advantage."

"Good thinking. Did he come alone, or does

he have guards with him?"

"Oh, no, we told him he'd have to come

by himself."

"I wish you'd summoned that kind of resolve

two hours ago."

"Oh, so do I, so do i. They didn't like it

either, his coming by himself. But now that you're here it just

seems easier to set conditions."

Her office was a muddle of decor, a pub

sign here, a decorative egg there, a

terra-cotta pig by the door. She offered him a

seat, but he shook his head and she immediately

understood. She waved her hand over a tea set

whose pot was in the shape of a 1900's iron

stove, but again he declined, determined

to communicate that he was here for only one purpose

and wanted to get it over with.

Finally Ms. Fogelstein shrugged and blinked,

then shrugged again, couldn't think of anything social

to say, and tapped the communication unit on her

desk. "Toby, have Mr. Orland bring the

Imperial Commander in, please."

There wasn't any response, but Ms.

Fogelstein didn't seem to think that was odd.

She rubbed her hands together in a nervous manner,

then held them out and shrugged again.

"I'm sorry about this," she said.

Ordinarily, Kirk would smile and let her

off the hook, but he resisted. Anyone running a

base this far out of the mainstream needed to learn how

to handle the dangerously unexpected. He'd seen

the remains of outposts who were unprepared in

attitude or arms to deal with the

antagonisms in sectors of space that could

seem perfectly established, but become disputed

at a stranger's whim. Apparently, Starbase

16 had been lucky until now.

As the hope fled in his mind that luck would not

slack today, another door opened and John

Orland appeared, markedly less lighthearted

than the last time Kirk had seen him.

In that instant Kirk's reflexes got the

better of him and he straightened his shoulders,

flexed his arms, and inhaled. He knew the

reaction was like a little boy defending a street

corner, but it came out of him anyway. He

wanted to appear as capable of subterfuge as

honor. He wanted the Romulan to see him not

as the ribboned commander, but as a swindler, a

tactician, a manipulator, a human

gauntlet. As whatever he had to be to get a

rise out of him.

The Romulan leader was bearded like a medieval

knight, neatly deported and dressed in

unfamiliar gear, maybe an older style

uniform, a simple blue jacket with amber

trim and a sash over one shoulder. Or maybe it

was just their version of off-duty clothes.

The two civilians stepped apart and the two

commanders came together, gazing firmly, plumbing for

vulnerabilities, finding damned few.

Jim Kirk stared at the face of his

Romulan counterpart and endured a thunderclap of

distrust--and other things he couldn't quite define.

"Captain Kirk," the commander said fluidly.

A mellow voice for his kind. "I've heard of

you. A remarkable record for one so young."

"I'm backed by remarkable support,

Commander," Kirk said. "What's your purpose

here?"

The Romulan's eyes didn't falter--

something the captain always looked for. "We heard

of a great race. We demand the chance

to participate."

"You demand?"

"Forgive me--poor choice of ^ws. I

stumble over your language from lack of

practice. My people tend to learn harsh ^ws first.

May I request that we be allowed to participate

in your race?"

Kirk turned his head a little, to allow for a

sidelong glare. He parted his lips and slowly

asked, "Why?"

The commander licked his lips and allowed--Was it

shy candor?--ffshow through in the form of a smile.

"I see you aren't easily maneuvered,

Captain. Would it help if I admit to you that

my presence here is unsanctioned by the Empire?"

Kirk's gaze bore into the Romulan. "You

breached Federation space on your own authority?

Risked a death sentence from your own government just

to run a race?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Kirk saw Orland

and Ms. Fogelstein huddled together, backing away

an inch at a time. The farther the better, as he

closed the inches between himself and the commander.

"I'm going to ask you one more time," he said.

"Why?"

The Romulan smiled in a reserved way, not

really a smile so much as a tightening of the lips,

an accenting of the cheekbones.

"There is no challenge left for me and those like

me," the visitor said. "There are no questions, no

conquests, no unknown territory in Empire

space. All we have to do is to go around and around,

Captain. As you see, I am no longer a young

soldier, hot for adventure as I once was.

But I crave a challenge, one chance to go up

against ... legends." He made a consciously

passive gesture toward Kirk. "I only

want to run the race. Perhaps to push the boundaries

of Federation thought about my kind ... to know I have

altered the galaxy just a little. I cherish the last

challenge of my career and want it to be something

other than ... one more circle."

Caught for a moment between suspicion and his oath

to break down barriers between cultures, Kirk

felt thorns of denial pricking at him. He

knew what had just become his obligation.

Provide an example--be bigger than his

reflexes, even bigger than his instincts. Be

gallant. Be polite. Give the answer time

to show itself.

"I don't believe your story," he said.

"But for now, it'll do. If you and your ship

qualify according to Race Committee

specifications, and your ship is handicapped to the

level of Starfleet ships, then I won't

order you out of the sector."

"Order us? Captain, the race is being run

in free space. You have no jurisdiction here."

Kirk handed him back one of those n-q-smiles

and added to it a half-swagger. "Want'a

bet?"

The Romulan chuckled openly and said , "No,

I would prefer not to make a bet with you."

"Believe me, Commander," Kirk stomped over

the chuckle, "if I don't want you in that free

space, you won't have time to run a race."

There were subtler changes logged away in his

file of expressions to watch out for, but this

Romulan was different a second later. A

difference like the color of clouds deciding whether

or not to rain.

"Understood," he said. "Accept my apology

again."

Too fast.

Fast and personable, way too much. Starfleet

would just have to make a new set of rules about dealing

with smiles and quiet ^ws that couldn't possibly

be true.

"Report to the starbase maintenance dock for

handicapping. Keep all your personnel aboard.

You stay here and sign up with the Race Committee.

I want to know your ship's specifications, fuel

and weapon capacity, and its name in the English

equivalent."

"Yes," the commander said. "I will provide you with

that information. My ship is called Red

Talon. It happens to translate

directly."

Kirk choked back a snide remark about the

vicious nature of the ship's name,--a remark of the

kind that no ship's master deserved, no matter

how ragged a past between civilizations.

"And your name?" he asked.

"Oh, of course," the Romulan said. "My

name is Valdus."

Chapter Four

Imperial Cruiser Red Talon

"Answer their questions. Be direct. Be very

short, but be polite. Humans read politeness

as a clue. I'll join you in a few minutes."

"Yes, Commander."

Valdus stood alone before the viewscreen as his

ship's centurion went off to handle the committee

regulations, to tell the humans what they needed

to know and not one syllable more.

Until his eyes ached, he gazed at the

gleaming white Federation ship, with its

powerful warp drive nacelles and its glowing

forward section hovering above the starbase and above

him.

His purpose had seemed simple until this

moment. Perhaps it was still simple, and this churning within

his innards was not a complication but a clinging memory

of that other captain's glare. That glare--boring and

prying into him like some kind of drill.

That man, that piece of fire. James

Kirk. He had not been merely handling an

annoyance, or even handling a potential threat.

He had been thinking hard, trying to think like the

enemy alien before him, to dig into them and know what their

minds held.

Valdus knew humans were not soft-hearted as

rumor preferred. He knew they could summon

steel willfulness; that had been the only way

they'd beaten the Empire behind a neutral strip

and held it there these generations.

And that young man over there was the kind who had done

it, that James Kirk and his sort.

"Dangerous," Valdus uttered.

"Commander?" a voice came up from behind him.

The sound of his subcommander's voice was at

once comfort and challenge.

Valdus, realizing he had been slumping,

straightened. "Yes, Romar, yes."

He turned now and the two of them sank into a

shadow together.

"You have something to tell me?" the subcommander

asked.

"Yes," Valdus said. "I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry when you're tense."

"Oh, you misread me."

"I'm the one who must order your meals to the

bridge, remember."

"No, I don't recall that."

"I shall point it out next time. This is not a

sanctioned encroachment of Federation territory,"

Romar said, speaking very softly, but in a casual

tone for the sake of others, as though discussing a menu

for the officers' table. "It makes me uneasy,

Commander. We have no orders to do this."

"Nor orders not to," Valdus pointed out.

Romar shook his head. "Please don't

smile," he sighed. "You know I falter when you

find me amusing."

"There are age-old reasons for my actions,"

Valdus told him quietly. "Older than you.

And you're not that amusing."

"Let me bring weapons up."

"Oh, yes. Let's fly into unfamiliar

territory burgeoning with Federation vessels,

including at least one Starfleet battleship, and

let's power up our weapons so their sensors can

read the surge. I wish I'd thought of it."

"What have you thought of?" Romar persisted, still

keeping his voice down. "You haven't confided in

me yet."

"Perhaps I never will."

"Yes, you will. You don't like keeping

secrets. You never make me guess like this."

Romar stepped closer to him and eyed him

squarely. "You're uncertain of what you're doing

here, aren't you? You're here to discover something, not to do

something. Yes?"

"I will do something," Valdus assured him.

"I have clear actions to take, once I make

up my mind. This is their idea, Romar, not

mine. I use the other man's methods whenever

possible. This competition is the best way I can

get an entire battle cruiser near that

planet."

Romar paused and thought for a moment. "The host

planet? Why should you want to be near it?"

A chill rammed down Valdus's spine at

those ^ws. To be near such a place, with such people

... to put himself and his ship and crew near such

creatures--

I was wounded. I was confused. Can a mind be

stripped of sense from outside forces? How can I

be sure my memory hasn't fogged over the

years? Many humanoid species look alike

in the galaxy. What was I seeing? Do I know

how to answer his questions? Will I know any better in

a few hours?

All around them, officers and bridge

personnel engaged in pointless work just to keep from

standing still and staring into the screen at that starship, but also

to keep from glancing too often at their commander and his

second, over here in the corner, muttering about the

secrets of this mission.

Valdus felt their tensions and the pounding of all

their hearts. It took his best inner control

to resist them.

They would sense what he sensed when he looked

at news pictures from the Federation and saw the

Rey people. Most of what he sensed, at any

rate. For how could they know that his one great animus

had been discovered in the wilderness? Was it

really the same group of people who sent that one small

ship out all those years ago--cd it be?

Could it not be? He would never forget those eyes

of theirs, wide and round and dark--how those eyes

changed from friendship to fear, and poisoned him and his

crewmates.

He had searched space for the source of that ship,

and never found it.

Now, the Federation had found it. But the Race

Committee had denied him a host guest aboard his

ship, so he couldn't be sure.

Sure ... he must become sure.

"Do memories ever lie, Romar?" he

murmured. He focused again on the Federation ship

before them. "Do fears fester?"

The low bridge lights passed in patches

across Romar's reddish brown hair and light

brown eyes.

"Such questions," he said, frowning now with concern.

"What are you asking yourself?"

"I may be looking at a demonic image

through a haze of a young crewman's fear,"

Valdus admitted. "The years may have left

me only a cloud of suspicion. I may be

entirely wrong, but I am driven to find out. I

must know," he added, "if these are the people who

destroyed my ship and murdered my crewmates

... so many years ago."

Romar studied his commander's face, the echo of

youth that still lingered in those gray eyes that had seen so

many campaigns, the graceful way Valdus had

aged, suggested only by threads of silver in his

dark hair, an old scar across his left

temple, and a certain touch of fatigue in his

voice from time to time.

But this other thing that was in his voice--th was something

Romar hadn't heard before.

"You had better tell me this story," he said,

"because if you're making arbitrary decisions for your

own sake instead of the Empire's, then ..."

Valdus gave him a sidelong leer.

"Then?"

In his own usual manner, somewhat less

severe than most of their order, Romar offered an

almost imperceptible shrug. "I will have to stop you."

"And I will have to kill you when you try."

The ^ws were crushing, but neither of them was

surprised.

Romar nodded and pressed his shoulder to the

bulkhead. "Then we shall have an interesting

few days."

His leader barely reacted. But there was something in

Valdus's tone when he spoke.

Something precarious.

"Oh, yes," he said. "If we live."

Chapter Five

Bridge of the Enterprise

Romulan. An Earth ^w. Earth legend.

The ^w might as well have been chiseled across the

screen as Jim Kirk prowled the view of that

other ship. How had an Earth ^w become so

alien?

Somehow he was outraged at the theft, even though

it was just a ^w.

He crossed back to the science station.

"Spock," he said.

The slim blue-and-black clad form pivoted

toward him, the black eyes severe, yet

tolerant of things Vulcans weren't supposed

to understand. The style of the man himself overcame those

stereotypes. Spock and his kind were often

described as stiff.

There was nothing stiff about him.

"No record of encounter with anyone named

Valdus," Spock said, "other than a Federation

agricultural intermediary from Daran Very who

died six years ago. If this Valdus has

gained any particular renown beyond the Romulan

Empire, it has escaped Federation notice."

"Meaning he's either extremely bad at what

he does," Kirk said, "or extremely good.

Did you notice what he said? That running this

race was his own idea?"

"Plausible deniability," Spock agreed.

"Yes. He admits he's doing this on his

own, and the Empire can deny everything if trouble

arises. That proves to me that trouble's about

to break. Get ahold of McCoy. I want that

report on our guests. Are they in their

quarters?"

"I've been monitorin g their movements since

this problem developed, sir," Spock told

him, "and apparently they sleep very little. They've

been touring the ship constantly since their arrival,

though slowly andwith somewhat irksome appreciation."

"Irksome?"

"I only report the crew's

reaction, sir."

"Yes, I understand," the captain allowed.

"There certainly is such a thing as too much

adoration."

Spock nodded and resisted reacting, but part of a

grin surfaced anyway.

"They have been adoring us copiously," he said.

"Restrict their movements. Keep them away

from the propulsion systems and any computer

accesses over level four. I'm not ready

to trust them yet. Not with this new development."

"I would hesitate to characterize them as spies,

Captain," Spock said. "The Rey have gone out

of their way to learn English planetwide and have

even made it their second international

language. This is documented by the Federation and

fairly accepted as genuine brotherhood. It's

difficult to convince an entire planet to perform

espionage. The purpose of their interest in

Federation membership seems genuinely to be

education and advancing their culture's

capabilities and contributions."

"Somebody else might have to teach them."

The blunt statement set Spock to silence for a

moment. He stood and stepped down to Kirk's

side.

"Captain, I wish I could offer you more

reassurance regarding the Rey. Or the

Romulans. Or this sector of space.

Regarding the first two ..." the Vulcan shrugged.

"As far as the third is concerned, unfortunately,

this race was organized before the sector could be

secured. As such, the event will prove to be as much

exploration as sport. This, of course,

provides the added possibility of vessel

damage and accidents, without the safety of marked

space lanes."

Kirk shook his head. "I'm not worried about

the contestants. Those people don't need

baby-sitters. I just hope one of those

spectator ships doesn't get caught in a

vortex. Those are the ones I'm worried about."

He glowered at the screen again. "They also carry

hundreds of potential hostages."

"Captain," Spock began.

Then he was suddenly quiet, and Kirk had

to turn and look at him to get the rest of that

sentence.

"Yes, Spock?"

"I've received a list of additional

entrants to the race as provided by the Race

Committee. A vessel representing Harrell

Hullworks, from Catula, Theta Pictoris,

two from the First Federation, one from Ardana

Exports--"

"All right, all right," Kirk cut him off.

"Have the list available in my quarters. I'll

look at it later."

"Yes, sir."

But Spock didn't turn away.

"Captain, I would like to remind you of something,"

he said.

"Well," Kirk prodded, "go on."

"While we are here, you should not forget to ...

enjoy the race."

Kirk felt his shoulders and the muscles of his

stomach relax a little.

"Why, thank you, Spock," he said. And

suddenly, Kirk found himself breathing a little

easier. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe this

really was just the curiosity of one Romulan

commander. Whatever it was, the only advantage the

Romulans would have was that secret. The starbase

engineers would bring their ship down to the power level

of the starships. That in itself was a gamble. Starbase people

were used to peace that was provided for them by the starships

and other vessels of the Fleet, who took the

brunt of trouble, like the army that went into the

frontier before the pioneers.

"Well, we'll see," he murmured.

Spock blinked. "Sir?"

"Nothing, Spock, nothing. I was just wondering

if it's ... I guess the ^w is healthy,"

he said, "to run some races."

From behind them a welcome voice interrupted.

"This from a man to whom a salad is green

peppers in a taco."

They both turned in time to see McCoy step

down to stand behind the command chair between them.

"Doctor," the captain greeted. He felt

a grin tug at his lips and realized suddenly that

Spock's effect on him was holding. "You have a

report for me regarding the Rey?"

"More or less," McCoy said. "I talked

to them, I looked at them, I invited them to have a

look at sickbay and got them to "ride"' the

diagnostic beds--"

"Which gave you a medical checkout," the

captain hurried. "What did you get?"

"I got a lot of thank-yous.

They keep repeating how happy they are at having

outside contact. Apparently they wanted it very

desperately. They're highly social and the

idea of being the only intelligent life in the

galaxy sent a cold shudder down their

collective spine."

"I can understand that," Kirk commented.

Spock nodded. "Earth went through the same

apprehensions in the early 2000's."

"You have a conclusion on those observations?" the

captain prodded.

"I would say they're not predators, not built

for hunting at all," McCoy replied.

"They're runners, generally slender, high

metabolic rates, herbivorous--they keep

asking about our galley and that's where I sent them.

They like to cook. Blunt teeth, good hearing, good

eyesight, strong sense of smell, tend to be

clever, quick, good at hiding--"

"Can you get to the point?"

McCoy shrugged, and plowed ahead.

"I'd say they're antelopes," he said.

Kirk and Spock eyed each other, and the

captain took solace in the fact that Spock

didn't seem to understand that either.

"Elaborate," Kirk picked.

McCoy spread his hands as though the whole thing

should be clear by now.

"They're deer, Jim. That's their place on

the evolutionary scale. They were never

hunterstattackers on the food chain. They were

always gatherers and scavengers. They come from a

planet where all the predators were brutes and the

intelligence developed in the secondary levels

of evolution--the large prey. Eventually they

gained control of the planet and got control of the

predators with science and medical means of

containment. But they're pretty twitchy. They

don't sleep much. They wander around the ship all

the time, afraid they'll miss something. These people's

advancement has been very slow according to Earth standards.

It took them centuries to get up to warp

drive, and they never made it beyond warp one point

five. Then they just ... gave it up. They're very

shy on the scale of advancement, and they tend

to give up easily when things get uncomfortable."

"Comfort doesn't make strong souls,

Doctor," Kirk commented. "If they were never

predatory, they never had to be strong. That's why

humanity went to space. Because it's hard

and uncomfortable and it builds character."

"The strong survive? Maybe," McCoy

said disapprovingly. "I'd have to say these people are more

interested in the character of others than themselves. When they

received a response to their last couple of calls,

and Captain Dodge flew in with the Hood, and the

Rey discovered that not only was life out there but

humanoid life that almost looks like them--why,

hell, they almost broke down and had a

planetwide sob. The galaxy suddenly opened

up to them and they're desperate not to miss anything.

To find life like themselves that acted strong and powerful,

decisive, willing to share--they've been wrapped

up in humanity like some kind of big hobby ever

since. They think we're ... nifty."

Kirk shook his head and that grin finally broke

out as he looked up at his chief surgeon's

cocky, friendly face under the cap of brown hair,

and absorbed the touch of Atlanta in his old

friend's voice.

"Yes, we're nifty. Not one of your more

helpful reports, Bones."

"Well, Jim, look at it this way. It's

a chance to put on your Napoleon suit and start

giving orders, because this time you'll have an audience.

These people are quailing and kind of spooky, but

they're thrilled to be here."

"Spooky is a nondescriptive term,

doctor," Spock pointed out.

"Not if you have Halloween on your planet,

Bub," McCoy tossed back.

"Captain," Uhura spoke up from behind him.

"Race Chairman Orland is hailing us from the

starbase."

"Not a moment's peace," Kirk said. "Put

him on audio, Lieutenant."

"On audio, sir."

"Captain Kirk? Are you there?"

"Affirmative, Mr. Orland, you're

audio."

"Thank you for that--it seems to be all worked

out with ... them."

"I'm glad, Mr. Orland. As long as

"they"' don't provoke any incidents."

"Well, they've agreed to run the route

without any race committeemen or host visitors

on board. We just plain told them we didn't

want anyone but their own people on their ship."

"I was going to suggest that," Kirk said. "I'm

glad you thought of it yourselves."

"So am i. And they've let us harness up

their ship and bring it into the maintenance bay. We'll

have those power reductions done in about six hours.

By then the other contestants should be here and we can all

go outside the solar system and take places on

the starting line. Everybody's anxious to get the

race started, so we're going to fire the starting

cannon at nine o'clock base-standard time. Okay

with you?"

"I'm just here as a contestant, Mr. Orland,"

Kirk told him. "You don't have to check with

me."

"Well, I just figured ... you know."

"I understand. Let's hope my job is done

regarding ... you know."

"I sure hope so too. Thanks very much

again, Captain. We'll start polishing the

cannon!"

"Fine with us. Kirk out."

He motioned a cut-off to Uhura, and in the

corner of his eye noted that she had smoothly

terminated the communication. To his right, he felt

Spock's silent gaze again.

"Fine with us," he grumbled, so that only

Spock could hear. "Let's hope we don't have

to start polishing the phasers."

The starting line was a sight to see . Dozens of

beautiful ships, new ones, old ones, plain and

painted, a half dozen ugly ones, all standing

at broadsides to each other, waiting for the sound

of the cannon to come over their sensors.

And there, studding the line-up, were the Starfleet

entrants. Two more starships and a frigate. The

Hood, the Intrepid, and the Great

Lakes--big, beautiful, white ships gleaming

along the line of merchant vessels and

representative ships.

All the ships were "dressed," lit up, all

running lights and exterior spotlights on,

all hull decor sparkling, flags and pennants

strung wherever possible. It was a glittering

display.

It would have been especially invigorating,

except for the dominating presence of the Romulan

battle cruiser, hovering a third of the way down

the line, dwarfing most of the ships around it.

Except for the four Starfleet vessels, the

Red Talon would've been the largest ship

participating.

Suddenly Jim Kirk was glad Starfleet

had accepted the invitation to the Great Starship

Race.

"Ship to ship," he ordered, "Starfleet

frequency code three, Lieutenant. Shield

the communications as well as you can. Starfleet

vessels only."

"Code three, sir," Uhura complied, but it

took her a few moments to do what he wanted.

"Captain, I have Captains T'ationoy,

Tahl, and Dodge."

"Put them on visual."

"Aye, sir. Visual, screens seven,

eight, and nine."

Kirk stood up, and by the time he turned to the

small upper deck scanners between the science station

and the communication station, three faces were gazing at

him with bridges of other ships in the small

backgrounds.

"Captains," he greeted as he stepped up

there and Spock came to his side.

"Hi, Jim," Ken Dodge cheerily said

first.

"Captain Kirk," the relaxed-looking

Vulcan woman offered with a glint in her eye.

Behind her, her Vulcan bridge crew watched the

screen with practiced dispassion.

And Hans Tahl only smiled and nodded because

he heard the others beat him to saying hello. He

was a very blond, very friendly man who always looked as

if he was about to sneeze.

Dodge, on the other hand, was a dark-haired

former field soldier who had come up through the

ranks very fast and without any Academy boost and

was very tough to surprise.

"Jim, you sure you want to bother running the

race now that we're here?" he asked.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Kirk

said.

"Come on. When have you ever beaten me at

anything?"

"Do I have to remind you about summer, oh, about

eight years ago?"

"Oh, you got lucky!"

"But I won."

"But it was plain, dumb dog luck!"

"But I did win."

Dodge grinned widely and paused to let his

bridge crew laugh at him. "Good point."

Kirk could tell they were working at their

high spirits more than should have been necessary under the

circumstances--circumstances which had been changed

by the intrusion of a certain ship and crew.

"I'll have the coffee ready for all three of

you when you get to the finish line," Tahl said from the

low-lying, heavily armed Starfleet frigate.

Kirk smiled. "Who says you're going to get

there first, riding in that warmongering bucket?"

"Hey, this is a frigate, boys! No

tender labs or science crew to weight me down,

and all our power's tight. You should've commanded one

of mine, Jim. What a frigateer you'd have

made!"

A foxy smile lit Kirk's flushed

apricot face. "Then what would you do for a

living?"

"Lounge in a starship, what else?"

Kirk heard something to his left and realized it

was Scott moving on the upper deck. The engineer

had come to stand against the rail, and together they gazed at

the tightly built power-packed Starfleet

vessel off their bow.

"Lord, I love a frigate," Scott

admitted. Then he blinked and added, "But don't

tell him that."

"Too late," Tahl said. "I heard

it. You're mine now, Scotty."

Scott smiled, and Kirk chuckled outright.

Spock's brow rose at them, but he didn't

say anything.

"ally're sunk, Kirk. The race is

mine," Tahl crowed. "After all, ladies'

men never win. They're too easily

distracted."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"ally might as well," Dodge laughed.

"ally can't win. There's no way to just get

lucky."

"Oh, fine," Kirk drawled. "Dignity

between captains. I'm glad this is a private

line."

"ally mean you're lucky it is. I'm

glad you're here, given the ... changes of the last

half day."

"Yes. After the cannon fires," Kirk

said, "use of these Fleet frequencies will be

grounds for disqualification. However, I wanted

to have a ^w with all of you about those "changes."'"

"Understandable," T'ationoy said.

Tahl nodded, and Dodge rolled his

eyes.

"I guess," Dodge sighed, "x

shouldn't be a surprise that somebody would take

advantage of a public event like this in an open

sector."

"I'm surprised," Tahl flipped.

"Aren't you surprised?"

With a serious snap, Kirk told them,

"Let's just hope the other contestants are

sufficiently distracted by the details of the race.

That way, we can probably maintain the peace of

this event. But if trouble does erupt, we'll be

the ones expected to deal with it. I suggest we

keep our eyes open and our Starfleet channels

on standby."

"Agreed," Dodge said.

Tahl folded his arms saucily. "We'll

muscle the peace if we have to. Hell, I

got a frigate."

Dodge's first officer leaned into the picture and

popped off, "A friggin' what?"

Jim Kirk chuckled and scratched his ear, and

he and Dodge exchanged a glance across the

viewscreens.

Tahl was about to respond when the Vulcan

woman on the far screen interrupted.

"We should also be on guard for tensions from

otherwise friendly vessels," T'ationoy

suggested. "These crews and commanders are not

trained in dealing with hostiles. They may misread

movements or approaches and react

prematurely. Obviously all are aware of the

Romulan ship, and some apprehensions have been

voiced."

"I've authorized a communiqu@e to everybody

this morning," Kirk told her. "I explained the

situation and that we're on top of it.

Hopefully, that'll head off any provocations."

"Very good," she said, and seemed to be

satisfied.

"I just got the memo," Tahl confirmed.

"It'll probably keep the other contestants

from taking any action unless they're acted upon. Very

well ^wed, Jim."

"It should be." Kirk nodded back over his

shoulder. "Spock composed it."

"Mr. Spock," Tahl greeted,

"x's good to see you again."

"Welcome, Captain," Spock said with

simple grace.

"ally're a comforting fixture standing next to that

guy there. At least we know there's somebody on that

ship with some self-control."

Spock nodded, but only once, unwilling

to take a compliment that cost his captain a point.

"Perhaps we can get together when this is all

over," Tahl added.

"Our pleasure, sir," Spock said. "We

shall have the coffee ready."

0900 Hours,

Starbase Standard Time

"Attention contestants. This is John

Orland from the Race Committee. Prepare to receive

the frequency for the first homing beacon on the

racecourse. When you get to that beacon--t is if

you get there--y'll receive the next frequency, and

so on. The spectator ships will already be there at

Gullrey when you come between the committee markers at

the finish line. I'll be there, too. Good luck

to everybody. Stand by for starbase navigational

specifications."

"Lieutenant Uhura," Kirk said, as he

settled into his chair, "receive that on the main

viewer, please."

"Ready, sir."

"Mr. Spock--"

The turbolift interrupted him with its breathy

whisper, and he turned to see Tom and Royenne

come onto the bridge, their enormous brown eyes

wide and shifting. They stepped onto the upper

deck as though the bridge would fall away under them

if they moved too fast or stepped too hard.

Tom blinked around with those big foallike

eyes and finally fixed them on Kirk.

"Captain!" he said, as though he hadn't

expected Kirk to be here. "May we watch?

Do you mind if we watch from here?"

"No, I suppose not," Kirk said. He

managed a sigh that took some of the tension out of his

shoulders. "Where's your other friend?"

"He wanted to watch from the VIP lounge,"

Royenne said. "He was enjoying the food. He's

a cook by trade, and your ship's cook was sharing

techniques about feeding a whole starship crew."

"All right ... well, you make yourselves

reasonably comfortable and--"

"And stay out of the way." Tom smiled

broadly, and his eyes picked up about

six lights. "We understand."

Even though he didn't really want it,

Kirk felt a sense of excitement brush over

him. Suddenly he was a little more eager, a degree

prouder than he had been a moment ago. "Mr.

Spock, adjust the bridge viewers and

viewscreens all over the ship."

Spock tapped one button--only one--and

suddenly the bridge staff, and on the lower decks

anyone else who looked up, saw a surrounding

scape of the race vessels hovering before, behind, and

to the sides of the starship, near and far, all itching

for the race to begin. It was as if the whole bridge

had become surrounded by windows.

Whatever Spock had done, he'd done it right,

and all for people who hadn't suspected him capable of

such poetic stage direction. The screens

compensated for each other, making the regatta look

as though it was right "outside"--even to leaving

slices out of the scene where there was bulkhead between the

screens. Warming engines on dozens of ships

preparing for light speed caused a fluorescent

glow along the starting line.

Lieutenant Uhura started a round of

applause, a nd after that first instant of thinking they

might be breaking a rule by clapping in church, the

rest of the bridge crew joined her and smiled at

Spock. The two Rey hammered their palms

together better than children at a circus.

"Oh, very nice," the captain murmured as he

looked from side to side and forward at the tails

of the private vessel Gavelan Star, and the

Starship Hood, and the scattered others who had

drawn line-up positions forward of them.

"Thank you," Spock said.

He nodded for the applause to taper off, then

allowed himself a few moments appreciation of the

beauty of the ships, the tableau of dozens of

vessels that wouldn't otherwise be gathered in one

place at one time.

"Captain, receiveg subspace," Uhura said.

"Transferring visual to the screen."

"Relay the subspace to Mr. Spock."

"Aye, sir."

Spock bent over his small viewer, and the soft

blue mask of light played across his eyes.

On the forward screen appeared a picture of a

small brass cannon about the size of a water

carafe, backdropped by a simple drape of red

velvet.

A voice came over the audio system.

"Ready ..."

"Receiveg directional, Captain," Spock

said.

"Set ... tune to frequency one point

nine six ..."

A human hand approached the little brass

cannon on the screen and touched it off.

Firing a plume of black smoke, the tiny

cannon made a deep-throated blast a lot

louder than anyone expected.

It echoed, and it hurt Kirk's ears.

"Go!"

Chapter Six

"Warp factor two, Mr. Sulu. Let's

race."

"Aye, sir, warp two!"

For solar miles around, vessels of every

description streaked from their places and glittered

into a formless dance against the backdrop of space-like

lanterns lit from within.

Some ships bolted away at warp three or

four, betting that their fix was a clear one, willing

to risk the chance that they were chasing a distortion into the

depths of night. Others lagged behind at warp one

or two, betting they could "hear" the beacon

better at low speed and risked being left behind.

Jim Kirk took both bets and both

risks. Maneuvering speed, sensor

flexibility. Of course, that also meant he could

end up lost and behind.

In the next instant, Gavelan Star

flashed into high warp. Then the Starship Hood,

and the Starfleet Frigate Great Lakes.

"Looks like Ben Shamirian thinks he found

something," Kirk commented. "Dodge and Tahl are

tailing him. That's what we like to see ...

starships dogging private yachts. Don't make

me look."

"Several spectator liners are beginning

to pull away from the starbase, sir," Spock

reported.

The captain nodded. "They'll be there for the

honors and jubilees when the race is over."

He moved quietly to the upper deck. He and

his first officer stood with their elbows almost touching and

into the science station sensor access, but they weren't

just looking for the race lane beacon. Not

yet.

"Are they tracking the committee beacon?"

Kirk asked, keeping his voice low. "Following

the race course?"

"It seems they are," Spock answered, but

he sounded uncertain. He grasped the viewer with

both hands, squinting into the blue light as it

played across his eyes. "The beacon is confounding

any attempt to triangulate. I believe it

is sending an intermittent signal. When we are

nearer, we may have to slow down even more in order

to read it with any hope of accuracy."

Kirk pressured him for a glimpse into the

monitor. "Looks like there's interference of some

kind. The Race Committee downplayed the

trickiness of this area."

"How long is the race expected to take,

Captain?" Chekov asked.

Kirk straightened so quickly that a muscle in his

neck cramped. He ignored the knot and said,

"As long as it takes, Ensign. Races are like

that. Someone will go over the finish line first,

second, third, then the body of the contestants,

then the stragglers or the lost entrants will be

scooped up from wherever they are, and the Race

Committee will declare a finish."

He barely heard his own voice. Why was he

so nervous? Nothing was wrong.

Nothing was wrong, nothing was wrong ...

On the port screen across the bridge, aft

of the middle of the bridge, just over the engineering station

--where Mr. Scott would be standing if he weren't

in the main engineering section complaining that races were

a waste of time for starships with serious business to do

--was a sensor image of the entrants

Irimlo Si, Ransom Castle, and

Blackjacket.

And beyond them, barely more than a sliver of lime

in the night, was the only ship he really had any

interest in other than his own.

Turning away from the Rey gentlemen, away from

the crew, Kirk leaned toward Spock, but

didn't look at him.

"They're using the race for cover," he

uttered. "Why else would they come into the sector

when almost everybody else is here for a public

event?"

Spock remained deceptively still. "We are

not on patrol, sir."

Kirk probed his own deepest thoughts,

his needs and instincts that told him to dog that ship and

not let it just fly off, their jurisdiction or not.

"No," he said finally. He gazed at

Spock in a way that they both understood. "Get

the best fix you can on the beacon and let's run the

race. But keep that ship under surveillance."

"Yes, sir."

Kirk stepped to the lower deck and slipped

into his command chair. It felt particularly

comfortable, the seat and back cool through his clothes,

impressions in the cushion recognizing the shape

of his thighs and his back.

The Romulan wasn't doing anything untoward,

the race had started smoothly, the seat felt good

... he resisted the needling doubt at the back of

his mind, though he knew it was a signal.

He was about to say something just to break the silence

when he was interrupted from behind.

"Excuse me ..."

Tom was looking at the forward screen. His

fair hair touched the collar of that incongruous

lumberjack shirt, andforthe first time Kirk noticed

that the other one, Royenne, had been given a

Starfleet casual uniform to wear. The olive

green shirt was wrapped somewhat loosely around his

lean rib cage, and the sleeves hung a little

short on his gangly arms, but he looked very

happy.

They both looked completely out of place and

absolutely delighted.

"Yes?" Kirk prodded.

"Oh!" Tom shook himself from watching the

panorama of ships either matching their speed, rushing

past them, or dropping away at their sides.

He glanced at Royenne and pointed forward, but

didn't say anything.

Royenne poked him. "Ask."

Tom nodded. "Why can't you just tell your

computer to pick out the beacon?"

Spock straightened, flexed his shoulders

slightly, and said, "Ninety-nine point nine

nine nine percent of radiating objects in the

galaxy are natural. The computer can't discern

between natural and fabricated radiations."

"That's our job," Kirk added proudly.

"It's one of the reasons robot ships have limited

use."

Sulu smirked and muttered, "If we told

the computer to find those beacons, it'd start

drooling."

Royenne drew in a breath and laughed along

with the crew. "I love these answers you give!"

Kirk grinned, and asked, "Are you having a

good time exploring the ship?"

Tom almost gagged in his rush to answer first.

"Oh, yes! It's so strong!"

"It's so orderly," Royenne punctuated.

Everybody was smiling. Well, not Spock, but

he was almost smiling. His eyes were smiling.

Kirk was about to make a joke about that when

Spock eyed his console and spoke up. "We're

being passed by the private vessel Haunted

Forest, sir. Captain Ames is winking an

acknowledgment at us with his hazard lights."

"Wink back at him. Then increase speed

to warp three." The growl in Kirk's voice

gave away his playful exhilaration. And he

didn't mind a little immoderate showing off, either.

Everyone paused in a moment of silence as the

Enterprise launched herself with incorruptible

purpose into a higher level of hyperlight.

There was a beautiful sound, a beautiful

feeling, and sense of being surrounded by power--which, of

course, they were.

Just before the sensation faded, Kirk capped it off

by saying, "Chekov, get a net on that beacon."

"Trying, sir."

"State of Maryland vessel New Pride

of Baltimore coming up on our starboard,"

Spock said, "immediately flanked to port by the

Blaine Aerospace entrant Cynthia

Blaine. Hospital ship Brother's

Keeper is falling slightly behind us, as are the

Andorian entry and the museum ship Thomas

Jefferson. Romulan vessel is running

abeam of us to port at some distance."

"They're not making any unexpected moves?"

"None at all--sir, sudden increase in

speed, several vessels--"

"Captain!" Chekov yelped. "Contact with

alternating fixed and flashing marker! Relative

bearings broad on the starboard beam, z-minus

four degrees."

Kirk leaned forward. "Take a running fix

on it, Mr. Chekov, then log the contact.

Hold onto that beacon!"

"Aye, sir. Computer, note running fix."

When the computer spoke up with its metallic

voice, Tom and Royenne almost hit the ceiling.

"ationoting running fix, alternating

F-and-F marker, Stardate 3223.1, zero

nine thirty-eight hours. Contact logged."

"Mr. Sulu, increase to warp three point

five toward that marker."

"Warp three point five, sir!"

"Keep alert for other ships. We'll all be

converging on that point. Sensors on maximum.

Full alert."

"Full alert, sir," Sulu said, and an

instant after Chekov echoed it.

"What does all that mean?" Royenne asked.

As the ship hummed with effort to comply, Kirk

pivoted his chair so he could ans wer before anybody

else did. He was starting to enjoy all this showing

off. He'd have to be a stone pillar to not like these people.

"It means we found the first beacon. We have

to come within a hundred thousand kilometers of it in

order to get the clues to the second beacon. With a

field of other ships trying to get the same

signal, it'll be like threading a needle. A

hundred thousand kilometers is a very small

area in spatial terms."

"But what is all that ... fixed and flashing?"

"Oh, I see," Kirk chuckled. "On

Earth--where a lot of our terminology originated

--fixed and flashing meant an alternating light of

one color varied at regular intervals with a

flash of a different color. Out here, of course,

it's flashing a subspace signal."

"And your navigator can see it?"

"With the ship's sensors, yes. We're taking

a running fix, which is a fix taken at two or

more different times as we pass the marker."

Tom interrupted, "Is that how you know your

heading?"

Royenne pushed forward. "And what's--"

"Ah!" Tom erupted. "You stepped on my

foot!"

"Oh--pardon me."

"I shouldn't have been in the way."

"No, no, I'm sorry. We're sorry,

Captain ... what's a bearing?"

"Gentlemen," Kirk chuckled, "don't try

to swallow too much at once. The heading is the

direction the ship is going. What you mean is the

course. That's the direction to be steered.

Relative bearing is the direction where something is

in relation to the ship." He leveled his right arm out

at the one-thirty angle from the bow of the ship.

"That's broad on the starboard, and down

one, two, three, four degrees is the

z-minus. So the fixed and flashing marker is down

this way, relative to where you're standing. Now

we're turning toward it and working to hold the

signal."

With infectious enthusiasm Royenne pursued,

"Why can't you hold the signal?"

"But what's a fix?" Tom insisted at the

same time. "I'd really love to know! Should I

take a class in space navigation?"

"Does Starfleet have a class?" Royenne

asked.

"I'm not sure," Kirk said. "We'll

check for you. A fix is a position taken without

any reference to a former position. We take the

time and our location of contact with an object, even

a natural object in space, and log it. If

another ship has logged it, we may be able to find

it on a chart. If we're the first, then we could

use it to find our way back."

"Same as dropping breadcrumbs," Sulu

commented, still grinning.

"And we're having trouble holding the

breadcrumbs," Kirk said, "because the Race

Committee made the racecourse difficult.

There are sensor blind spots and interference everywhere

in this sector, and the committee beacons are

designed to be tricky on purpose. That's the

sport of it."

Tom drew a long appreciative breath.

"Beautiful!"

Suddenly, Chekov shouted, "Look out!

Ships coming in!"

He pointed at the board between himself and Sulu,

and the helmsman twisted his lean body against the

controls. The ship surged to starboard and whined with

effort.

"Hang on, everyone," Kirk warned, mostly

for the two in back.

Before them on the screen, and to the sides on the

auxiliary monitors, space was suddenly

crowded with hulls of every configuration. Streaking out

of the darkness to haggle for the eye of the needle, they

dove viciously for one spot in space, the

hundred thousand kilometers around that flashing

marker.

Within sixty seconds almost the entire field

of contestants were plunging for that spot, converging like

bees.

"Continue at warp three point

five," Kirk snapped. "Do not reduce

speed, do you understand?"

"Aye, sir," Sulu responded through

gritted teeth, his body still canted to one side as

though he were pushing the ship himself.

"I'll play chicken with all of them to be the

first one to the first marker," Kirk said. "That's it,

Sulu, don't give an inch."

"Not inching, sir," the knotted helmsman

grunted.

A gleaming sable ship with a broad sulfur

yellow stripe from nose to fantail and fake

gunports painted onto her hull dropped out of

nowhere in front of them. It consumed the forward

screen so sharply that Uhura gasped and Chekov

pushed back in his chair. On the aft deck,

Royenne almost fell down, and Tom shouted

something, but Kirk instantly forgot what it was.

He was busy.

"Get in there, Sulu! Get under him!"

"Trying, sir!"

"Not good enough! Push! Make him move

aside!"

The ship screamed around them, dragging up every

ounce of power she'd been left and insisting she should

have more, like an amputee refusing to believe her

limb was really gone.

"Who is it?" Tom gulped.

"ationew Pride of Baltimore,"

Spock supplied. "Unlikely to give way."

"We'll see," Kirk cracked.

"Other ships approaching, Captain,"

Chekov said breathlessly, but he needn't have

bothered.

There would be no efficient way of describing the

shocking thunder of vessels converging on this spot, and

even Chekov forgot his caution of senior officers

and quit looking at his monitors. He just stared,

as all around them on the screens a swarm of ships

dipped toward the same spot.

"Don't sideswipe anybody," Kirk

warned. "Remember, we're one of the biggest

ships."

Sulu didn't respond. His concentration was

full-up.

"Collision!" Chekov came halfway out of

his seat and pointed at a starboard screen behind

Spock.

On the screen, sparks were spitting between

Irimlo Si and 554-2.

"Ask if they need assistance, Miss

Uhura," Kirk said. Cleanly he added,

"Mr. Sulu, do not give an inch yet."

The two officers each muttered a separate

response that made the bridge sound very

efficient, but no matter what anyone might have

tried to claim, this just wasn't business as

usual, or even emergency as usual.

This was something very new and different for the

Enterprise crew, and no one knew how it would

spin out. Excitement for kicks--

"Increase speed, Sulu," he insisted.

"Get under the Pride. Turn on your ear if

you have to, but squeeze past him."

"Captain Turner isn't easy to squeeze

past, sir," Sulu commented, but it was only a

comment. He proved that by pressing the Enterprise

forward, galling the speed out of her that was dangerous

for these quarters, and turning up on a nacelle,

somehow managing to skirt past New Pride.

Chekov gawked at his console and choked,

"Less than five hundred meters to spare!"

"Sir, receiveg a frequency for beacon number

two!" Uhura said. "Frequency eight six

six."

"Log it!" Kirk barked. "Sulu, veer

off!"

The starship howled furiously around them, and

turned herself inside out to change direction

violently.

On the main screen and the screens all around the

bridge, the panorama of vessels suddenly

changed. Several other ships changed course

too, adjusting to their own readings of the second

beacon.

How true was the signal? [ the readings coming in

to Enterprise clear at warp three point

five?

"Irimlo Si reports minor damage

only, sir," Uhura said. "And 554-2

claims no intent to drop out of the race. Both

are jockeying for position. And Captain Glover

is hailing from the New Pride of

Baltimore. He wants me to inform you that he

had right of way."

"Well," Kirk tossed off, "tell him to go

on back to the starting line and look up the rules,

then let me know."

Uhura smiled, and had to wait a beat before she

could respond without laughing. "I'll

tell him, sir."

On the starboard upper deck, even Spock's

practiced impassion was suffering. Kirk saw it

as he glanced up there, for some reason impelled

to keep an eye on his first officer.

Spock's voice had an unexpected lilt

when he glanced up at the main screen.

"Sir, the Melkotian entry is bearing off

slightly, but reducing speed. Starship

Intrepid is moving away firmly on a new

course. Six other ships--correction, seven--

are following her, apparently assuming Captain

T'ationoy has discovered a clearer trace of the

signal. Ransom Carnvale Mining Company

entrant Ransom Castle is taking a

course on the z-minus port beam. The field

is beginning to draw apart and widen--"

"Romulan vessel just increased speed,

sir," Chekov interrupted, and he said it so

quickly that Kirk heard Spock draw a breath

to say the same thing and just get beaten to it by his

junior officer.

"Correct," Spock allowed. "He is

pulling away, sir. Moving on a descent

plane."

Kirk eyed the port screens. He wanted

to tell Spock to keep a finger on the Romulan

ship, but he also didn't want to appear to be

hawking another entrant for no good reason, and the

Rey, so far, apparently didn't perceive all the

good reasons.

"Red Talon is blending with the lead

vessels," Spock said, reading Kirk's

posture, obviously. "Difficult to discern which

vessels those are any longer, however. Interference

is thickening ... I believe I read the

Blackjacket, possibly Ransom

Castle ... at least a half dozen others are

blurred readings, some pulling forward, others

falling back."

Hesitation battled in his face, in his voice.

He didn't like what he saw on his monitors.

But Kirk noticed something else. Never mind

that Spock didn't like what was happening, there was

another struggle going on. Spock's brows would

tighten, then he would raise them and try to relax,

try to keep in mind that this was all supposed to be

for fun.

"They're taking the frequency for the second

beacon and moving off toward it. Let's

do the same. Mr. Spock, feed that frequency

through to the navigational computer ..." He leaned

forward and allowed a naughty grin to break on his

face. "Mr. Sulu," he said firmly,

"helm alee."

The quick-fingered Oriental officer who could steer

a ship through a curly pasta noodle--and just had--

suddenly looked lost. He peered back over his

shoulder.

"Sir?"

Spock turned an amused attention on the

helmsman, raised both of those upswept black

brows, and said, "Mark eight, Mr. Sulu."

Sulu's face lit up and he got the idea

that all this machinery, all this fabulous science was

still being run by the same kind of folks who invented

it in the first place.

A mischievous delight took him over.

"Aye-aye, sir. Helm's alee!"

The Federation's first heavy cruiser began to hum

as power and directions were fed through the systems, through

the engineering section and up into the great nacelles

where the brittle and brilliant warp science

boiled to do its job, and the ship changed course,

veering off toward the flickering second beacon on

the corkscrew racecourse.

The captain pressed forward like a man facing

into the wind.

"I always wanted to say that."

Red Talon

"What they have done is clever."

"I beg your pardon, Commander?"

Subcommander Romar approached Valdus from

behind, but stayed an arm's length back.

"These beacons," Valdus said, gazing at the

field of racing ships shifting and fading in and out.

"Somehow the race people have devised tricks with which they

disguise these beacons. A maze, Romar. They

will make us climb the walls and look out.

Signals read false and more false on certain

speeds, and leave the truth of their locations for us

to devise. We cannot rely on our navigational

equipment. We have to be cunning. We have

to guess. If, of course, we wanted to win."

He inhaled abruptly. "What is the condition

of the vessel now that we are under power?"

"All systems have been impressed with

powerbacks by the starbase mechanics.

There are bottlenecks on our thrust

systems--"

"Begin work to take them off."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Start taking off the bottlenecks now."

"It will take hours, sir!"

"Let it take hours."

"We'll be disqualified."

"I don't care about their race," Valdus

said through his teeth. "Get my power ... up."

Studying the unconciliatory determination that

suddenly flared on his commander's face, Romar

held still and quiet for a moment until control

returned.

He knew Valdus as well as anyone and had

watched over many cruises as the commander had driven

his crew on the singular key of cowardice.

Subdued, introspective, but ruthless,

Valdus was willing to accept shorter odds than

most, was merciless with underlings who showed any sign

of putting their own lives before their Imperial

duty, and had no particular interests outside of

his own command. He had tolerated whole

civilizations he completely despised because it was

in the Empire's interest. It was said he had

grown his beard to disguise himself from himself. He

didn't even have any particular interest in the

United Federation of Planets. Rather than seeking

renown, Valdus simply did a job with

somber and sometimes ghastly deliberation.

Until today.

So Romar was treading carefully, with all his

senses on alert. He didn't want to do the

wrong thing and end up scrubbing photon shells below

decks. Too well he remembered the low point

in their relationship when he had tried to prevent

Valdus's destroying the career of a centurion

who had balked in the face of danger. It had

taken months for Romar to regain Valdus's

trust.

Red Talon was known as the worst ship

to serve in the Imperial Fleet because its quiet

commander could become suddenly merciless with weakness in

others. Promotions and demotions went up and down

like a bouncing ball. No one envied Romar his

nearness to this one unreadable commander.

But Romar stayed. Part of his perseverance was

due to curiosity. Valdus was a mystery, and

Romar couldn't resist a mystery.

He knew Valdus's career had

been somewhat lackluster in its early years

until he was the only survivor of an attack

and boarding by an unknown enemy. Valdus had

managed to escape and, when all was lost, had

destroyed the ship rather than let these hostile

superior beings take it. The story had been

vague, Valdus in medically documented mental

confusion, and speculations had run rampant while

investigations thrashed without evidence.

Patrols had been sent in and worked the area for

years, but nothing had ever turned up. For years the

Empire searched for this powerful enemy that could come out

of nowhere and end up consuming a ship of an

Imperial Swarm. But wherever the boarding party had

come from, they had disappeared. Ultimately, the

Empire lost interest and decided that such a

violent civilization must have destroyed itself somehow.

By then, Valdus was considered a hero. Time had

done that too.

Only Valdus's shunning of accolade

continued to let Romar believe the story, or some

part of it, was true. Valdus had been offered

command after command, but had accepted only the ones that

left him haunting the same unremarkable sector

where he lost a ship long ago.

Perhaps that, too, is part of my loyalty,

Romar thought as he looked at Valdus from behind.

I know he is merciless with himself too. He

carries the demeanor of a man who has looked

too close at the face of death, who has been

purged of pointless ambition, and who is somehow

hungering to look at that face again to see if he can

make it blink.

Pushing his thoughts back for the moment, Romar

determined to get at least part of an answer about this

odd event, which normally Valdus would avoid,

even laugh at.

He stepped closer.

"May I ask you," he began, "how long do

you intend to participate in this activity of theirs?"

Valdus cleared his throat and shook away his

stare at the screen.

"Until I decide which ship to track."

"Which ship," Romar echoed, to see if it made

any more sense coming out of his own throat. It

didn't. "Very well ... which ship do you think you

may target? What type of ship?"

"I refrain from telling you because you would then be

obliged to dispense a recorder marker to the

Empire regarding our movements."

"Yes," Romar admitted tentatively.

"And I would do so, of course, being an officer who

knows the course of operations ..."

"If we weren't running under silence now,

yes?"

The subcommander laughed but kept the sound

private between them.

"Yes. Thank you for looking after ... me.

Your order of silence keeps me from such a

troubling choice. Which ship are you targeting?"

"Romar, I will tell you when I am ready."

"Why do you want to corral another ship,

Commander?" Romar persisted, in a tone that said he

would get at least part of the answer before leaving his

leader alone again.

Valdus very well knew that tone. Now that he

heard it, he felt somewhat relieved. There was a

certain complex security in knowing he was being

watched, as he always had been, as was the way of their

kind.

"Because the suspicious Starfleet field

leaders would not allow me to have a host guest on

board this ship. And I want one of those people."

"The leaders?"

"No--not the leaders," Valdus snapped.

"Those ... people."

"The Rey?" Romar's brow drew tight.

"But why? They are--weaklings. No one considers

them a threat. They're just another whimper in the

night the Federation will have to protect. Why do you

want one?"

Valdus let his facade of nonchalance slip

from his expression. He watched the starlight peel

away before them on the dominant main screen and

found himself wishing for the days when there were no such

screens at all in these ships.

"Because," he said, "I know they are the most

dangerous people in the galaxy."

Chapter Seven

"Very good work, all of you. Be assured that was the

easiest we'll get."

James Kirk flushed with pride as he beamed

at his crew, and on top of all this, they had

witnesses to their wonderfulness.

He glanced back at Tom and Royenne.

When he was a child, his mother had told him that winning

didn't matter, it was the game that counted, the

fun, the exercise, the teamsmanship.

Like hell. He wanted to win.

He'd nodded at her like a good little boy--even

though he really wasn't a particularly good little

boy--because he had known not very deep inside ...

winning was more fun.

"Readings on beacon number two are already

becoming sketchy," Spock said. He came to the

rail and looked down at Kirk. "Our twenty

percent power down is costing us sensor distance and

accuracy. While the vast majority of this space

is empty, this one particular region is dotted

with anomalies of various types nebulae,

spinning stars, pockets of electrical action,

communication dead zones, and so on. Long-range

sensor readings are already distorting and diminishing.

Soon it will become awkward not only to trace the

beacons but other ships."

Kirk gazed up at him, then glanced back

at the two Rey men again, and lowered his voice.

"No wonder nobody found these people until

twelve years ago."

Spock nodded, but didn't say anything.

"John Orland downplayed the trickiness of this

area," Kirk went on. "They probably took

all that into consideration when they decided how far

to power down our ships, adjusting sensor capacity

to make sure this area remained a challenge for

us." He lowered his voice. "Just keep track

of the Romulan for me."

Not making any obvious acknowledgment, Spock

held his captain's gaze a few seconds--j

long enough--and turned back to his monitors.

On the small screens to port and starboard, the

field of ships still in this area was beginning to widen,

to stretch away as each ship's crew sought its own

science and instincts, followed its captain's

whim, experience, or passion, as the case might

be. A portion of the field was invisible already,

having rushed from the first beacon at higher warp than

others, but there was no way to tell if they were still

ahead, or if they were off on a wild-goose

chase in the wrong direction, chasing sensor

shadows.

When Tom and Royenne began muttering to each

other and pointing at the forward port monitor at

a glimpse of the Canadian entry Bluenose

IV, Kirk took their distraction as an

opportunity.

"Where is he, Mr. Spock?" he asked

quietly.

Preoccupied with the surging and broadening of the

race, Spock didn't look up from his

monitor. "So far, abeam of us at flank

speed ... distance increasing. Ambassador

Shamirian's ship Gavelan Star just pulled

out of sensor range."

Kirk rubbed at a cramped finger on his right

hand and said, "Doesn't mean he's not lost."

"Also losing contact with Blackjacket and the

Haunted Forest. We are outdistancing

several other entrants. I will specify them if

you wish."

"I don't."

Chekov's face was almost buried in the cuff

of the science station auxiliary monitor, so close

that his voice sounded muffled. "Captain ..."

"What is it, Ensign?"

"Host entry Ozcice is passing us ... but

they're going in the wrong direction. They are

heading ... in that direction, sir." He stood

straight and pointed to port aft, over the heads of

Tom and Royenne, who suddenly thought they were doing

something wrong. They ducked and glanced at the

ceiling.

"The contestants are scattering," Spock said.

"Ozcice could be following a bounced sensor

reading, or they could be seeking the third beacon."

"The third beacon?" Kirk shot back,

suddenly relishing the challenge. "They're already a

beacon ahead?"

Chekov looked at him. "But, sir ... I

thought I saw the Tholian ship going under

Ozcice, heading directly back toward the

starting line. How can it be?"

"That's how it's going to be from now on,

Ensign," Kirk added. "And it'll get

worse. It's like a road rally. Clues

everywhere, being interpreted and misinterpreted.

Beacons can fold back on each other. As long

as we don't try to follow anybody, at least

our mistakes will be our own. Any sign of the

second beacon?"

Chekov plunged for his monitor, knowing that was

supposed to be his job.

"General reading, sir," he said, "not settled

down yet. I will try to make it settle."

Kirk tried not to smirk. He was feeling a

lot better than he had expected to feel.

Flank speed ... he hungered to increase his own

speed and nose the Romulan out.

Actually run a race with him, beat him. On the

other hand, would it be a nobler show of

sportsmanship to let the visitor slip ahead?

He had an unprecedented chance to be

cosmopolitan if he wanted to avail himself of

it. Take Valdus at his ^w, think back on

that face and look for affirmation, sift faith out

of the skepticism he'd trained himself to rely upon,

read Valdus as an independent person rather than

tagging him collectively--he wanted to do all

that. The Federation expected him to be able to do that.

To let the visitor win, possibly move the

plate tectonics of separate civilizations a

little closer.

If he could believe Valdus.

The trained Federation representative wanted

to take the galaxy at its ^w, but the kid inside

--the one who wanted to win--didn't.

"Bring us back up to warp three, Mr.

Sulu. Pull ahead. Take your course from

Mr. Chekov."

"Warp three, sir."

"Sir," Chekov called, apparently feeling

pressured now. "I have interference on the beacon

frequency."

Kirk swiveled slightly. "Spock?"

Spock left his monitor, sat down, and

tapped into another monitor that a moment ago had

only been showing part of the racecourse. Now

figures and a window graph appeared.

"Beacon two is being scrambled by what

appears to be a spinning neutron star. Pattern

of the static tells me that the beacon is behind the

interference."

"Behind it?"

"Yes, sir."

Chekov looked distressed. "Then how can we

track it?"

Kirk shrugged. "Find the ripples, and you'll

find the fish."

"Sir?"

"Rather than looking for the beacon, look for the

source of the interference. You're the navigation

specialist, Ensign. Reach out there and get me

a course."

Chekov's round young face went blank for a

moment, then he blinked, muttered a vague,

"Yes, sir," and turned back to hunt for that

spinning neutron star.

"Captain?" Tom asked

tentatively.

Kirk turned. "Yes?"

"How long is the racecourse?"

"It's about three thousand linear light-years,

if you stretch it out along a string. As they've

designed it, it's bunched up into a corkscrew

that bends out into deep space, then bends back

to your planet, if you can visualize that.

Didn't they fill you in when you were accepted as a

guest on a contestant vessel?"

"We received a packet of information," Royenne

said, "but ... I haven't read mine yet."

Tom smiled sheepishly and added, "We were so

busy looking at all the ships and meeting everyone

..."

"There were people everywhere," Royenne muttered.

Embarrassment raged across both their faces.

"That's all right," Kirk said. "I haven't

read mine either." He smiled, and had a sudden

thought.

Relief drenched the two visitors as they

saw that they hadn't insulted him, or the race

organizers, or Starfleet or the Federation or

any unmentioned deity.

Again everybody was grinning.

Kirk smiled, and had a sudden thought. "Would the

two of you like to sit down?" he asked, realizing that

they were the only people on the bridge without chairs.

Off their eager nods, he continued.

"Lieutenant, notify the quartermaster and have

two chairs brought up here."

Uhura's smile disappeared and surprise

struck her flawless face. She uttered an

acknowledgment and turned to get some chairs onto the

bridge, but she still looked surprised.

Kirk knew why. He'd never done this before.

Guests had always been allowed to take a look

at the bridge, then politely invited to go to the

observation lounge for snacks and beverages and

generally to stay out of the way.

But what the hell. This was time for entertainment,

right? He had a chance here to show off and push the

envelope of interstellar perception.

Right?

* * *

"Searching for beacon number five,

Captain," Spock said. "Reading seems clear

at the moment. The signal is occulting, however

... appears to be overlapping shadows. I seem

to be reading two beacons."

Kirk could tell the Vulcan was dissatisfied

with his own answer. "We haven't got all day,

Spock."

Seeming almost affronted, Spock straightened

and looked down at his captain. Spock said,

"They are identical, sir."

"Can you differentiate between the signals?"

"Captain, I believe we are looking at a

gravitational lensing effect. A beacon and its

identical echo."

"Mm," Kirk murmured, "good trick. Which

one do we follow? Can you detect what's

splitting it?"

"Not yet," Spock admitted. "This sector

of space is devoid of life-sustaining

bodies, but also cluttered with adverse

naturalia which, as you pointed out, have been

responsible for turning back many early

explorations before ships were capable of dealing with them.

With our sensor power reduced, these natural

distractions tend to drag our signals off

course. I'm attempting to map them and compensate

for them, in case any of the beacons turns us

back on a course. Mr. Chekov is tracking

the competition."

Kirk nodded, then pivoted as casually as he

could. "And where's our friend?"

"He is at the extreme of sensor range,

having increased to flank speed again."

"That's the fifth time he's fallen back then

come up on us again. Am I haunting him, or is

it the other way around?"

"I would say there is a mutual haunt in

progress, sir."

"But I don't have a reason, Mr. Spock,

other than the race. He does."

Spock stepped down to the command arena and stood

at Kirk's side, but said nothing to scratch the

mood.

They stood together, gazing at the main screen and

its image of a few racing ships moving in and out of

visual range, some matching time with them, wondering

which ship would next flash off into a higher warp

speed or drop to a lower one.

Spock's voice was deep and melodic, almost

as though he was reading poetry. "Immediately behind us

are Haunted Forest, Unpardonable,

Hood, and River of w. Slightly ahead

of us are Blackjacket, New Pride of

Baltimore, and Alexandria, sir.

Flanking us are--"

"Alexandria," Kirk said as his eyes fixed

on a bulky working trader humming two points

off the starship's starboard bow. He propped an

arm on the back of his command chair and said, "My

father used to talk about her. He served on her as a

deckhand when he was a teenager. Tough old ship.

Some parts of her interior are made of the wood from

the original Alexandria, a Baltic trader

schooner. The pieces sat in a Chesapeake

Bay museum for almost two hundred years

until somebody bought them and built them into that ship

out there. Lots of stories in her bones."

Spock shifted near him. "In her bones,

sir?"

As nostalgic mist came over his eyes, the

captain said, "That's right."

Spock let a few seconds tick by, then

droned, "Captain Hall would do well to have them

scraped out."

A laugh boiled up in Kirk's chest, and he

tried to stuff it down but couldn't.

"You're a pirate, Spock," he chuckled.

"Sir," Uhura said, "Captain Dodge

hailing from the Starship Hood."

"Put him on."

"Kirk, this is Dodge. Do you read?"

Raising his voice to compensate for the crackle of

interference in the communication system, Kirk said,

"Poorly, but you're on audio. Can you boost the

gain?"

"Already on maximum. The whole area's

full of this garbling and clicking. Where are you?

Kirk's eyes glittered as he glanced at

Spock and lied his tail off. "We're looking

for beacon six."

"Six! How the hell did you find four! We

can't find it anywhere!"

"We shut it off as we went by."

"Kirk, you son of a dirty, lying,

sidewinding--somebody cut me off before I say

something I'll have to apologize to him for."

Uhura smiled and said, "Captain Dodge

has terminated the communication, sir."

"Well, now that I've told him we're

looking for six, we'd better hurry up and find

five." Kirk leered at the screen, and prowled

toward the starboard rail. "Chasing shadows ...

is there any way we can pick out the real beacon

with any certainty?"

"No," Spock flatly told him. "We

may take the fifty percent chance, if you like."

"Something's going on," Kirk said, still glaring

at the screen, which refused to give him facts.

"I can smell it."

Spock's elegant head tilted a bit.

"Intuition?"

"Damn right."

A year ago Spock would've frowned with

teeming arrogance. Disbelief, disrespect,

probably both. Today that intolerance was nowhere

nearby. He only nodded with what could've been

approval, but was, at the very least, understanding.

"Mr. Sulu," Kirk said. "Take a fix

on one of those two signals, and increase speed

toward it by one half. Swing past Alexandria and

take the lead. Give her a wide berth, or

she'll try to cut us off."

Sulu looked doubtful. "They'll try to cut

off a starship?"

"They might," Kirk said. "That's a strong

ship. She's taken a lot of punches in her time

and shook them off. Pete Hall's a tug

captain by trade."

Sulu shrugged acceptance. "Can't beat that

combination."

Kirk ticked off the right number of seconds,

then stepped forward and stood next to his

helmsman. A hot glitter showed in his eyes.

"Sure as hell gonna try, though," he

said.

Red Talon

A race. Vessels rushing this way, that way,

chasing blips and echoes. Small-minded

business, the living abnegation of worth.

Romar paced across the back of the bridge,

turned, and paced to where he had begun. This he had

done before and would again before he summoned the courage

to step to the command level and confront Valdus.

His shoulders tensed within the padding of his uniform.

Strong shoulders, his father's shoulders. Shoulders that

could break a door. Legs that never ached, no

matter the strain, though he might climb a

pyramid.

Muscles turned against his ribs, his fists

coiled, his feet--it felt as if there were

splinters of glass in his boots. He was a

subcommander of the Imperial Fleet and

he knew his duty. Take over if the commander is

insane.

There was no menace to men of their kind like the

menace of the mind. When a trained mind began

to stray, seek its own purposes above the

primary causes of the Empire ...

He looked down in the command ring.

Down there was no pyramid, only Valdus.

A quiet commander as that kind went, a man of

surpassing contemplation and scant hardness in his

face. He sat with his own shoulders rounded even in

the padding of his uniform and his hands folded between his

knees. His posture said he wouldn't fight.

What good was this? If any other ship hailed

them and they went to visual, others--Federation

people--wd see the Imperial commander sitting there with his

shoulders down and his hands folded, forlorn as a

lost thing, and that would be the new view of the

Empire. For decades people would tell their children and

grandchildren of the time they saw a commander in his ship,

slumped and sorry looking, and how the rumors

weren't true. How there was nothing to fear across the

neutral zone, and all was empty legend.

Could he let that happen? The Empire turned

on the fear of others. Did he dare stand by in

case the stone wall should crumble?

Romar had paced since the starting gun while

they went from one beacon to the next, as politely

as anyone could please, mustering the nerve to go down

there and ask questions. He had to do it. He had to find

out if there was madness.

He counted to three and demanded of himself that he go

down and not have to shame himself by counting again. One,

two--

"Three," he murmured. His feet were numb

from the glass.

Trying to look casual, he sat on the deck

riser next to the commander's chair. He looked at

Valdus, but the commander didn't turn his eyes from

the main screen, from the field of ships moving in the

nearness and in the distance.

Romar swallowed twice, cleared his throat

once, then swallowed again. Folded his hands,

unfolded them, and finally became angry enough with himself

that he would either speak up or not look in his

mirror for many, many days.

"If you die in your sleep," he began, "it

would do well that I should know ... what your plan

is."

"To run the race," Valdus said

bluntly.

"Until?"

"Until they believe I'm only running the

race."

Almost with an audible moan, Romar sighed,

"Commander ..."

Valdus smiled suddenly and looked sidelong

at him. "If I happen to die in my

sleep?"

Romar felt heat rise in his face and almost

got up and left, but the commander's smile held

him down.

Looking tired and careworn, like a man waiting

to see if his crops would grow or if he would

starve this year, Valdus changed position

to stretch the muscles in his back and looked again

at the forward screen.

"I have never thought about dying in bed," he uttered

casually. "I've been prepared in my life

to die in every situation, but never in my sleep. I

have been ready to die for most of my career. That's

what happens when you skim past death at close

quarters and you feel its breath upon your neck

..."

Confused even more now, Romar fretted beside him.

"Commander, won't you talk to me?"

"I am talking to you," Valdus said. "I

can't tell you the plan yet. I'm revising it."

"Why are you revising it? What has changed?"

"The simplicity has gone out. Things are

different. You should have come with me when I went

to meet the captain of the Enterprise."

"I would have been honored to go, but they told you

to come alone and you complied. You said there was nothing

to fear on their starbase."

"I should have defied them. That is how a firm will

is displayed, but I failed to think of it in time.

You see, I had no fear of going alone, and that

cost me a show of strength. Remember, Romar,

fear can do you service in the right circumstances."

"I'll try to remember. Why would you wish me

to meet him?"

"To look at his eyes."

Romar's spine started to ache. He wished he

could take his boots off. Curiosity chewed at

him, but he would gladly ignore it if the commander

would agree to turn back, abandon this unexplained

movement into claimless space, and simply be part

of an unfinished story in a Federation history

book.

Brittle and acute, he tried to be

cold-blooded. "Eyes are eyes, Commander."

Vigilance kept Valdus very still as he gazed

at the screen. Moments crawled by in silence,

with the commander's face creased by things he had seen,

perceptions he had distilled since leaving the

starbase.

Quietly he said, "Oh ... no."

And he said nothing more.

The bridge made haunting noises around them.

Other crewmen did not look at them. They all

realized how bizarre this movement was, and they were

all worried.

Romar knew he was being unimaginative, and that

somehow he had failed to inspire trust. Suddenly

he felt twice his own weight.

"What do you want me to do about this race," he

sighed, "while you decide upon your action?"

Enchanted with the view of space and its

activities, Valdus didn't respond

immediately. Romar's suspicion that the commander might

not be sure of their purpose was strengthened when

Valdus didn't resent the structure of that

question. Others might have called this behavior weak,

but Romar noted a valiance in how hard Valdus

was to embarrass.

He would remember that, too.

"Try to win," Valdus said. "At least,

appear to try. Run their race as best you can.

When the opportunity arises that fits my

purposes, I will act upon it. The moment will have

to offer us privacy, solitude, even separation,

because we must put off confrontation as long as

possible."

He stood up, impassive, perhaps withdrawn,

but he continued to gaze at the screen, and back in

time a few hours, to the eyes that had changed his

plans.

"I do not want to have to deal with that man."

Chapter Eight

Ransom Carnvale Mining Co.

Vessel Ransom Castle

"Here you go. Bonafide one hundred percent

gen-u-wine down-home Confederate breakfast.

Eggs over medium, Smoky Mountain sawmill

gravy, sourdough bread, Ozark grits, and

chilled apple cider, unstrained.

Ship's specialty. We try not to leave out

any Southern mountain range. Now, here's how you

eat it. Take your grits and spoon 'em on

top your eggs. That's right. Now, take and chop it

all up with the side of your fork. Ataway. Go

ahead, be mean to it. Now hoist yourself up a

shovelful of it, and you'll have a dilly of a

breakfast recipe to take home to Golleray and

teach all your pals."

As First Mate Mike Frarey directed the

breakfast like a musical jamboree, he got

what he wanted from the sweet little lady perched on

the bench at the mess table with the off-watch crew--

he got a whopping big smile.

He straightened and asked, "Did I say

some thing wrong? Ain't that how you pronounce it?

Golleree?"

"Yes, that's how," the girl said.

He knew she was lying, but it was one of those

kindhearted lies, the sort meant to make

somebody else feel good.

And being the somebody else, he did. Feel

good, that is.

"I'm not mispronouncing your name or nothing,

am I?" he asked.

"Oh, no," she said.

"Say it again for me, just once, so I'm

sure."

Pushing aside a lock of her platinum

hair, she plunged her fork into the mountain meal.

"It's Turrice Belliard Roon. But I like

the way you call me Turry. You won't stop,

will you?"

"Oh, no!" Mike boomed. "Sure

won't."

"Where is your captain?" she asked. "I

haven't met her yet."

Mike jabbed at a fellow crewmate and

jolted the man to one side so he could squeeze in

beside Turry. He got a couple of nasty,

teasing looks about it, but nobody made any

cracks. Good thing too. He'd have cracked 'em

back.

"Well, I dunno," he said. "Nancy's

kinda particular about having strangers on the

bridge. Not that you're strange or nothin'--in

fact, gotta say it's kinda pleasant having

you around here. Can't quite explain it, but you're dang

pleasant to have around."

Mike smiled and felt his face go

red as Turry pursed her lips and tried not

to laugh. As first mate, he was informally assigned

to taking care of their host guest. He was a big

guy, rough-hewn, self-conscious about his size,

and embarrassed about the gap between his front teeth,

but he'd been told by more than just his mother that his eyes

had an animated crinkle about them when he

smiled. So he figured that canceled out the gap.

The crewmates sat around the table, dressed in

rough jersey shirts and faded trousers. Their ship

was immaculate and strong, built to haul virgin

ore to processing plants, and he hoped it could

impress her. A truck in space. Later they

would show her the barge section, where the raw ore was

loaded and unloaded, and how they moved it in and out,

and he would spend time telling her about the interstellar

mining industry.

Yup, they'd have lots of hours together, and he'd

enjoy every minute.

The mood in the galley mess area changed,

if subtly, when Nancy Ransom herself shuffled

in and scowled at the steaming breakfast buffet laid

out over there by the wall. She had her jacket on,

the one that made her look short and stocky, and her

brown hair was pulled back so tight that she

looked like a seal sunning on a rock.

It was a nice breakfast--Louise had outdone

herself back there over the hot stove--but Nancy still

wasn't mustering so much as an approving nod.

Mike went a little cold, worried that Nancy

might make fools of them all in front of

Turry.

"Should I say hello to her?" Turry asked,

almost whispering.

Mike shrugged. "Maybe later."

"She's a little touchy," one of the load

operators said.

"Mind your meal, Stevens," Mike ordered.

"Okay, okay."

Turry kept her voice low. "Is something

wrong? Is it me?"

"Naw, naw, nothing to do with you. Couldn't be you,

hon."

"Marry her, Mike," the engineer popped from

down the galley's old trestle table where they and

four others were gathered. "She's pretty."

"Like them big eyes," deckhand Harry

Stevens commented.

"We'll talk about it when you aren't around,"

Mike said, but he blushed in the cheeks

a little.

And even more when young stockman Sam Oats

roared back, flapped his elbows, and crowed like a

barnyard redcrest.

The laughter of his shipmates was a blend of

humiliation and sustaining joy for Mike Frarey.

He smiled, inched his big form a little closer to the

best thing that had happened to him in ten years, and

offered her some more coffee.

Reaching for another couple of slices of

sourdough, Mike was doing what he always did when

there was a visitor or an ore company rep on

board. Entertain them as best he could and keep a

buffer zone between them and Nancy.

And there was sure no trouble entertaining this sweet

thing from the host planet. He couldn't remember

when he'd been so puffed up with good old-fashioned

billy goat, turkey cock, tomcat feelings

sitting next to a lady. And he liked it.

He liked her.

Not that Nancy Ransom wouldn't be civil

to Turry, but that was the best she'd be. For someone

who came from a long spacefaring heritage, right out

of one of those small spaceports where shuttling

cargo or space taxiing were just about the only ways

to make a living, Nancy never had much confidence

in herself. She always thought she had confidence, so she

always blamed somebody else when she faltered.

She was naturally suspicious and refractory and

would instantly resist whatever was pushed her way.

There was something pioneer about her, though, that made

others continue to sign on her ship and work for her in

spite of the odds they'd be blamed for something.

And she was the hardest worker Mike had ever known.

She managed to keep her parents' marginal ore

shipping business in the black. Barely, but always.

Her draft-horse work ethic was the most

infectious trait about her. Add that she was one of

their own kind, flew the Stars and Bars on her

ship, and wasn't quite convinced the Confederacy lost the

American Civil War, that was enough to keep

down-homers like Mike signing on season after

season.

"You know anything about the Old South?" he

asked spontaneously.

"Oh, yes I do," Turry said. "Earth

studies are their own experience. I took as many

as I could at our university. I'd like to live

there someday."

"Like to do that myself, all of a sudden,"

Mike muttered.

He expected a crack from his shipmates, but

nobody said anything. There was nothing but the clinking

of forks on plates and the slurp of coffee. That

meant they could tell he was serious and wasn't just

teasing. He could barely pull his eyes off

Turry as he shoveled the gray-white gravy

onto his bread.

"If you want to get to know Nance," he went

on, "best you can do is ask her about her family

history. She's got this rebel way about her.

Comes from one of those families who can name the

company, brigade, regiment, and major

battles of all their ancestors who fought in the

war. Fact is, we'all a little like that."

Turry worked to swallow a forgiving mouthful of

eggs and grits. "Are you all from the same

colony?"

"Yeah, we're all from Port Apt. Most

of us, anyway."

"Where's that?"

"Near Alpha Centauri. Ask me how it

got its name."

"All right ... what kind of name is Port

Apt?"

"Colonized by an Arkansas family."

"The United States."

"That's right as rain. We'all second and

third and ninth and tenth cousins and like."

Andy O'Boyle choked down a spoonful of

grits in time to belch, "Couldn't tell that."

Turry grinned and everybody else chortled.

Encouraged as the mood got better and better

in spite of Nancy Ransom's presence down

the table, Mike went on.

"Most of us had relatives in the group of

original settlers. They come from Jonesboro,

Harrisburg--t side of Arkansas. Over there

was a road sign with some houses around it, and on this

road sign was the name of the place--Apt. It was

named that back in the 1920's, because folks said there

was "apt"' to be a town there someday."

Turry covered her mouth and was trying to smile

and chew at the same time, but Mike picked up the

satisfying delight in her great big brown

eyes. Just like a doe's eyes ...

"Anyway," he continued, "our great-grands,

they named their colony Port Apt 'cause they

figured it was an optimistic name for a place where

there was apt to be a big mining port some

day. Now Port Apt is about two hundred

times the size of the place it was named after. Done

real well. Lots of good free industry and

entrepreneurship. Never lost our heritage.

Kept the Confederacy's idea of small

government. They keep the roads clean and the

space lanes clear, and the people do the rest. Love

to show it to you."

Turry gazed at his big round face, and

Mike felt that he was nothing but a canvas of

lines and scratches and scars, but her voice was like

a song when she said to him, "I would love to see

it, Mike. What about Arkansas?"

He blinked. "Pardon?"

"Is there a town at the road sign yet?"

Sam interrupted, "Not yet."

Mike pitched half a piece of sourdough at

him, got him square in the face, then turned

back to the lady. "Things move kinda slow down

in those parts. You can't force a city to grow. Never

quite developed the way some folks said it would.

Prosperity pretty much followed the railroads

in those days. There's no city there yet."

From down the table, the voice of their captain

surprised them with a glint of humor as Nancy

Ransom insisted, "Apt to be, though."

A pause--then the mess hall broke out in

laughter.

Mike Frarey almost rolled backward off the

bench, almost choking as he laughed. Must be something

about Turry that just lightened their load some. Even

Nancy was loosening up.

He hadn't expected that to happen, given that

she wasn't too pumped up about running this

race. She just couldn't stand to let it go on without

her. Had a little problem that way.

Only when he realized he was laughing with his

mouth open and a half-chewed display of food showing

itself to the ceiling did he clamp down and grab

hold of the edge of the big table. Down at the end,

Nancy was eating, but she was eyeing them

mischievously and her lips were drawn long in a

grin.

"How we doin', Nance?" Joe Sibley asked

from Mike's left.

"Marilyn's got the watch," their captain

said, her concentration again on her breakfast. She

ate with both elbows on the table, her sho ulders

up, and her head hunkered down. "We running behind

Blackjacket, don' know how far, but

we're gaining. Thought we saw Alexandria go

by, but the sensor shadows were awfully big for a

trader."

"Was it Alexandria or wasn't it?"

Sam Oats asked.

"Just told you, we're not sure. All we know

is something big circled around in front of us. You

want to come up to the bridge and try to identify

ships by silhouette, thrust, and size? Sure as

hell let you have a try. We're coming up on a

marker for a gravity well of some sort, so

Marilyn's got us slowed down and on visuals.

We got ahold of two beacons, but I think

it's got to be some kind of lensing effect."

"Which one you gonna follow?" Mike asked.

"Haven't decided."

So Mike shrugged at Turry, who was watching

the captain hopefully, and gave her a

reassuring wink.

"After I get done eating," Nancy said,

"I'm going up there and speed us up again. If

it's a gravity hook, I can spin around it with enough

speed."

"Or get caught in it," Louise Clark

called from the galley cooking area, where she was

shoveling hotcakes onto a communal serving

dish.

"Don't drive, woman," Nancy called

back. "Just cook."

Everybody laughed again, including Louise, and

even Nancy this time.

Mike looked past Turry and Sam, and said,

"Hey, Nancy, maybe you can catch up with

Blackjacket and run him down. You know,

impress Ian enough to bring you on board and make you

the only woman ever in Blackjacket's

crew."

Without looking up, Nancy snapped, "Who

wants to be? That slippery carrot-top can have his

all-male paradise if he wants. His loss.

Bess," she said, leaning forward to leer at Mike,

"if I was in his crew, I wouldn't have my own

ship."

A stadium howl of approval jumbled through the

crew as they shook their fists and pounded the table for

her. And something unexpected happened--nancy's

cheeks rounded up with pride, and she must have felt

real good because she reached past Sam and offered a hand

to Turry.

"Hey," she said. "How are you?"

Turry caught the hand and responded, "I'm

so completely delighted to be on Ransom

Castle, Captain. You should be proud of all that

you have."

"I'm proud," Nancy said. "Welcome

aboard."

Mike and the others worked hard to avoid falling

dead silent with shock. They forced themselves to keep

chuckling, keep eating, and keep up the small

talk, even if it was just "pass the coffee, will you"

or "here, have a hotcake." A sense of

conviviality skittered through the galley mess

area.

Maybe this wouldn't be bad at all! Maybe

they'd all have a fine ole time. Maybe at the

end of the race they could get out their pickin' gear and

make some music.

And maybe there was something tickling the wind for

himself, Mike realized as he put his enormous

hand between Turry's shoulder blades and gave her

a little congratulatory pat. Felt just right--

Until the ship suddenly whined and cranked

three quarters onto its side.

As the hull pounded around them, they clung to the

table and to each other as the lights crackled and

thunderbolted, and their Ozark breakfasts and all the

fixins came slamming into their laps. Mike

managed to catch Turry on his left and two

others on his right, but it didn't last.

Alarms blasted through the erupting darkness. The

artificial gravity surged, twisted, sent them

all careening against the port bulkhead, and tales

of the new South died in their minds.

YELLOW ALERT

Chapter Nine

Ransom Castle

"We're out of warp, down to one-eighth

impulse."

"Get the backup lights on. What hit

us?"

"Something we hit. Looks like some kind of dark

residual cloud. We didn't see it."

"Damage?"

"Well ... I'm not sure about that yet."

"Get sure!"

"Okay, okay, don't yell--"

"I'm yelling at you, and I'm gonna yell

at you because you're in charge of the bridge, and you're

supposed to know what's in front of you,

Marilynffwas

"You back off me, Nancy."

"I'm not backing off you, even if it's only

a race. What if we had a shipment on

board?"

"Then we'd have a plotted course and we

wouldn't be running into clouds nobody can see,

all right?"

"Uh, Nancy? 'Scuse me." Mike

Frarey moved between the two women as half a

dozen others scrambled around them. Behind him,

Second Mate Marilyn Betts escaped

around the pilot station and moved out of the line of

fire. "Looks like a puff of ionized gases

and spinning dust left over from something that exploded

maybe a million years ago. There's still

reaction going on in there. It's off our sensors,

so it's damn big."

Nancy fell silent for a count, squinting into the

forward screen at a swimming smoke gray

gauze that was almost invisible against the blackness of

space. Even bumping up against it, they could

barely see it. The only clue to its existence were

faint bluish crackles of electrical

activity and the fact that they couldn't see anything

through it.

She scratched the side of her face

distractedly and asked, "Where are the other ships?"

"The ones we can see are turning to go around it.

We sent out a warning, so everybody knows about it

now. I don't know for sure how this thing will affect

our maneuvering ability."

"Who's in the area?"

"We saw the Tholian ship ahead of us, and

New Pride of Baltimore right behind them,

a couple others I can't tell who they are,

Blackjacket, maybe, and we caught a

glimpse of a Starfleet ship, but we couldn't

tell what direction it was going."

"Starfleet ship? Which one?"

When Nancy's face turned gray with the

reference, Mike realized he'd made a

mistake. He should've just told her he didn't

know what those ships were. Could've been

anybody. Impossible to tell.

"Well ..."

"It's Jim Kirk, isn't it?" She

turned from gray to red even in the dimness. "Damn

him, I can't get away from him even out in the

middle of nothin'. Okay, let me think. And

where the hell are my backup lights!"

Around, below, and above, they could hear the ship pound

with wild activity, people doing their jobs and their best

not to panic and not to have to bother Nancy. Like a

gaggle of snake handlers, they'd learned that.

Stay off the bridge unless there was really something

to say. Then stay off anyway.

Everyone hung on with one hand and worked with the other

as the ship was sledgehammered with blow after blow of

force from the ancient furnace they'd stumbled into.

"Reverse the loading tractors," Nancy

decided. "Give me some room to turn around."

"Got nothing to push against," Mike said.

"If they whine, we'll stop."

Mike twisted around as best his bulk could

manage with the ship shuddering under him, and called down

the engineering crawlway. "Tractors on full

reverse, Sam."

"No--" Nancy grabbed his arm. "Wait a

minute ..."

Watching Nancy's small eyes get even

smaller as she looked at the screen, then the

readouts, then back at the screen, Frarey got

one of those funny feelings down his spine. He

waited what he thought was long enough, then prodded,

"What're you thinking?"

"If everybody else is bothering to go around it

..."

"Yeah?"

"Then we'll gain five hundred light-years

on him if we cut right through it."

Mike kept his voice low. "On

him, huh?"

"Yeah, on him!" Nancy erupted.

"Shielding's full-up, isn't it?"

"Aw, Nancy ... we're up in the front

end of the field ... we could put ourselves back

God knows how far--"

"Or we could jump all the way ahead.

Let's do what we do best and beat a bastard at

the same time."

"Aw, boy ..."

"Get the crew to put up the lead sheets on

the interior bulkheads. Wake up the off-duty

watch. Extend the stabilizers to maximum.

Get the old pulse jets out in case we need

them. We're gonna cut right through this thing."

"Nancy, I don't know ..."

"All right, maggots, hang on and listen

here!"

Red Talon

"The cloud is the remnant of an explosion

when a neutron star collided with a class-C

red giant. The result is highly ionized

particles, hard radiation, dust, debris, and an

above normal content of residual antimatter.

There is also a great deal of momentum in the

interior of the cloud, where the spinning has not yet

completely dissipated."

"How old is this soup?"

"I would appraise ... five to eight

million years."

"Then we can expect it to spin one more day?"

The ship's science specialist turned his

face up from the monitor to respond to his

leader's peculiar question--or to see if a

response was a mistake. "Yes, Commander ...

of course."

Valdus nearly smiled, but such a slip could

in the long run prove damaging to any commander.

He did, though, enjoy the look on the

specialist's face when he asked his question.

Apparently, he'd succeeded in convincing the poor

fellow that he actually wanted an answer.

Perhaps he hadn't lost his touch yet.

The bridge crew wasn't used to dealing with him

directly. Usually he told Romar what was

to be done, and Romar dealt with them. They were

confused why a simple race would not only draw

his interest but his direct attention.

He enjoyed their confusion. He hoped also that he

could commit his purpose without cost of their lives,

but he wouldn't admit that to them either. A commander was

better off all around letting his crew guess and

suspect and being less sure of any conclusion they

may make independently of their leader.

"Romar, where are you?"

"Here, Commander."

Of course. Never more than two steps out of

sight, especially when he was measuring Valdus

against every passing moment.

"Your orders, Commander?" Romar asked. "You

wish to avoid the cloud, certainly."

"What are the other vessels doing?"

"All are piloting to avoid it."

"Not correct, Subcommander," the helmsman

said. He spoke to Romar, but couldn't help

glancing every other ^w or so at Valdus. "One

vessel is nosing into the cloud. I believe they

are playing to gain space by going through it."

"If this race was my only care," Valdus

said, "I would do so also."

Romar moved a step closer and, judging from his

drawn brows, didn't like having to probe the

next steps. "Standard elliptical course around

the cloud?"

"Yes."

Ah, the gift of a simple answer. Valdus

enjoyed giving one today. Romar obviously found

succor in it. One clear thing to understand and

execute.

So much more the fracture when Valdus clutched

Romar's wrist and held him back from approaching

the helm. "A moment," he said. "The construction

of this vessel going into the cloud?"

Romar stared at him, suddenly crisp again.

He pushed the science specialist aside, waved

him away, then hunched over the monitors and

manipulated the controls until there was focus.

"Industrial merchant loader-transporter

... cruising speed, hyperlight three ...

capable of five in short bursts. Heavy dragging

engines, propulsional unit length overall--"

"That's enough."

Almost choking as he tried to keep the numbers from

slipping through his lips, Romar made a tight

sound in his throat, and drew himself straight again.

He looked exhausted. The effort his patience was

costing him was clear.

Patience.

Valdus silently offered his sympathy, but

provided no explanations. He was thinking about that

ship and watching as it pressed into the gas cloud.

"And in a cloud of that type," he began, "a

ship could pull abeam of another ... and never be

noticed. Yes?"

Enterprise

"A caustic brew. Very dangerous."

Spock cupped his readout monitor with both

hands and peered in as the black cloud's facts

piled up on the screen before him.

"Sweeping electrical activity," he went

on, "turbulence in the high nineties ...

gravitational congestion toward the center, caused

by residual spinning from the original collision

... no plottable pattern to the spin."

Beside him, Jim Kirk glowered at the same

power figures and chemical breakdown numbers and

didn't like a single one of them. "What can happen

to the Castle if she keeps going in?"

Spock came up from the screen andfora moment

gazed at nothing as the numbers turned

into pictures in his mind. "Ionization of her warp

core, greatly compromising motive power,

possibly stopping it alt ... sensor blindness

... shield collapse, causing the crew

to retreat to the interior of the ship, cutting off

access to the engines and compromising their control over

life support and hull integrity. They may not

be able to extricate themselves."

His arms stiff, Kirk turned and looked at

the forward screen. In the distance, on maximum

magnification, a purple-black cloud with shaggy

blue hairs of electricity was eating the

Ransom Castle, and the Castle wasn't

pulling out, and he knew why.

"Ship to ship, Lieutenant," he said.

"Audio."

Behind him, Uhura's panel chirped in

compliance.

"The Ransom Castle, sir," Uhura

said steadily. "First Mate Mike Frarey on

audio."

"Mr. Frarey, this is Jim Kirk. Put

me through to Captain Ransom."

"She's here," the mate's voice crackled

over the comm system, already affected by the cloud

sucking on the Castle's power. "Go

right ahead."

"Nancy," Kirk said, fighting not to sound

patronizing, "don't go in there."

"Thanks for the advice."

Nancy's voice was composed--a scary sound from

Nancy.

Kirk shifted a little and wondered about the sound of

his own voice. Did he sound arrogant?

"Captain," Chekov interrupted.

"Go ahead, Mr. Chekov," Kirk said,

trying not to communicate that he might as well

talk to anybody other than Nancy Ransom,

especially since he hadn't thought of anything

to say to her yet.

Chekov was at his navigation station, but he was

looking up at the science station on the starboard

side, forward of Spock, as though to confirm what

he had just seen.

"Sir ... the beacon just faded!"

Kirk shifted and said, "Spock, confirm that.

Did we guess wrong?"

Spock took the seconds he needed as

everyone on the bridge watched him, and even

Nancy Ransom had to listen to the silence on the

open communication net as the Enterprise found out

whether or not it had made a big blunder.

"No sign of the beacon, Captain," he said.

"Evidently we have been following the sensor echo

from the lensing effect instead of the actual beacon."

"ally're lost," Nancy's voice concluded

for them. "After I'm inside the cloud, you'll have

to follow somebody else, won't you?"

"It's just a race, Captain," Kirk told

her. "It's not worth risking your ship."

When she didn't respond, he got

worried.

How could he talk to a woman who held him as

her personal evil spirit? Would it be better to just

tell her to go on in, try to cut across the course

by swimming the quicksand, and hope she would do the

opposite of anything he said?

Even Nancy Ransom wasn't that much of a

child. Nobody could run a mining company

transport and be a child for very long.

He wondered if she knew that he understood that,

and that he'd learned things over the past ten years,

whether she had or not.

"My science officer suggests that going into that thing

isn't a good idea," he tried again. "We read

red-lined turbulence in there."

"allyeah, and I don't have a fancy

Vulcan to run my fancy computer. So if I

dig my way through there and cut a couple hundred

light-years off the course and blow you away, then

I guess I'll just have seat-of-the-pants flying

to blame. It's a trick I learned while I

was still in Starfleet."

"Look," Kirk said, "you can insult me all

you want, but don't degrade yourself by insulting my

staff. I've given you my recommendation.

You're welcome to take it, along with my

assurance that no one else will hear about it. If you

don't care about your crew, think about mine. I

don't want to have to go in there after you."

Even as the ^ws bolted out, he knew they were the

wrong ones. She wouldn't let go of the past, and now

he'd as much as laid a challenge at her feet.

"Then I won't call for you. Castle

out."

The click of the channel closing was like a crack

over the head.

"Not the reaction I was fishing for," Kirk said.

"I made a mistake. I should've contacted

Ken Dodge or somebody else to warn her off.

Anyone's voice but mine should've been coming over

the channels at Nancy Ransom, and I'm the

one who should know that first."

"Is the Ransom Castle going in there?"

Royenne asked from behind the action.

"Seems so." Kirk fought not to sigh. He'd

forgotten they were there. He had a certain appearance

to uphold here--usually not the case on his own

bridge.

Then again, they were here as observers, so they might

as well observe the captain admitting he

wasn't perfect.

"Captain Kirk," Tom added, "are you going

to let them go into that thing?"

Kirk shrugged and gave them the awful truth.

"There's nothing I can do if she doesn't want

help."

"But isn't there an interstellar law you can

quote or something?"

"A ship in space is an autonomous

entity, Mister ... Tom. That is interstellar

law. Mr. Spock, Mr. Sulu, let's

get back to the race."

As the crew frowned and tried to concentrate on

a race that suddenly lost a bit of its

imperative in lieu of something more

precious, Kirk stepped back toward Spock.

"She's got guts," he said, "but I doubt

she'll come out more than six or seven minutes

ahead, and it might even slow her down. If she

comes out at all--it's my fault if she

doesn't come out," he murmured, still looking at

the screen, at the dot of Ransom Castle

against the monstrous crackling cloud. "Will the

transporters work inside that mess if a

rescue unit has to be sent in after them?"

"Unlikely," Spock said, "though I can't

be sure."

"I should never have hailed her, Spock. I

pushed her over the edge."

"I disagree, sir." Spock's tone was almost

gentle as he turned to face him. "Captain

Ransom displays an admirable willingness

to take risks, but not the ability to weigh risk

against gain. That ... is what makes a commander of

note."

This was his first officer's way of telling Kirk

to go easy on himself.

"I guess you're right," the captain sighed.

"That imbalance is what kept her out of

Starfleet."

"Captain?"

Kirk turned to the aft deck. "Yes,

Tom?"

The Rey man actually left the sanctuary

of the turbolift apron and moved across the bridge

toward them.

"Are you leaving that ship behind?" he asked.

They all watched the forward screen as it

battled to magnify the great distance between the starship

and the Ransom Castle. In those seconds, the

last hint of the merchant ship--one glint of a tail

fin--was consumed by the mindless mass of garbage

left over from a cataclysm millions of years

ago. Now, by any definition, the Castle was on

its own.

Kirk didn't like the sound of his own voice or

the idea of leaving a ship behind in potential

danger in the name of sportsmanship.

Tom didn't seem like the type to face the

bulls, but he wasn't going to let go until he

got the honesty they were all holding away from him

at arm's length.

He stepped between Kirk and Spock--something

even the crew knew better than to try, and he

pointed at the gaudy mass on the forward

screen, and his voice carried a crack of

insistence .

"But what if they don't come out again?"

YELLOW ALERT

Chapter Nine

(continued)

Ransom Castle

"It's all right! Don't panic! It's just a

little shakin' here and there!"

Ship's cook Louise Clark put her hand out

on the shuddering metal sink, glared into the mirror

she had mounted five years ago, and absorbed the

shock on her own face. There was a tightness around

her eyes and little lines that looked like the ones on

her mother's eyes. Her face was flushed, hot.

"You been through this a hundred times," she told

that face. "What are you doing shaking like a

chicken?"

She pulled at her collar. Sweat drained

down her neck.

"God, what's the matter with you?" she

murmured at the face shriveling with fear before her.

She turned away from it and swore not to look

again.

"It's all right--I been through all this before--

we've got pounded before, plenty--"

Over the serving shelf of her galley she

looked into the mess area, along the endless wooden

trestle table, at another face. She grasped

the edge of the serving shelf.

"Don't fret," she said. "No need

to panic ..."

The ship slammed sideways a few inches, enough

to throw her down onto the slanted deck. She

rolled against the bulkhead, then out the doorway and

into the mess hall. A long-forgotten reflex

let her catch the point of the table and keep herself from

sliding underneath--a meetingplace that was already

occupied by the ship's guest.

The alien girl--what was her name?--had fallen

underneath and was clinging to a table leg.

Louise concentrated on trying to remember the

girl's name, just to give her brain something to do besides

give in to the frantic feelings that seemed to be

taking over. Why was she feeling this way? She

hadn't lied to her own face in the mirror--most

of those worry lines had come from sitting down in the

galley and trying to prepare the next

meal while the ship took some kind of pounding.

Making food was her therapy. She had ignored

orders to make fast and had peeled carrots and

stirred hot chili in the middle of awful storms

and even a couple of hostile pirate attacks.

What was wrong with her today?

It wasn't even all that bad yet.

"Coming down with something," she muttered. "Got a

crick in my neck. Just coming down with a bug, is

all. How are you doing over there, hon? Scared as

I look?"

Under the table, the alien girl's huge brown

eyes were sallow with fear, but she was clinging as much

to a vestige of common sense as to the table's leg.

That showed in her face. With those milky bangs

hanging over her face, the girl looked like a

sheepdog who had been smacked with a glove and

found a place to hide.

Louise summoned everything she possessed

to overcome the fear strapping her chest. There was

nothing she could do about her trembling hands--she could

barely control her fingers. Only by using her

fingernails could she get a grip on the tabletop

and pull herself to her feet as the ship pounded and

slipped.

"What's the matter with me?" she asked the

air as her feet squared under her own weight.

"I gotta think, gotta think, think, gotta

think--"

But she couldn't. A blinding screen as wide as

a shower curtain hung between her and rationality. She

was furious at herself and frustrated at not being able

to think. The air was shimmering, flashing, and turning

hot.

Louise cast an arm over her eyes and

staggered. Felt like the ovens were all turned on.

Heat ...

"Can't think in the heat--a cook that can't think

in the heat--"

She laughed at this new disability, her lips

quivering. Fear quickly swallowed any humor she

managed to drum up. Only bigger was her need

to get ahold of herself.

Reaching upward, she grasped one wrist with the

other hand and pulled her arm away from her eyes, and

she blinked until her eyes began to clear.

There was someone else in the galley. Not the

girl. Someone different. Two of them. Not

Castle crew, no one she knew--

Two men, soldiers of some kind, in

tough uniforms that had metal fibers knitted into the

fabric. With helmets! Helmets that looked like

bird heads.

Why would anyone be wearing helmets?

"It's only a race!" Louise said out loud,

choking on her own bile.

And this wasn't the transporter area.

Wasn't the loading dock, wasn't the fantail

where guests were brought on board?

"You're in the wrong place," she told the

two stern-looking men. "You got in the galley

somehow. This is the galley!"

The soldiers ignored what she was saying. One

of them approached her with some kind of data-reading

device. The other hunted down the Rey girl and

went under the table to sniff her out with that thing.

A couple seconds, and the soldier under the table

pulled out what looked like a phaser, but longer and

bigger.

Louise stumbled back. A surge of raw

terror filled her mind, and she suddenly couldn't

hold a thought, not even a ^w, not an idea. The

motions around turned to fuzzy streaks. Her eyes

watered until she could barely see.

A strident whine erupted under the table. The

heavy table itself jolted just enough to notice, and the

soldier under there drew back and straightened. At

his feet, the Rey girl collapsed into imposed

sleep.

Louise felt her debilitating terror

suddenly drop off and good backwoods anger

blast up inside her. She was drenched in sweat,

but that didn't matter anymore. Her lungs

pumped so hard she thought she was having a heart

attack--but it was her galley, and she was part of the

Castle's working crew, and all of a sudden she

knew what to do.

An instant later, the soldier coming at her had

the pointy end of a can opener buried in his thigh.

As he choked in shock and pain, Louise

shouted. "Don't you poker-faced nightcrawlers

speak English? You are in the wrong place!"

Iron made good punctuation, and two

skillets slammed into the two men's chests as they

closed in on her, quick as bats.

The two devils didn't say anything, in

fact even communicated through glances and motions as

though cautious that their voices might be heard.

They let the skillets clatter to the

grease-soaked old deck and closed

in. One on each arm, they dragged her into the

cooking area and pressed her against the refrigeration

units and the freezer.

"What do you want?" she croaked, struggling.

"What do you want! There's nothing here!"

One of them held her down while the other

reset his weapon--down or up, she couldn't

tell--and aimed it at the sides of her

secondary oven, the one mounted on the wall above

the stove top.

"Are you stealing my oven?" Louise gasped.

"That's crazy--y don't even have the same

electrical systems on your ship ... but take

it if that's what you want ..."

They ignored her. One held her back, one

worked on the oven until the heavy unit shivered in

its place, then nodded at his cohort.

Louise wiggled her shoulders and balled her

fists, shook them and jabbed at the wide

metallic chest before her, tried to kick and

failed, but kept struggling.

"Your mothers ought to be ashamed!" she squawked as

they bent her backward over the stove top. Her

spine grated against the edge of the stove.

The smell of a thousand stews, chili pots,

sloppy joes, egg dumplings, hush puppies,

corn chowder, chicken puffso--all clinging somehow

to the air of her galley--reminded her suddenly

of a thousand meals, one at a time. A thousand,

maybe two thousand, maybe ten. Most served in

the midst of boredom. Her meals, one after the

other, day after day, watch after watch, had been the

only respite from drudgery for the crew, so she'd

made 'em good.

She focused on the bottom of her old

blackened oven as it shuddered above her head. A

grim laugh jumped up in her throat and

vibrated against her teeth, and suddenly she felt

almost giddy. Something was wrong, but what?

How could they do her harm with her own oven? They

didn't even figure that her oven wouldn't hurt

her.

Almost a generation of cramming overstuffed

turkeys into that oven, of casseroles tilted up

on one end so they'd fit, of crews sparse and

crowded, bulky with layered clothes and steaming with

sweat, surviving off the fare of that long-suffering

oven. Seasoned crewmen expected heavy chow

to see them through a cold, long watch; young and

confused deckhands wondered if this was what

they wanted to do with their lives--how many of those young

ones had she warmed with a hot home-cooked meal

to help those confusions sizzle away?

Plenty.

On its inside walls, cooked hard beyond any

hope of scrubbing, was evidence of those ten thousand

meals. Her knuckles were brown with old burns,

each toting a memory.

The oven shivered on its housing and came loose

on one side. Louise saw a knot of

cooked-on white gravy somehow splattered on the

underside of the unit. She wondered if she took

a knife to it could she maybe just chisel it off,

maybe get one more inch of the galley put away

right--

She was thinking about getting out her scrub

bucket and borrowing a common iron from the engineers

when the oven suddenly caterwauled like a pig,

tore off its broken housing and fell, and drove

one pointed corner through Louise's left eye and

into her brain.

Chapter Ten

"Time for a calculated risk."

Good bait.

Everybody--Spock, Sulu, Uhura,

Chekov, the bridge duty engineers, Tom,

Royenne--turned to look at him. He was sure

that down on the engineering level, Chief Engineer

Scott was looking at the ceiling.

It was that now-we're-in-trouble look.

Now that he had their attention, he fixed his

g aze on the forward screen and made sure his

voice was just loud enough to make it to all points on

the bridge.

"The best way to keep ahead of them," he said,

"is to keep ahead of them."

He knew Spock was staring at him, understanding that

he was talking about the Romulans. If the others

understood that--fine. If not, then they thought he was just

talking about the other race contestants and no harm

done.

His own crew knew what he meant, but Tom

and Royenne--how would they react, as

representatives of Gullrey, to see that a

Starfleet captain was preoccupied by what to them was

just another contestant? Would he lose the

edge that the Federation might someday need in this

sector?

"Who cares," he muttered. "Mr. Chekov,

plot a course z-plus ninety degrees to the

galactic plane. Let me hear the course when

you get it."

Silence fell, except for the sound of

Chekov's sweating.

By the time he spoke again, his dark hair was

plastered to his forehead like a line of belaying pins

against a painted gunwale.

"Bearing, one five, mark zero ... range,

twelve parsecs," Chekov offered. He turned

to Kirk, his terse accent clipping the ^ws. "Will

that be sufficient, sir?"

"If not, we'll go out farther. Mr. Sulu,

implement at warp factor three."

Sulu didn't make any comment, but his voice

was a rasp as he said, "Z-plus one five to the

galactic plane, sir ... warp factor

three."

On the forward viewer, the growling dark cloud of

residue from a millions-year-old explosion

suddenly fell away to the bottom of the screen as

the ship turned upward and vaulted for the galaxy's

sky.

Kirk counted off the seconds, hoping that--

"Captain?"

Somebody would give him a chance to explain it out

loud.

"Yes, Tom? Something I can do for you?"

"Would you mind ... should I ask Mr.

Spock?"

"No, no. I'd be happy to tell you. You

see, most of the interference is in line with the

racecourse, moving with the galaxy's natural

spiral flow. We're going to rise above all

that, go at a z-plus angle away from the

course, "up"' in the common idea of up and down

from where you're standing. By going above the sweep of the

distortions thrown off by that cloud, we might be able

to find a frequency window."

For what seemed like a shy and enthusiastic breed

of people, the Rey would stomp right over their shyness for a

thimbleful of new information.

Kirk figured that out when Tom appeared at his

side, right next to the command chair, as if he'd

been invited down there and had been there before.

Nobody did that.

Well, nobody but McCoy, but that

was different.

And Spock, but that was really different.

"How far "abv"' will we go?" Tom asked.

"You're watching, but you're not paying attention,"

Kirk told him gently. "Do you remember the

range when Chekov stated the course?"

"He said ... twelve."

"Twelve parsecs. That's twelve parsecs

up from the standard zero--reference, an imaginary

plane going through the center of the galaxy like an

arrow. It's a navigational reference."

"What can go wrong?" Tom pressed. "You're

not saying it, but I see in your face that you're

worried about something."

With tempered irritation and even a touch of

amusement, Kirk glanced at him then pushed out of

his chair to put some distance between him and the persistent

Peter Pan. Something funny about getting too

close.

"You'll see when we get there," he said.

He moved toward the helm and stood behind

Chekov.

Tom put both hands on the command chair and

took a step back. "You mean I'll see when

something goes wrong."

Couldn't fool him.

Maybe Tom was nervous. Or maybe he just

saw through the knight-in-armor appearance Kirk

tried to keep up for company, and realized that the

wild maneuver could also make them fall

irrevocably behind in the race. With every light-year

they pierced as the minutes went by, they could be

losing ground.

Correction--they .were losing ground. There was no

doubt of that.

But they were doing it on the chance of gaining sight.

"Chekov," he said, and poked his thumb toward

the starboard science console, "up there. Start

looking. Ensign Antonoff, take navigation."

"Aye, sir," Chekov said, and Antonoff

dropped from the engineering station, echoing the "aye,

sir," to the tone, and skidded into the vacant seat as

Chekov jumped to the upper deck to look for a

clear view below.

Down there other ships were having the same

problem. The cloud was throwing the beacons all over

the place. The field was scattered. They were

risen above the course now. If they could go far

enough, fast enough ...

The forward screen gave them a vision

of the galaxy below, the sweeping, thick spray of

white dust most people still called the Milky Way.

"Are we above the galaxy?" Tom asked.

"We aren't really above the galactic arm so

much as we're on the upper swell of it," Kirk

told him.

He tried to sound calm, but he was tense, awed

by what he saw, and nagged by the sensation that they were

falling behind with every second that slogged by.

"I'm betting we can beat the Ransom

Castle to the other side of that cloud," he

uttered. He was speaking to himself. If anyone

else wanted to listen, fine.

He knew Tom did, that was for sure. He

could feel those big brown golf-ball eyes right

now.

Spock stepped down to stand beside him, and let his

hands fall behind his back and clasp in that casual

manner of his, a signal that the seas were green,

the sky was blue, the desert was dusty, the race was

being run, and all was well with the world, whichever world that

might be.

Too well.

Kirk lowered his voice--ag. Not used to doing

that on his own bridge. Why didn't he just

buckle down and send those two below?

Nah ... let 'em stay.

He leaned toward Spock. "What's the

matter with you?"

Spock looked at him. "The matter with me,

sir?"

"Even you should be a little on edge with a Romulan

in the sector. What's wrong?"

"Nothing at all," Spock said, and he sounded

perplexed, as though he felt obligated

to provide something wrong to serve the captain's

intuition.

"You're too calm, Spock," Kirk

insisted. "We all are. I can't put my finger

on it ... and it's not exactly calm.

Complacent might be more accurate. I can feel

myself fighting it."

As his nominal obligation turned to concern,

Spock faced him. His voice became quiet and

his gaze was anything but cold. "I do not understand."

"You don't believe in luck, do you Mr.

Spock?"

"No, sir."

Kirk shook his head. "Well, the only

problem with not believing in luck is that you

don't believe in bad luck either."

"Got it!" Chekov gasped. "Sir! A

frequency window!" He twisted around, his face

shining. "You were right! I have the beacon!"

"Plot it," Kirk told him quickly.

"Ignore any further signals. This is the

only one we'll follow. As soon as we start

to move, it'll distort."

"Aye, sir, plotting."

While Chekov worked, Spock gestured up

to his upper console monitor. He must have set

it on automatic, because it was pouring out a

graphic picture of the now distant cloud and the

racecourse.

"Now that we can see the beacon," he said, "we

can also see sketchy readings of several vessels

within five hundred light-years of the cloud, moving

in several directions at various levels. Your

trick worked. There may be a few ships ahead of

us, but we have quite a jump on the main body."

"But look at the configuration of that cloud,

Spock, now that we can see the whole thing,"

Kirk pointed out. "Nancy's instincts were right."

"Yes," Spock agreed. "She'll come out

right on top of the beacon."

"If she comes out. Chekov, get that fix.

Let's not hover up here forever."

"I have it, sir."

"Locate ships in the immediate vicinity so that we

can plot a safe course, Ensign."

"Aye, sir ... two merchant transports

... the museum ship, I think ... the

hospital ship ... another merchant ... the

Starfleet Frigate Great Lakes on the

perimeter ... and one smaller emission,

probably a private ship."

Suddenly the feeling of calm satisfaction was

driven down. Kirk bolted past Spock so

hard that the Vulcan was bumped back. "No one

else?" he cracked.

"No one else, Captain," Chekov said.

"Confirm that, Ensign."

Chekov looked down at him and frowned.

"Sir?"

"Spock, get up there!"

Too close to call whether Kirk's ^ws or

Spock's heel hit the upper deck first.

Spock's sallow complexion was sapphired

by the sensor hood's light, his expression harsh and

dissatisfied.

"Confirmed," he said. "There are no other

vessels of cruiser thrust capacity within five

hundred twenty light-years in any direction."

Together they turned to the big forward screen.

Kirk felt his throat go dry.

"Where's the Romulan?"

Red Talon

"This? This is your fear? This? For this we risk

our ship, our lives, intrusion into another ship?

For this, all the lies, all the trickery? Standing

off a Starfleet captain? Valdus! Turn

to me and say something! I want to know why I

die!"

Romar held out both hands in a furious

encompassment of the form lying crumpled on their

deck.

"A girl?" he gasped.

His tone collected all the implications of

girlness and girlhood and everything an innocent could

be, including the silky complexion turned

to paste by a disruptor stun.

"What are you thinking!"

Nothing he did succeeded in raising a

response from his commander. Not his tone, not his

expression, not even the threatening points and flashing

hands meant as near slaps.

"You won't die," Valdus said, his voice

calm but chapped. He stood as a man in the

sun. Eyes squinted, face kinked, lips

pursed. "You must trust me. If she is what

I think she is, then she and her kind are

dangerous to us."

"Dangerous! Again you toss these ^ws over me!

How are they dangerous? Tell me what they have!"

Romar tried to ignore his own fury and read his

commander's eyes. Valdus looked different

somehow. His normal air of complaisance was gone.

Romar put his fingertips to his temples. His

head hurt, and his eyes throbbed. He wanted

to understand, but had no idea where to begin. He threw

his hands to his sides, and spat out with as much venom

as he could muster.

"Valdus!"

Chapter Eleven

Enterprise

"Emergency alert, all hands. Sensors

full capacity. Helm, come about."

"Coming about, sir. Course, minus nine five

on the descent plane. Sensors eighty-one

percent. Best we can do on the sensors, sir."

"Get us between the beacon and that cloud. Skirt

the turbulence as tightly as possible. Scan for

other vessels."

"Mr. Scott reports ready for z-minus

dive, sir. Helm is answering."

"Implement."

Jim Kirk turned to the back of the bridge as

he felt the artificial gravity fight to keep

his feet on the floor, and he looked at the two

Rey guests.

As the guests sat side by side in chairs that

weren't supposed to be there, skin tightened around

their huge eyes, lips parted to draw in the breath

of the moment. Tom sat forward on his chair,

incongruous in his plaid and denim logging duds,

his long fingers spread out over his knees.

Royenne was hunched back and down, gripping the

edges of his seat in a manner that didn't serve the

Starfleet uniform. Both manners of attention were

flattering for the crew around them.

"Might get dangerous, gentlemen," Kirk

said to them. "You may want to consider leaving the

bridge."

They looked at him as though he'd slapped

them.

Royenne nearly whispered, "Are we in the

way?"

All the captain's training and experience and

instinct and all that stuff embroidered into his

personality told him to take the opportunity

to boot them below. Clear the deck. Give them a

nice teacherly yes and that would be that. They'd be

gone, below decks, nice and safe, relatively

speaking.

"No, not really in the way," he found himself

saying. Social convention or something had him by the

throat. Was he enjoying showing off that much?

"Then we wish to stay," Tom said. "It's our

race, sir."

"Your race, but if the situation develops

into a crisis, you might not like what you see."

Tom cleared his throat. "We want

to be part of this. You have come here for us and our people ...

we want to really .be in the Federation. All your

benefits will be ours, and we want to share your

dangers. We trust you, and we're not afraid."

"Well, you ought to be," the captain said. He

didn't feel like absorbing any compliments, or

mollycoddling misplaced bravery, but something

kept him from ordering them to join their friend on the

observation deck.

Just when he had almost worked himself up to ordering them

below, Tom smiled and said, "I have never learned so

much in my whole life. Do you think I can steer a

ship someday?"

"Probably," Kirk said, "but not this ship."

Well, at least he'd dug up enough

authenticity to say that. Tom seemed to take it as

a compliment.

Good enough. Kirk turned back to the screen,

now providing them a bird's-eye view of the

galactic arm and the spread puff of residual

cloud, and instantly forgot the Rey guests.

Something else took him over.

No trail of engine exhaust, no warning

signals from anybody else ... what was it

he'd heard about silence being deafening?

"Get us back down there, Mr. Sulu," he

said. "I don't like not knowing where he is."

Red Talon

"The cloaking operation is a strain in the

midst of this discharge, Commander. Shall we veer out and

relax the cloak?"

"No, Centurion. Maintain cloaked

status."

"Very well, Commander. Maintaining status."

Simple answers, simple orders, this was

Valdus. The crew was used to him, but they were

burdened today. Was this a suicide mission or not?

If not, why couldn't he tell them his plans?

If so, why couldn't they be allowed to take part

in the glory by knowing that they were to die in action?

Why wouldn't he tell them?

He himself did not know that answer.

Even here, secluded in the transporter

chamber, speaking through the ship's crackling internal

communications system distorted by the storm outside,

Valdus could sense the burden of his crew.

Alone now in the chamber--at least, the only

one awake--he turned from the communication

panel, pressed a shoulder against the wall for

balance, and looked at the unconscious Rey

girl.

She had such a simple appearance. Narrow

features, long limbs, a quiet face troubled

from within. Large closed eyes branched with brown and

red lashes.

As the turbulent cloud shook Red Talon

around him, Valdus wrapped the ship's cloak

around himself, around his purpose, and forced himself to be

nefarious, though it wasn't his nature. He had

always been an officer of open cause, who obeyed

orders to the extreme, whose personal skills had

never shown themselves above those of his fellows. From the

beginning he had been an obedient, governable

tool of the Empire, never questioning, never straying from

the noted course, long ago yanked off the course

set for his life by one incident and the deaths of all

in a crew but himself, and somehow made a hero. His

own tractability all those years ago had put

him in command of this ship now, a destiny never set for

him by nature, and had placed this moment at his

feet.

If he did only one truly independent

action in his life, this would be that one.

"Commander!"

He jumped with surprise as the panel

blurted beside him.

Sharply he answered, "Yes, what is it,

Centurion?"

"The Federation starship! It returns,

sir!"

"Are you sure?" Valdus demanded. "It's not

a distortion you're reading?"

"Absolutely not."

Rage filled his chest as Valdus glared into the

immediate future and kept having his vision blocked

by that ship and that captain.

His hand was being forced. There was nothing he could do

about this but act as proscribed.

"Then we act," he said. "Bring tractor

systems to bear. Prepare to turn them on,

effect a hard pull, then turn them off quickly.

Stealth is the key, Centurion. Let us move

on that starship as animals move on each other."

Enterprise

"Arm phasers."

"Phasers armed ... ready, sir. Leveling

to angle with the racecourse. Approaching the

cloud."

Sulu was keeping his voice a lot steadier

than anybody felt. He was the best liar on the

bridge.

The skin prickled on the outsides of

Kirk's arms. His muscles pulled inward all

over, every sinew experiencing his emotions full-out,

and he couldn't stop it.

He didn't care if anybody saw.

"Skirt the cloud, Mr. Sulu. Mr.

Spock, Mr. Chekov, scan for Ransom

Castle. I want to know if they've gotten

themselves out of that thing."

"No sign as yet, sir," Spock said.

"I don't like this."

"Agreed."

"Captain," Tom asked, "by arming your

weapons, aren't you inviting battle?"

Kirk glanced back at him, but his attention

never really left the forward screen.

"Just being ready for battle never causes it,"

he said. "Sometimes, that's the very force that deflects

it. Complacency is what sucks the unready

into war."

If Gullrey was coming into the Federation, putting

two of their representatives on the bridge of a

Starfleet ship, advertising themselves to all the

civilizations around, peaceful and hostile, better

they know the galaxy as it really was, and know what

they were getting into.

One hard lesson Kirk had learned early in

his career in space--the innocent were rarely treated

innocently.

"Skirting the cloud, Captain," Spock

said. "Picking up some readings inside that might be

engine exhaust."

"Can you confirm?"

"Endeavoring to do so. Bursts of discharge are

refracting our sensors as before."

"I'd go on running the race," Kirk said,

"but I don't like leaving until I know what

happened to the Castle, and what happened to--"

The deck pushed up under him and drove him

to his knees. The starship bolted forward and down

several degrees on her descent plane, and

suddenly they were tumbling down what might

as well have been a spaceport grain-loading

ramp.

Kirk ended up on one knee, hanging onto

his command chair with one hand and the bridge rail with the

other. Bodies spilled by all around him. He

caught a glimpse of Tom rolling along the

upper deck when, in a sickening motion, the deck

surged until he couldn't see Tom or

anybody else anymore.

His senses winked out, and the next few seconds

were a provoked fight to get them back.

Red Talon

"Take cover quickly! Duck back into the

cloud. Condition of maneuver?"

"It worked, Commander! The Federation ship is

inside the cloud's perimeter ... being drawn

deeper toward the magnetic center. Shall I

continue tractor maneuvers?"

"Can they see us?"

Valdus put his lips close to the communication

panel, breathing against his vessel's wall as he

might the warm shoulder of a woman. The surprise

had drained him and he took the wall's support

for what it was.

A starship--probably the Enterprise, the

ship that had been haunting them since the beginning of the

race--dropping at them out of the great vacuum,

vectoring back toward the cloud and standing guard in

their line of escape.

Not a good time to attempt taking over another

vessel.

And now the Red Talon and its secrets were

dipping back into the depths of the residual cloud,

letting their prize slip farther away.

Deprived. Because of that man.

Reduced to lashing out like some kind of snake

trying to protect its meter of ground, Valdus

had struck. Now he would have to recoil or be

detected.

"We are maintaining our cloak, sir,"

came the tentative answer from his bridge.

"I do not believe we have been seen."

His command bridge. He saw it in his mind.

He should be there. Not down here, guarding his crew from

an unconscious alien girl.

Only a girl, Romar had told him.

Only a girl.

The imperilment of his ship ... even his

civilization ... was it from outside or from within?

What would it be today? Was it his choice?

"Has Subcommander Romar reported to the

bridge yet?" he asked abruptly.

"ation yet, Commander." The centurion's

voice was laced with frustration about all the things he

had not been told.

Valdus almost smiled. He'd heard the same

tone from Romar only minutes ago. The tell

me tone.

"Release the Federation ship from our tractor

beams at one point of drag per second.

Make it gradual, uneven. Then retreat

slowly. Take care not to stir up the cloud or

make any alerting of our presence here. Let the

internal turbulence draw the starship in now."

"Shall I continue conquest maneuvers upon the

merchant ship?"

"Not yet. Another chance will come. Retreat, and

we will leave the cloud at another angle. Make

all maneuvers subtle ones, Centurion ...

let us not be seen."

Enterprise

"Free drift! No steering capacity at

all!"

The sheer power it takes to slam a Starfleet

heavy cruiser forty feet sideways in open

space is enough to break legs and spines and get

anyone's attention, including the ship's computer.

Yellow alert, yellow alert ... all

hands, brace for turbulence ... brace for

tur--"

And even Uhura's silky voice was choked

away as she was thrown from her chair when the ship

pitched forward and to port.

Lights popped before the captain's eyes.

White ones, yellow ones, the occasional little red

or blue one. All he saw was Uhura and a

few moving forms, then only the lights.

"Don't try to get up, sir--"

Whose voice was that?

There were hands holding him down. He fought

to climb back up through the corridor of lights

by counting how many hands were holding him down. One on

his right shoulder, one on his elbow, one on the other

elbow ... who on the bridge had three hands?

His head pounded, drowning out all other

noises, hammering down a retching nausea. He

clawed feebly at the arms extending from those hands.

Fabric--

"Medical emergency! Dr. McCoy to the

bridge. The captain is down!"

"Graphic visual, Mr. Chekov."

Spock's voice. "Engineering, report!"

"Scott here. There's a pocket of

gravitons caught in the flow of that cloud, sir.

It's taking every pellet of IPS to hold our

position and not be drawn deeper inside.

Reaction exhaust is pushing tolerance, thermal

stresses are above critical per unit, and

field polarity is unstable. I'll have numbers

for you in two minutes."

"Valve off a portion of our reactants if

you can't stabilize them."

"It'll cost us thrust, Mr. Spock."

"We'll have to manage."

"Right away, sir. Scott out."

"Shields up, fifty percent."

"Shields, fifty percent, sir."

That was Chekov, and Spock was running things.

Kirk could see the lean blue and black form above

him, floating against the lights. Spock's voice

sounded shaky.

No, not shaky. Tentative ... forced. There

was a difference. As though Spock was fighting for

stability. Was he hurt too?

"No, I'm not down," Kirk choked. His

chest curved as he tried to force himself to a sitting

position using just his diaphragm muscles.

Slamming aside the hands that held him down,

he rolled to his knees, fighting against the

centrifugal forces pulling him toward the port

deck. He fixed his eyes on Chekov, clinging

to the science subsystems monitor, hammering

controls to bring automatic compensators back

on line, which at the moment weren't operating

automatically enough, and Uhura was crawling

to help him. All around, others struggled back

to their posts. The yellow alert Klaxon howled in

his ears and told him they were stabilizing, or the

ship would've automatically gone to red alert.

Well, it wasn't much, but it was something. With his

mind he clung to that flashing yellow gash on the

wall and used it to drag himself to his feet.

"But the doctor's coming, sir--"

Kirk shoved Sulu off. "It's just my head,

Lieutenant."

"But sir!"

"I'll think with my ears if necessary. Get your

hands off me."

"Aye, so--"

"Condition, Mr. Spock. What hit us?"

Spock stepped across the lower deck, reached for

him, and helped him get to his feet.

"A gravity well," the Vulcan said.

Kirk frowned. "Which is?"

"We produce gravity without mass

by artificial high speed spinning of

gravitons," Spock told him. "However, such

conditions can be created in nature if enough

free-floating gravitons are caught in a

spinning phenomenon. This residual cloud is still

spinning with momentum from its original collision and

has collected a large number of gravitons

over the millions of years. They spool down

into a drain, are rejected at the bottom, and

pulled back in. Gravitons, combined with the

energy of the spin, are creating a gravity well.

Like the energy of warm water creating a typhoon,

this well is self-perpetuating as long as it has

the energy to spin."

"Are you telling me we're caught in the

remains of a collision that happened six million

years ago?"

"Yes. Residual momentum." Spock

pointed to the small visual readout on Sulu's

console. It showed a serrated blue tornado of

corrugated space--the computer's enhanced idea

of what it was reading out there. "The current is

funnel-shaped and rifled, creating a washboard

effect, which is responsible for the turbulence

we're experiencing. We're caught in the

spooling action, near the top."

Kirk squinted at the picture until his

eyes hurt. "If the gravitons are being

drawn down and spat out the bottom, can we go

down and get spat out too?"

Spock glanced at him. "Not without being

crushed. The power down there is enormous."

"How big is it, Spock?"

Spock pushed the captain to his command chair so

he could lean on it, then crossed to Sulu's

console and tapped into the science readouts. He

fell suddenly silent.

Kirk clamped his lips. He knew what

Spock was doing--he'd have to give him the time to do

it. By measuring areas of stress on the

ship's primary hull, the computer could project

upon that and come up with a figure. That figure would

show them the size of the trap they were caught in.

It could be a light-year across and ten thick in a

cloud this size. Like a tree, growth depended upon

a thousand conditions in the galactic garden.

Briefly subjugated by his pounding head,

Kirk resisted the urge to go over there and pound an

answer out of the computer. Spock would do that. It was

afraid of him.

Suddenly the ship heaved and the deck dropped out

from under them again. Kirk ended up bent in two over

the helm, with Spock and Sulu clinging to the console

at his sides.

He let his chest take his weight, reached down

with both hands, floundered until he found cloth,

clawed on, and started to haul.

At his sides, Sulu fumbled for his chair, and

Spock levered to his feet and at the same time

kept the captain from slipping to his knees again.

Sulu gulped, "Thank you, sir,"

probably just to get Kirk to let go of him.

So he did, and pushed himself off the helm and

back toward his chair, pulling Spock up with

him.

The turbolift hissed open and McCoy

appeared, white as frost and staggering. His eyes were

wide as he made his way down the tilted deck

between the stunned Rey guests to the rail.

"Jim, sit down!"

"I can't right now," Kirk snapped.

"Lieutenant, patch me through to engineering."

"Aye, sir--Mr. Scott, sir."

Kirk slid sideways into his seat and held

on. "Scotty, can't we get control over this?"

"This is the control, sir." Scott's

voice sounded strained and annoyed, but not worried.

A good sign.

"Suggestions?"

"It's a storm, sir. We've got to put

our nose to it and plow against the wind until we're

clear."

"Not sideways under these conditions?"

"ation recommended."

"Noted. Keep on top of it. We'll do it

your way."

"Aye, sir. Engine room out."

The intercom clicked almost imperceptibly

against the howls and bleeping of other emergency

systems. Kirk straightened, pressing

a shoulder against the back cushion of his chair, and

raised an arm to intercept McCoy's hand as the

doctor tried to bring a medical scanner toward

his head.

"I said not now, Doctor. Mr. Sulu, one

quarter impulse. Any sign of the Ransom

Castle? It could be caught in this thing too."

"Why can't we move sideways against this thing,

Jim?" McCoy asked.

"The ship's designed to move forward

primarily and aft secondarily," Kirk told

him, seeing the maneuvers in his aching head.

"Moving abeam is the highest level of stress

on both hull and engines."

"Captain," Uhura called, calmly but

abruptly, "receiveg a signal ..." She

paused to adjust her instruments and listen. A

second ago she had been sure of something, and now

she wasn't.

Kirk turned to her and did the thing he hated

most. He waited. Giving orders instantly

relegated him to an observer when he really

wanted to do something with his hands. He should take up

knitting. He could give orders and knit.

Finally impatience got the best of him.

"Lieutenant, do you have a report?" he urged.

"Is it the Castle?"

"One moment, please, sir."

Kirk made an ugly sound in the bottom of

his throat and twisted around to McCoy, who was

hanging on to the back of the command chair and forcing it

against its tendency to swivel with the turbulence.

"All right, Doctor, hurry it up."

"You should report to sickbay, but I know I'm

barking up a tree with that one."

"Have you got a prognosis or not?"

"Yes. You hit your head on the rail.

Hold still for three seconds."

"You've got two."

"Jim," McCoy began, then he paused.

He glanced behind them at Tom and Royenne, but the

Rey guests were busy trying to stay on their

feet. As he pressed a medicated pad to the

bruise on the back of the captain's head, he

leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. "There's

something about these Rey people that I can't put my finger

on. They read out as essentially humanoid,

along the same lines of sensible evolution as you

or I, or any mammal. Most things the same,

a few things different, eyes, noses,

mouths--my instruments don't tell me anything,

but all my medical instincts tell me there's

something."

Kirk jerked forward and snarled, "There's something

on that pad is where there's something. What is that?"

"It's medicated."

"It hurts. Back it off."

McCoy scowled with grim disapproval.

"You're a bad boy, Captain."

"Sir," Uhura called, "receiveg contact with the

Light-ship Hiawatha, sir. Apparently she

was placed here to mark this well of turbulence."

"Little late."

"Aye, sir."

"Mark the contact, Lieutenant." Kirk

eyed the swarming blue mess on the forward screen

and wanted to rub his eyes and wave a magic wand

so he could see through it. The churning blue-black

garble made him feel like a drunk on wood

alcohol.

As he felt McCoy's hand on his arm,

steadying him in the chair and keeping him down, he

focused his vigilance at the screen and the

undissipated energy that held the starship in

check. And he knew that thing out there wasn't his

real menace.

"It was him," he said.

The doctor leaned forward to see if there was

anything he could do.

Jim Kirk stared relentlessly at the screen.

"He's out there, Bones ... I can hear his

heart beating."

RED ALERT

Chapter Twelve

Red Talon

Hands could be eyes. Romar knew.

Through half his childhood he had been blind.

When science gave him back the eyes nature

had taken, he had vowed never to abandon the credit

of having once been blind. He kept his senses

sharp, paid attention to other than the obvious,

remembered to listen. The breathing of another person

could reveal that person's thoughts. One who was once

blind, if he didn't forget, could move in

places where others would only stumble.

Such places were many on a converted Klingon star

cruiser. Many hidden and dark places.

Here, in the thorny electrical bowels of a

captured alien vessel from the wars of another

lifetime, Romar closed his eyes and followed his

hands and his ears. His finely tuned hearing could

perceive tiny crackles, faults in the power

flows. Harmless faults, but as good as a map for

such as he, the crackles led him through the innards of

Red Talon.

When he got to an appropriate place, a

cross section of electronics, he moved his

legs up underneath him and sat down in the cramped

space with his head hunched down and the back of his

neck scraping the top of the crawlway. It

wasn't even meant to be a crawlway--t's how

small it was.

Power flow valves. Very simple, basic,

no secret technology. All over the ship.

He felt them under his palms. Blood in a

body. Like any blood, it could be made to clot.

The clot would cause backups, until the body

cried out in agony and exploded.

If Valdus was going against the Empire, there

would have to be that explosion. A fairly simple

idea, not particularly clever.

But it was all Romar could think to do.

The first thing he could do would be to kill Valdus,

and he would do that if Valdus had somehow lost his

mind, but Romar knew such an act wouldn't be

easy and probably couldn't be done honorably.

He would rather blow up the ship.

He sat in the cramped huddle until his

legs were numb and his feet tingling.

When he was finished, he was ready

to incinerate the Red Talon. He felt a

twinge of sorrow, but none of regret. He was the

ship's subcommander. If the commander was mad, it

befell the subcommander to destroy him or destroy

the ship, or both, in order to protect the

Empire.

With a muttered explanation to the walls, he

began his long crawl back through the blackness,

listening to the unremitting crackles fade behind

him.

If we live, he thought, I shall have

someone open the bulkhead and effect repairs on

the crackles. If Valdus fails to tell me

the truth ...

A different ending to the venture.

He broke through the slice he'd taken out of the

wall and into the lighted corridor and held a hand

over his eyes until they became adjusted. Still

sensitive, all these years later. These

corridors always hurt a little. Had he gotten

himself promoted time after time in order to serve on the

dim and quiet bridge? Perh.

No one would notice the gash in the wall.

Red Talon had many gashes in her old

hull, inside and out. When the smoke from the cutting

torch was drawn out by the ventilation system and the

wall cooled, this would be just another gash.

He dusted his jacket free of lingering dirt from

inside the walls, ignored a passing crewman

who took care to glance only shortly at him,

then strode down the corridor.

The ship was large and imposing, yes, but from the

inside there seemed to be too much space. Romar

preferred the tight quarters of smaller, quicker

vessels. Larger ships made larger targets.

Usually larger problems.

He went directly to the transporter area,

through the door opening without breaking stride--

luckily the door panel slid open just right for

him to make such an entrance--and ended up standing between

the two guards who had been posted inside the

door.

On the edge of the transporter platform,

Valdus sat with his knees up and his shoulders

slumped, staring in mute contemplation at the Rey

girl they had captured. She lay now on the

deck between the control console and the platform, still

insensible from disruptor sting.

Romar chewed on his lip. He had hoped things

would have improved, changed.

He accepted that, reviewed in his mind his own

movements in the veins of the ship, and went to sit

down on the edge of the platform beside his commander.

The two of them sat there for a pitifully long

time.

Silence ate at them.

Valdus never looked at anything but the girl.

"Send the guards out," he said finally.

Blinking, Romar glanced at him, then turned

to the guards and called, "Wait in the

corridor."

"Yes, Subcommander," the senior of them said,

and they both went outside.

Now there was silence and loneliness, too. Romar

looked absurdly at the starch white door

panel and suddenly missed even the company of low

level guards.

"Where were you?" Valdus asked him. "I needed

you on the bridge."

"I was occupied."

"We had an action while you were occupied. I

ordered an assault upon the merchant vessel, but

as we moved, a Starfleet ship appeared

suddenly. I was forced to abandon the merchant conquest

and throw tractor beams on the starship to yank them

off course and into the cloud. Now we linger in the

periphery of the storm."

"They didn't see us?"

"No," Valdus said, "but he feels us."

Wariness nearly approaching superstition showed in his

face. "Let nature have them. We will slip out

of the cloud at another point, pretend to continue the

race, and pursue my target."

Romar squeezed his eyes shut. They ached

now. "Commander, why do you want that ship? You have this

... person ... you have looked at her, and now you

want the ship she was on?"

"I wanted to look at a Rey," Valdus

said, "to hear my memory speak more loudly, to see

if it lied. But it doesn't lie. Now that I

see her, I remember everything."

Nauseated, Romar hunched forward until his

chin almost touched his knees, and moaned, "And now you

tell me we must conquer a merchant ship ..."

"You know, Romar," Valdus said quietly,

gazing at the girl on the deck, "expansionism

is part of our evolution. Not only socially, but

physically, too ... it keeps us strong. If

someone were to conquer us, we'd consider it perfectly

normal. We know that eventually one

race will dominate the galaxy. It's our duty

to be sure it is our race that dominates.

There's nothing wrong with conquest. It's been

normal for eons ... until the Federation came

along to act as a stopgap against us. They've

taken away our ability to expand. Therefore, they

prevent us from evolving. They protect weak

races who would otherwise be absorbed by a larger

power."

He paused and changed the position of his legs,

taking the time to think. Without blinking he looked at

the unconscious Rey girl.

"By protecting weaker races," he mused, "the

Federation is diluting their own strength and

guaranteeing that they themselves will eventually be conquered.

To put more and more people on the cart, with fewer and fewer

drawing the cart ... a civilization puts the

blade to its own throat this way."

He kept staring at the girl, at her silvery

hair and large closed eyes, at her simple

shirt and wrap skirt.

Romar stared at the girl, too.

"I've put a bomb on the ship," he said.

Valdus looked for a moment as though he'd been

struck in the chest, then actually smiled and looked

disapprovingly at his subcommander.

"You have no faith in me," he said.

"I have tremendous faith in you," Romar

admitted. "But presently I am confused. When

I'm confused, I pick one thing to do and I do

it."

They sat together in a longer silence, not looking

at each other, but only surveying their captive.

"I would hate you for this," Valdus said finally,

"if I did not understand."

Pricked by the idea of having to ask another

question, Romar gritted his teeth to do it. "What do

you understand?"

"That she is doing something to us."

Romar wiped his brow and felt suddenly hot.

"She," he said, "is unconscious, Commander."

"But she is doing something. Can't you feel it?"

"I don't feel anything from her, Commander."

"You're hot, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am warm, but I've been working."

"Planting your bomb."

"Yes."

With a subdued nod, Valdus drew a long

breath, as though searching for the right ^ws.

"You see the movement in her legs and

arms. Her body knows it has been stunned.

She's doing something to us. Making us warm and

uneasy."

"Commander ..."

"Look at her. Look, Romar." He

clasped Romar's elbow and squeezed it until

the other man winced and did as he said. "Her

body moves. Her face is disturbed. That

tension is coming to us. Through the air, to us!"

Romar shook the hand away and stood up.

"Yes, I am fatigued, of course, and this is

what I feel."

"Because you have been stunned," Valdus insisted.

Romar pointed at the Rey girl as she lay

twitching on the deck and irritably said, "She

has been stunned!"

"And she is giving it to you. If you strike

me--" Valdus held up a warning finger even as

Romar pulled back to smash his own knuckles

into Valdus's face. "I will have to restrain you.

Or kill you. So lower that hand."

Breathing heavily for some reason, Romar

willed himself to stop, his hand still drawn back,

ready to strike. Knotting his fingers, he glared

down at his commander and held still to hear what

Valdus would say at such a moment.

"And I have spent my life practicing for this

moment," Valdus said. "To resist this moment. I

will stay sane one minute longer than you will, my

friend, and the last gesture will be mine. So sit

down."

"I can't sit down," Romar choked. He

clutched one wrist with the other hand as though to hold his

limbs in place. "I'm distressed."

"The ghastliness of what I know," Valdus

told him, "distresses me too."

Romar paced away.

Being near to his commander was confusing. His

purpose had seemed so clear earlier. Now, as

he looked at Valdus, at those eyes he had

read so often, the steadiness he had served for years,

he couldn't think.

"I can trigger the explosion from any console on

the ship," he said.

Valdus looked up at him. "Why didn't

you arrange a hand remote? That's what I

would've done."

Romar sank on a shoulder against the bulkhead.

He stared at his commander until his eyes ached.

"After all," Valdus commented, "I

could knock you down." He leaned back a little,

shifted his feet again in their heavy boots, and added

casually, "I'll help you do one. Then I'll

have to be very sure of myself. Is it a chain reaction

trigger?"

"Stop! Stop talking."

Romar paced the transporter area twice,

three times, four, trying to come up with an

explanation. Something about the Rey girl. Something

about the Rey people. Something from the deep past in

Valdus's life, something Valdus was very sure

about, enough that he didn't even raise his voice when

he talked about this fundamental, irreversible

threat.

Whatever it was.

Valdus just let him pace.

Suddenly Romar made his decision and turned,

pointing at the Rey girl on the floor.

"Wake her up."

Valdus came alive and rose to his feet.

"No! I'm not--ready!"

"Ready for what? What happens when she

awakens?" Letting his question ring, Romar moved to the

transporter control panel and fingered the

communications grid. "Medical section!"

"No!"

Valdus snatched him by the arm, but Romar was

young and could stand the pressure of his Commander's

grip. He let his arm ache and shouted

into Valdus's face.

"Why not! Awaken her and face her! Are you a

coward?"

Pushing away with both hands, Valdus suddenly

went stiff as a log and backed off the length of the

girl on the deck.

His brows lowered and drew tight. His eyes were

heavy--laden with undefined torment. His chest

contracted as his respiration grew shallow and he

battled his own apprehension.

He stared at Romar, his lower lip pressed

upward and breath coming in shots.

Romar forced himself to be silent as his commander

struggled with past and present and some undcld

ugliness that could mysteriously endanger the

Empire.

An otherwise calm leader turned before

Romar's eyes into a gargoyle, an image of

disfigurement and gracelessness. Valdus's

battle with himself was a sight to behold. After a

few seconds, Romar didn't have any

more trouble remaining quiet for he himself had said

something to cause this volcano to shudder. And he

wasn't even sure what that something had been.

When Romar thought his back would break from the

tension, Valdus suddenly drew a single sharp

breath.

"All right," he choked. "Awaken her."

Chapter Thirteen

Enterprise

"Go to red alert. Emergency status, all

decks. Excessive turbulence."

James Kirk's voice was all steel and

firm resolve as it echoed through his ship. It

sounded a lot steadier than his stomach.

Luckily, his stomach was private and he

didn't have to tell anybody about it if he

didn't want to. He'd rather face a dozen

Romulan ships than that raw force of nature

swirling on the viewscreen. Enemies could be

outsmarted, outgunned.

Everyone would be awake and working now, most of the

positions double-manned, crew teaming up.

On the bridge, the Klaxon was turned off so

the bridge officers could work without shouting. Kirk

was sure he heard the red alert horns throbbing

below him, even though the designers insisted the

starship's bulkheads were soundproof.

The ship bucked and dropped again. Half his

mind went to Spock, the other half to Scott in

the engineering section.

He resisted an urge to smack the comm unit.

Calling down there wouldn't do any good. Scott

would be distracted from his work, and all he'd be able

to report was that he was doing his best.

The ship slipped sideways and threw

everybody to port. Kirk lost his grip on his

command chair and ended up bent forward over the rail.

Like a treadle the bridge heaved and dropped

several times before he could even look up. Knowing the

crew would be watching him, glancing at him to see

how hurt they should be, he pressed both palms

against the rail and shoved himself up against the

pressure and back into his chair.

Pressing an aching shoulder against the chair for

balance as the deck dropped another ten degrees

on one side, Kirk barked, "Forward thrust

one-third sublight."

Standing--not sitting--at the helm with his feet

spread apart and his body hunched over his console,

Sulu nodded. "Forward thrust, sir. One-third

sublight."

"Keep fighting it, gentlemen," Kirk

encouraged them. "Give engineering a chance to get

its bearings."

He eyed Spock, who was working hard at the

computer controls, getting hyperaccurate

measurements of the well and its pulse spikes

to see if they couldn't find a pattern to push

against.

Working was an added complication to just hanging on.

One hand for yourself and one for the ship. Old adages

came back to life at these times, and screamed for

attention.

The artificial gravity system whined as the

ship pivoted against it, a gyroscope forced

to turn its axis in another direction. If

space had an "up", the ship was turning upward,

and twisting to one side, being dragged down into the

churning mouth of the gravity well. The crew was being

heaved like bugs on a boomerang.

"One step at a time, gentlemen," he warned,

keeping his voice a link between his mind and his

bridge crew. "Handle each stress as it

presents itself. Spock--"

"Vector force at right angles, sir," the

first officer anticipated. "Attempting

to compensate."

"Ship's power? Can we crank out of it?"

"Possibly."

"Lieutenant Uhura, try to release a

recorder marker. If it has high enough thrust, it

may shoot free of the well and make way into the

race lanes. Specify location of this anomaly

and that any markers stationed here have drifted and are no

longer viable for safety."

"Aye, sir, recording--"

Kirk wanted to put his hands on something, steer

something, do something--

Then Uhura's voice broke into his thoughts.

"Contact, Captain--.Ransom Castle."

"Put her on."

"This is Nancy. What are you doing inside

there? Did you follow us through?"

Her voice was crackling, distorted.

Kirk straightened in his chair. Too late

he realized he had just failed to read her tone,

her inflections, measure the ^ws she had

chosen to use--^the measurements were trained into him,

but he hadn't done it. Maybe McCoy was right

and he needed treatment.

"No, we didn't follow you. We were sucked

in. Some kind of gravitational spin force. You

must have just missed it. Are you clear of the cloud?"

"I told you I'd get through, didn't

I?"

"Have you seen the Romulan vessel? We've

lost contact with them and believe they might be in the

cloud."

"allyeah, they were going to pirate my ship and

take my hold full of nothing. Or maybe

it's my ship they want, the whole forty-year-old

patched-up bundle of her."

Kirk glanced at McCoy, just to make sure

he wasn't crazy and she really was galled at

having to talk to him.

The doctor could offer only a one-shouldered

shrug as he clung to the command chair.

"I'll take that as a no," Kirk said.

Though he too was hanging on to the chair to keep

from slipping down the bucking deck, he almost

smiled. Damned if she hadn't gotten her ship

in and out of that cloud after all. She'd been right about

her crew and her vessel.

Jim Kirk had heard all the superlatives

applied to himself, wonderful ^ws he had inherited

from the Enterprise captains who came before him,

whom he didn't dare let down. And his own

reputation--the most rash, the bravest, the most

confident, the most brazen, the one who had gone

farther than anyone else and somehow come back.

While those ^ws were compliments and epithets all

rolled into a package any wild dog would be

proud of, he found himself bolstered by finding out that he

wasn't the only one of a breed--even if he

found that out from Nancy Ransom.

Nobody with any sense really wanted to be the

only one.

"Do you want help getting out?"

"Negative," Kirk quickly told her.

"Under no circumstances approach us. Continue

on the racecourse and notify one of the other

Starfleet entrants to remain alert on the

Starfleet channel. If we need assistance,

we'll broadcast an SOS. Enterprise

out."

"Uh ... wait a minute."

His body aching, Kirk shifted in his

seat, felt the weight of McCoy leaning against the

chair back to keep from falling, and watched his

crew try to keep the bucking ship from twisting apart

inside the cloud. The gravitational currents had

a grip on the primary hull, the secondary

hull, and both nacelles and their struts, all

at different tolerances. This was the kind of thing that

could rip a ship apart like a piece of paper.

They had to use the ship's deflectors and

internal artificial gravity to keep those

tolerances near equal, or they were scrap

metal.

All he needed was more of Nancy Ransom.

"Go ahead," he said, and forced himself not to slap

a hurry up on the bottom of that.

It was five seconds before Nancy

responded.

"We had kind of a rough ride."

Kirk leaned forward. "You need assistance?"

"ationo ... I'm just constrained by Federation

Interstellar Maritime Collision Regulations,

according to Rule 38, paragraph 2, to report the

following to the nearest Starfleet vessel of

Scout Class or above. We've had one death

aboard, apparently accidental. Okay, I've

done it. Ransom out."

"Wait a minute!" McCoy shouted.

"Ransom!" Kirk pushed out of his chair.

"State the nature of your casualty."

"It was an accident. Turbulence, I

guess. I've reported it. That's all I have

to d."

"Read the rest of the order, Captain," Kirk

insisted. "I have requirements here too. I'm

obligated to conduct a Level Three

investigation."

"I don't want you here."

"I'll go," McCoy interrupted.

"Maybe you don't," Kirk said. "But at

least let me send a team to investigate."

Behind him, McCoy said, "I should go."

"Keep your details to yourself, Kirk. I

don't need any Starfleet interference on board

my ship, least of all be beholdin' to y."

The doctor pulled himself along the arm of the command

chair. "I want to go."

Kirk stepped forward between Sulu and the ensign

at navigation.

"Nancy, listen to me. It doesn't matter

what you think of me. I admit you were

right. There was something to be gained by going through the

cloud. And you knew your ship, your crew, and you

made it through. That's the sign of a good captain.

A little faith, a little knowledge, a little risk. But there's

more for a good captain to do." He paused, and wished

he could do the listening for her. "You owe this to the

crewman you lost."

McCoy sidled up beside him. "I think I

ought to go."

Not five seconds went by before the unexpected,

unlikely, and certainly unpredictable answer

bunched through the channel, so sharply that it sounded like

just another electrical crackle.

"All right."

* * *

"Stand by, Castle."

The situation went ticklish as Uhura tapped

off the vocal connections and held the channel

open. Kirk didn't look around. He knew

she'd done it.

"What just happened?" he murmured. He

gazed into the forward screen's vision of the

purple-blue cloud, with its electrical

charges cricketing everywhere, and at the grave,

ghostly figure of Ransom Castle turning

on the screen's sensor periphery. If not for the

form of running lights outlining the ship, he would

never have even noticed that she was out there.

"Did Nancy Ransom just agree

to Starfleet intervention? Without an argument?"

"There's been a death on her ship," McCoy

simply said. "I know how you would be feeling."

Kirk turned to him. "And when's the last time

I heard you begging to have your atoms scrambled?"

"Now, don't hold that over my head."

"Then explain it."

McCoy paused, realizing his joke had

fizzled under the stress of the moment and the captain

wasn't in a mood for quips.

"Merchant ships don't carry medical

officers, and I don't want those people setting

broken legs with soup spoons."

But Kirk didn't turn away. "What

else?"

The doctor fidgeted, his ice blue eyes

moving with self-consciousness. "Well ... you have a

feeling there's more going on than a race," he

said, "and I trust your impulses."

Kirk gazed at him a moment. "Mr.

Spock, stability of transporter under

these conditions?"

Spock turned from what he was doing to another

secondary console and tapped in.

"Transporter conduits read stable ... matter

stream transmission on line, buffer operating

... however, target scanners are fluctuating

nominally due to ionization within the cloud."

"Thank you. It'll have to wait, Bones."

"Jim--"

Kirk shook his hand off, and a jolt nearly

threw McCoy to the deck. "You're dismissed,

doctor. This isn't the time."

"Jim, how many times have you and Spock insisted

on beaming into dangerous situations to come to somebody

else's aid? Why would you deny me the chance to do that

when I'm the one who swore the oath to do it?"

"It isn't safe. You could materialize two

feet outside the Castle's hull."

Spock heard them and as he leaned on the

console, he twisted around enough to say,

"Unlikely, Captain, if we use the

Castle's transporter instead of ours, using

our transporter pads as homing points."

"That's right!" McCoy said. "Receiveg is a

lot easier for those popcorn machines than

sending. Scotty told me that."

Kirk glowered. "I'll have a ^w with him

later."

McCoy pushed off the command chair's back and

made his way past Tom and Royenne to the upper

deck. "I'll get my pack and be waiting in the

transporter room. As soon as that thing can be

aimed and fired, beam me over there so I can do my

job."

Red Talon

The mania seized him like poison advancing

through his system.

Romar's eyes hurt and his arms and legs

twitched. How had he lived so long among

dcvrs?

Insane mutineers--how had he survived here?

Every voice was threatening, every sound shrill, jarring.

He smelled the noxious stench of his own terror,

felt his brain shattering--the nightmare sensation of a

brittle body, as though a movement would crack

him in half, but failing to move would melt him.

He wanted to look away, but he could only

stare at the Rey girl, and she stared

back at him.

She was pressed against the wall of the

transporter chamber, a cave into which there was no more

retreat. She could only stare in her horror at

them.

Romar's hand trembled, tightened around the

hypodermic that had brought the girl back from her

stirring unconsciousness. He was standing alone in

front of her where a moment ago there had been two

interns from the medical team, but they had fled.

Madness ... they were all consumed by a mania and

he was the only one on the ship who hadn't been

caught in the web of treason. They were patently

psychotic! The entire crew, all this time! How

could he have been ignorant to it?

A clapper was ringing in his mind, maddening him, but

he fought it. How were they doing this?

Hadn't he planted a bomb? He should go

to it! He should ignite it--

A movement in his periphery snatched his

attention from the Rey girl--she was nothing, just a

blemish--and what he saw was his commander's jacket

flashing by, and he lunged.

Romar caught the hem of Valdus's sleeve

as Valdus dodged for the entranceway, but tripped.

As their bodies fell in a staggering heap at the

door, the panel slid open, and out in the

corridor crewmen were running frantically and at

least two others were coiled in a personal

battle on the corridor deck.

Escaping!

Romar vowed not to let them go.

"No! Cowardffwas He clawed at the leg of the

man whose orders he once cherished and defended.

"Animal!"

Valdus didn't say anything, but fought him with

impunity, boxing his face until Romar was

beaten back.

Dizzy, his face bruised, his head spinning,

Romar found himself on his knees, staring at the

floor. A puddle of lime blood spread there

--his nose was bleeding.

He pressed a sleeve to it, snorted so

violently that he almost passed out, and staggered

to his feet.

With a passing glance at the Rey girl, hiding

in the transporter chamber racked with terror, he

stumbled toward the transporter console.

He could do it from here. He could incinerate the

ship and its poison with it. If he could

just find the key pattern ... foolish console!

Built an age ago, never brought up to date!

Traitors had been at work here--t was it!

"Treason, treason," he hissed, teeth

grinding as though he had a traitor by the jugular

between them.

The Rey girl whimpered, her brow drawn

tight, her cheeks pasty, legs throttling and

failing to keep up her meager weight. Her arms

were spread out at her sides against the back wall

of the transporter chamber. No where to run.

Romar almost had it. He knew the orders

to tap into the computer, how to make it go through the

ship's walls and find his trick and set it

afire. Almost there. Almost there--

--when the door panel flushed open and the buzz

of a disruptor filled the air.

A chrome orange beam shot into the room, and

it made a hungry sound.

Chapter Fourteen

Red Talon

The hands before him were clay white. He stared

down at the creased knuckles, the bleached

fingernails, the swollen veins like winter ivy.

Eyes were burning ...

Against every impulse he had been following, he

raised one of those hands and pressed the back of it

to his eyes.

He staggered back until the bulkhead stopped

him. His head began to clear slowly. Madness

peeled back in thin strips, one at a time.

In the haze of immediate memory, a buzzing flash

... the sizzling shape of the Rey girl, caught

in an instant of horror, a glowing mass that

expanded, then dissipated. Her expression somehow

lasted much longer than her death.

Perhaps it only seemed so ...

Romar sagged against the wall, one knee bent

almost to the floor. Waves of his own paranoia

flooded through him, each less than the one before, and the

pounding of his heart in his throat started to lessen enough

for him to notice.

He flattened a hand against the wall

to steady himself, and drew breath after breath.

Movement in the room ... he wasn't alone.

Valdus hovered nearby.

Too near--Romar wanted to strike out,

drive him away, pierce him through the eyes,

kill him.

But ... why?

Strike his commander? The idea retreated,

became more foreign, with every breath Romar drew.

Valdus approached slowly from the entranceway,

still holding his disruptor pistol upward as though

somehow the Rey witch would return and weave her

intangible web around them again, to strangle them again.

He reached out and took Romar's arm, and in the

residue of madness, Romar yanked away from

him.

The air was still crackling. They still felt on their

skin the remnants of disruptor fire. Romar

stared at Valdus, battling within himself to decide

whether he should submit or strike out. For an

instant longer he truly didn't know what to do

or who was enemy and who friend.

Then Valdus sighed and lowered his weapon, but

made no more attempts to touch Romar or help

in any way. He seemed willing to wait.

"You resisted well," he said, "considering."

Feeling burned and short-winded, hollow-eyed

as he stared across the short space at Valdus,

Romar rolled against the wall until both

shoulders were pressed back against it and he could

straighten his legs.

When he found his breath--or some of it, he

gasped, "Why did you ... keep this secret

to yourself!"

Valdus let the echo fade, then quietly

answered, "Would you believe me had you not felt it

for yourself?"

Simple truth.

Romar's shudders of rage left him weak.

He didn't argue. He watched as his commander

looked away.

"Even I wasn't sure," Valdus

murmured, gazing at the empty transporter

cubicle. "I had to convince myself as much as you.

Memory is a trick, Romar. I couldn't

trust it. When I felt it again, the unsureness

of the years peeled away. All the doubts I have

harbored for decades suddenly cracked. I

wasn't imagining or remembering incorrectly."

He left Romar to his recovery and

paced toward the empty chamber where minutes ago

the great threat of his life had shriveled before his

weapon.

"I knew they could do something," he said.

"Emit a smell, cause a thought, put something

into our atmosphere ... something that made us go

mad. But I didn't know who they were or where they

were from. There was no planet nearby ... I thought

perhaps I was mistaken. Until the Federation found

them for us. As the galaxy unfolded and the Empire

was held in tighter and tighter check, I realized

what a weapon this could be against us if the Federation were

to discover it."

Stumbling, Romar caught himself on the

transporter control unit and pulled himself around

to the front of it. "I almost ... I almost ..."

"Yes," Valdus said. "You almost did ...

what I did."

They stood together side by side, both nearly

exhausted from this bizarre experience, each trying

to piece together the past and finding it most

unsatisfying.

"The attack upon the Scorah?" Romar

rasped. "All the legends--"

"Are half true." Holding a palm up at

the transporter chamber, Valdus said, "That

... was the attack. They came aboard, as

subtle as that girl. As their fear spread among

us, we saw each other as enemies and were killing

each other. Except for me. I turned and

ran."

Romar looked at him. How could a statement like

that be made so easily? He knew if he tried

to say such a thing, his tongue would freeze in his

mouth. Had Valdus lived with this so long?

"It has haunted me my whole life. I

spent my life trying to prove my worth

to myself," Valdus went on, "but in my soul I

was deathly afraid. I only survived ..."

This time his strength gave way. Shame flushed

his face and he lowered his eyes. His shoulders

sagged. He turned from the chamber and from Romar.

"I only survived because I was more afraid

than angry."

The room seemed unduly cold.

They were both shivering, but for different reasons.

Valdus sat down on the edge of the platform and

sighed.

"I couldn't return with the truth ... that we

all went insane and I destroyed the

ship and murdered my crewmates, my commanders.

Even if I had said it, who would have believed? So

I invented a tale. An attack of which I was the

only survivor. I shunned celebration. I

despised myself for not having the will to think my way

through what happened. Weakness ... I don't know,

Romar. This time, I killed the Rey instead of

my own crew. Experience, most likely. I have

taught myself to focus on the enemy ... determined

such a mistake would never come at my hand again."

"How can the humans deal with them?" Romar

coughed.

"I've pondered that. Two possibilities.

Either the humans have simply never been in a threat

situation with these fear-projectors yet or ..."

"Or this only affects those of our descent!

Commander--" Romar almost gagged on his own ^ws, but

forced them out. "A weapon against us!"

"Yes." Valdus said, staring at the floor

between his boots. "This event, this race will bring

commerce and colonization to these creatures. They will

never be contained again. They are just another weak

culture the Federation will have to protect, but also they

are a ruthless weapon against the Empire. This is

more dangerous to us than losing a war. These people's very

existence strips away control and turns our

civilization into a weapon against ourselves. Losing a

war only means occupation for a few generations

until the yoke of failure can be thrown off. But

this--^the people can turn back our evolution a

million years. Turn us into elemental

survival instincts with arms and legs. We must not

have that, Romar ... we can't have it."

Horrified, his face still white with realization,

Romar also sank to the platform and stared.

Seconds ticked by. Truths compounded until

the two officers felt the weight of all their kind

upon their shoulders.

Finally, when Romar thought his throat had opened

and perhaps he could find a breath, could speak without a

creak in his voice, he parted his lips and pushed out

a question.

"What is your plan?" he asked.

Ransom Castle

"A dozen injuries of various severity, the

worst being a dislocated knee and two concussions,

and I've made a preliminary postmortem on

your cook, Captain Ransom."

"Keep your voice down, will you? And don't

call me Captain Ransom. My crew acts

like farty schoolboys if they hear that too often."

"Oh--sorry. The incident seems to be as you

reported. A tragic accident when the old

auxiliary oven came off its anchors. Fatal

cranial implosion. You might be comforted to know

... it was quick."

Leonard McCoy was used to Jim Kirk's

face, a passionate verdict of anything that was

happening at a given moment, good, bad, or

otherwise. Nancy Ransom was stoic as a

Vulcan, but in a constantly off-putting manner.

It made him want to check her blood

pressure just to see if it could possibly be as

low as Spock's.

"I'm still confused by the cook's body position

when the oven came down," he finished. "Judging

by the injuries, it seems she must have been leaning

backward over the top of the stove. Is there any

reason she would be in a position like that?"

"Probably fixing something."

"Under the auxiliary oven?"

"Look, she could'a been tripped and been

knocked under there by the turbulence. You can't

figure that out?"

"It's my job to ask, Captain," McCoy

said saucily, forcing himself to keep the peace, even

if that meant getting technical. "There's one

other thing I can't account for, however," he plowed

on. "I've checked your personnel rosters and

everybody is accounted for, except one person.

Your guest from the planet of Gullrey.

Turrice Roon. She's nowhere to be found."

From the bottom of the access wiring trunks, a

big man with a mustache popped up- -the first mate,

if memory served--his wide face suddenly

mottled with concern, distorted by trails of

electrical smoke from the damaged underworks. The

whole bridge smelled like burned wiring and

plastic.

"You mean Turry?" he asked.

McCoy spun around. "Do you know where she

is?"

The big man's eyes narrowed. "I left her

in the galley. You telling me you can't find her?"

"The galley," McCoy said, and turned

back to Nancy Ransom. "The site of the only

fatality on board. In my book that's cause

for suspicion, Captain."

Nancy shook her head and winced.

"Suspicion of just what?"

Feeling his skin prickle, McCoy leaned

forward. "There are Romulans in the sector. As

chief surgeon aboard the nearest Starfleet

vessel, I have an official duty to suspect

foul play. It's in the rules, and it's in my

nerves right now, and I'm not going to ignore either of

those things."

"What do you take me for?" she said bluntly.

"You're just scared of answering to that captain of

yours, and you know what he'll do to you if you don't

bring him back some fancy-pants report of

trouble on my ship. Jim Kirk watched me

get drummed out of Starfleet ten years ago, but

he can't instruct me what to do on my own ship,

and neither can any of his stooges. My crew

expects to run a race. That's what we're

going to do, Romulans or no Romulans. I

don't care about those stick-eared bastards."

"But they may have kidnapped a member of your

ship!"

"Kidnapped?" Nancy blurted. "Hell!

That henhearted insect's just holed up under a

mattress or something. You're making up stories

in your head."

McCoy felt a rasp of frustration in his

throat as he raised his voice, widened his

eyes, and tapped a forefinger on the pilot station.

"The Romulan ship was last seen in this immediate

area, and now it's gone and so is a member of this

ship's complement. I'm not doing a very good job if

I don't suspect a connection. I'm going

to conduct a full investigation down there. I want

one officer to help me."

"I'll do it!" the mate said, pushing to his

feet.

"You stay where you are, Frareyffwas Nancy

snapped. Her shoulders came up so tightly that

they almost covered her ears. "Doctor, don't

make me sorrier than I already am that I let

you come over here."

Straightening his shoulders under the flashing

damage-control lights, McCoy hammered his

^ws at her, matching her ill humor with his own.

"Captain, I don't know what your story

is, but apparently you had to blame somebody other

than yourself for it. One innocent person is dead and

another is unaccounted for. I'm beginning to see why

Starfleet didn't want you, and in my

estimation it didn't have a damned thing to do with

James Kirk. Now, do the right thing and declare that

galley off-limits. Y--let's go. I'm

worried our "accident"' just turned into a

murder."

McCoy envied these small private ships,

like the Ransom with their non-processed food that

didn't come out of a replicator. Sometimes, on

the Enterprise, he felt like he was eating

diodes instead of fried chicken.

The galley on a ship like this held true

magic. The poets might think it was the masts or

the sails, the engines or the shape of a hull, but

the crew knew differently.

The galley was the place where they could walk

in, get warm, and catch a whiff of home.

And "home" could be plenty of places in these

times. Maybe there was only chicken stew cooking,

but it might be stewed with potatoes grown on a

planet from the Aldebaran system, or laced with

illegally traded spices washed through the black

market from Orion. Those illegal chickens ...

they tasted best somehow.

Didn't matter. Once the cook cooked it,

it was legal.

McCoy only cared about allergic reactions.

As long as most of the Enterprise's crew was

human, there weren't too many problems.

Eventually there'd be more and more aliens threaded through

Starfleet. Then he'd have his hands full.

On the Castle, the crew was all human.

Nancy Ransom was too much of a stuck pig to have

it any other way.

That made McCoy's job easier today.

This time, as Mike Frarey locked the galley

hatch after them, McCoy wasn't doing a

medical inspection or looking for injuries. He

was looking for clues. He had locked everybody

else out, all the people they'd met in the narrow

corridors on the way down here, all nervous and

sag-eyed with grief. No matter how they'd

plied him with questions, he couldn't tell them their

surrogate mother was anything but dead. And they had

their own job to do--searching the ship for the Rey girl

named Turrice, who, so far, hadn't been

accounted for.

"That captain of yours is a brat," he said as

he glanced around the mess area with a different

purpose than when he'd been here before.

"Nancy?" Frarey said. "Everybody's got

a style, is all. That's hers."

"Why do you people stay with her?"

Frarey faced him, mantled by the dark-painted

door. "Steady job, Doc. Nancy's the

dues. She's tough, but she'll get every order and

there's never been a lean season for any of us. And

all of us came here 'cuz we know what lean is

like."

McCoy swaggered and said, "Son, you haven't

seen lean since your mama fed you bacon."

The big man allowed himself a chuckle. "Got

that right." Then he sadly commented, "We're

pretty sure it was an accident, Doc, what

happened to Louise."

McCoy screwed a glare at him. "What

makes you sure?"

His brow furrowed, Frarey shrugged, opened his

mouth, closed it, then shrugged again.

"That's what I thought," McCoy said.

"Don't touch anything unless I tell you.

Don't walk unless I tell you. Try not

to breathe."

"I'll do that, sir."

Then the doctor started asking himself questions. He

moved into the cooking area, using as few steps as

possible.

"I find it much too coincidental," he said,

"that the woman ended up wrenched over on her back

on top of a stove at the same instant the

auxiliary stove came dancing down from its

hooks." He leaned downward and peered up at the

blackened oven housing, then straightened, bent

sideways, and peered between the oven housing and the

wall.

"Scraped," he barked. "Not broken.

Somebody put weight on this. A lot of it. You

can see the raw metal where the soot couldn't get

to ... and here the metal anchors are twisted, not

just broken. The oven's weight alone couldn't do

that. Somebody came in here and brought this oven down

on that lady while somebody else held her over

the stove top."

In the mess area, Mike Frarey's wide

face crumpled. "Jesus, poor Louise

..."

McCoy came to the doorway. "Pretty

gruesome. And damn heartless."

Frarey nodded, sniffed, tried to get over it,

then said, "You sound like you belong on this

ship instead of that fancy job. I can barely hear

it."

"What you barely hear," McCoy said, "is

Atlanta, Georgia."

"Thought so."

"Let's see what's in here, now that I know

what to look for."

Frarey got a confused expression on his

face and asked, "Now that you know what to look for?

I don't know what you mean."

"You don't have to. Where's my medical

pack?"

"Right here you go."

"Thanks. Let's set the tricorder for

atmospheric analysis."

"Atmosphere? The air's the same all over

the ship."

"Let's see if it is."

The tricorder worked silently in his hand, no

vibrations, no hints of the great auxiliary computer

power in its small casing, and he watched the tiny

screen.

"Mmm," he grunted. "Not much there. Not

conclusive, anyway. Could be some traces of

unlikely gases, but I can't hand traces that

small to the captain. My captain, I mean.

All right, we'll try something else. You go over

to that bulkhead and break open the vent. Pull out the

filter and bring it to me."

"Well ... okay, sir."

With Frarey occupied, McCoy put his own

creaky knees on the floor and his nose almost that

low. He lay the tricorder down and used his hands

as brooms to gather up a tiny pile of dust.

There wasn't much. He hoped the floor hadn't

been swept since the incident happened. Sometimes

cleanliness could be an annoyance.

This from a surgeon? He scolded himself and

muttered under his breath, then stopped because he was

huff+ his little dust pile away.

He scooped a square centimeter of it into the

top of his hand-size mass analyzer and was

suddenly glad he'd brought it along. The little

machine blipped anxiously, and he decided it was

confused because he'd given it something other than a

bone fragment, but after a few moments it fed him

back a readout of the DNA.

"Got it!" he snapped.

"Pardon?"

Taking only two steps as he was

told, Frarey appeared beside him with the

drumhead-size air filter.

"Hair particles," McCoy said as he

allowed Frarey to hoist him back to his feet.

"No wonder mankind evolved into a biped. We

weren't meant for knee work."

"I got your filter here."

"Put it on the table."

They both leaned over the circle of meshed

dust, hair, and lord-knew-what else, and

McCoy turned his tricorder on it. He had

to readjust twice before it understood what he

wanted it to do.

"There it is," he uttered. "Right here. Look

at the screen. Hair particles, epidermal

flakes ... airborne aerosol of fatty

acids. Here's the DNA analysis, and here

... is the separation of DNA. Human ... and

Vulcanoid."

"Huh?" Frarey straightened up so sharply that

his spine cracked.

"Romulans, my lumberjack friend,"

McCoy said knottily. "That's "huh."'"

"There's never been a Romulan in here, not

ever!"

"There've been Romulans in here within the past

ten hours."

"Aw, Doc, that's nuts! How can you know that?

From some d ust and crud?"

"No, son, from what's caught in the dust and

crud, and what makes up the dust and crud.

Skin flakes, fatty acids in moisture,"

he finished, tapping his tricorder, "that is

nonhuman."

"Are you saying they came in here for some reason

and scratched themselves?"

"I'm saying they left some sweat behind.

Sweat, hair, skin, all living things do it just

by walking through the air. Air isn't a vacuum.

We're not walking through nothing. There's friction,

however diaphanous."

"But I thought those buggers didn't sweat."

"Everybody sweats. Just at different

levels. I'd call this conclusive. Somebody

beamed into this section, killed that poor woman, and

either killed the Rey visitor with a phaser or they

took her with them. One of the two women was the

target, and the other was the witness. I'm betting the

cook was the witness and got killed for it. The other

girl ... they wanted to have one of her

kind to look at for some reason." He ran a

finger along his lip and squinted at the table.

"Some reason."

"They won't keep her ... alive for long,

will they?"

"I doubt it."

Sore emotion twisted Mike Frarey's big

friendly face. He lowered his eyes and turned

away, still careful not to take a step.

Pausing, McCoy watched him and read the set

of the wide shoulders.

"Oh," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't

realize."

Frarey's throat knotted and he blinked.

He stuck his thumbs in his belt and tried to look

casual. "So'okay."

"No, it's not," McCoy said firmly.

"It's not okay at all. We've got to get a

message back to the Enterprise somehow. The

Romulans have turned this race into a blood

sport."

Chapter Fifteen

The Castle

"We have to send a message to the

Enterprise."

"I doubt you can."

Nancy Ransom sat on the cooler and

peeled a banana with more care than McCoy had

ever witnessed. She gazed at it, not at him, not

at their small main screen, but at her banana,

peeling and peeling, very slowly.

McCoy almost stopped to watch. A banana

could only last so long.

"Why can't you?" he asked. "Is there a

legitimate reason or is it just you?"

She made him wait until she was almost through

peeling.

"Since you're convinced it's just me, there's not

much I can say, is there?"

The doctor glanced to his side at Mike

Frarey, who thumbed his belt and fought a shrug.

"Captain," McCoy attempted, "I may

owe you an apology. That doesn't change the

fact that in my opinion a murder has been

committed and the perpetrators are still in the

race. If they've got what they wanted, why

are they staying here?"

"If they're staying in the race, what makes

you think your theory's not all wet?"

"I only have the facts I've gathered. I

admit there's margin for error, but we can't afford

to assume error. If the Romulans are

responsible for your missing guest, then they still think

they have something to do here."

"When we find 'em, you can dinghy over and ask

'em."

McCoy felt his eyes start to crawl out of his

head. He decided he'd better go ahead and

raise his voice before somebody called a team with a

butterfly net.

"I am answerable to the Enterprise," he

said, "and I'm compelled to relate this information.

I've already reported to you. It's now incumbent

upon you to make sure I fulfill the next

stratum of my duty. Don't make me quote

the paragraph, will you?"

Nancy broke off the top of her banana and

said, "Communication panel's right over there. Have

yourself a roundup."

As she savored the first piece of her treat,

McCoy stepped past Frarey, ignored the two

other people manning their posts, and bent over the

panels.

"Enterprise from Ransom Castle ...

Enterprise, this is McCoy. Come in."

He opened the reception grid more and more, and

kept trying.

"Enterprise, Enterprise, McCoy here

..."

Two minutes later, he glanced at Mike

Frarey, then turned to Nancy.

"It's broken."

She shook her head. "Nothing wrong with my

subspace. Some hotshot swamped the subspace

nets. Probably full-blasted their emitters.

Somebody's idea of a race trick."

"That shouldn't be allowed! It's dangerous!"

"Anything that gets you ahead is allowed. You were

sitting next to Mr. Epaulets at the

Captains' Meeting, weren't you? Just wish I'd

thought of it."

"Who would do that?"

She raised and lowered one billiard-ball

shoulder. "Helmut Appenfeller might do it,

maybe Ian Blackington. Could be

Pete Hall. He's around here someplace.

We'll come out of it in an hour or two."

"Then you'll have to turn around and go back to the

Enterprise."

She shot him a black-browed glare. "Like

hell! Even your captain told me to move on,

and I'm moving on."

"Can you contact any of the other Starfleet

vessels in the race? Great Lakes or

Hood or the other one?"

"Intrepid, and no I can't contact them any

better than I can send a message back. You

just tried to get through, didn't you?"

"Captain Ransom, aren't you affected at

all by the murder of your cook?"

From behind McCoy, Mike Frarey caught the

doctor's shoulder and drew him back from saying

anything else, but it was too late.

Nancy didn't look up anymore, but her

posture showed what must have been in her eyes. She

shifted away, then farther away, brought her

knees tight to her body, and stared at the deck.

McCoy slumped mentally, and even a little bit

physically.

"All right, I'm sorry," he said. "I'm

just afraid of what can happen if we don't act

right away. Whatever we think of each other, I

don't think either one of us wants the death count to go

up."

"Louise wouldn't want it, Nance," Frarey

said, almost too softly to be heard.

But Nancy did hear.

She drew a long breath, picked a piece of

banana fiber from her teeth, wiped her hand on

her shirt, and rubbed the back of her neck.

"If you can conjure a way to send a message

back to Captain Hog Wild and his Vulcan

sidekick," she said, "we'll transmit it."

Red Talon

"Our vessel is secure, Commander."

The bridge was too spacious for comfort. Romar

found himself still beating down shivers, still wishing for

privacy, wishing for a time of cloistered safety in

a defensible place.

Valdus met him near the weapons station.

"Report."

"Skirmishes were less violent as distance from the

transporter room increased. There must

be some range limit on this sorcery. Six

injuries, five minor. One guard is dead.

We were most fortunate."

"Fortunate that no one did what I once

did," Valdus elaborated for him.

Romar averted his gaze. "Yes. You foresaw

what would happen and destroyed the witch before she could

overwhelm us. You saved us, Commander."

"Don't stress yourself, Romar," Valdus

grumbled. "Damage?"

"Several blades in several walls, some

circuitry cut, currently being mended. The

crew is confused, somewhat shame-faced, but I have

neglected to explain to them."

"Better they remain confused. Their duty is

only to man their posts."

"In their inner minds," Romar said, "they

understand why we must do this. They are asking no questions.

They only look at each other. No one

speaks."

"All the better. You have isolated the target

vessel again?"

"Yes, they moved out of the cloud while we were

involved with the starship. We lost a prime

opportunity. Now we must follow them in the open

and hope for another chance."

"You see?" Valdus told him solemnly.

"It is that man."

Romar paused. "Their captain? But he

didn't see us."

"Yet his senses brought him to us. He forced me

to take action without even realizing what he was

doing. I have witnessed such instincts before ... but

never used so forcefully."

Valdus moved to the bulkhead, and he touched the

wall. His finger ran from the wall at his waist to the

wall at his cheek.

"You know, Romar," he went on, "I had this

ship refitted before we came here--"

"Yes," Romar said. "I know."

"These bulkhead frames, these wall forms ...

are specially ordered. You see the graininess of

them? They were created by my own scientists and

laborers. I had them built, and I replaced

the walls in six major sections with them."

A few hours ago, Romar would have taken this as

the signal of insanity in his commander. Walls?

What matter could walls possibly be?

But he had felt the effect of the Rey and he

no longer trusted anything, including his

own arbitrary judgment. After all, Valdus had

been right.

He remained silent. He didn't even ask

the obvious question. When Valdus was ready, he would

tell him the significance of the wall material.

He studied Valdus's face. So little age

showed, despite the decades of service. There were

some lines, if he looked closely as Valdus

blinked, swallowed, breathed, and there were circles

under the experienced eyes today. Perhaps they had always

been there, but Romar had never looked.

Fatigue? Regret? Commitment? Yes,

all this knitted into the years. Valdus wasn't

having any second thoughts. This was a man who had

slaughtered everyone around him once before and knew the

taste of mass murder for a purpose.

Romar moved to him, his own sense of purpose

boiling in his chest.

"Your order, Commander," he prodded.

"I want you to arm a boarding party," Valdus

said. "Provision them for siege. Bring all

weapons to bear. Angle gradually toward the

target vessel."

The commander's face released its surly edge.

Unlikely peace came into his eyes, as though

speaking orders that released his burden finally ...

finally.

"Overtake it," he said. "We will turn that

planet to glass."

Chapter Sixteen

"C aptain, I'm picking up a recorder

marker signal. Extreme range ... closing

slowly at warp one. I think I can pull the

message in through the cloud's interference."

"Do it, Lieutenant. It's somebody trying

to communicate through the washed-out subspace nets."

"One moment, sir ... message relaying.

It's Dr. McCoy, sir. I'll draw the

message in."

Jim Kirk, his bridge crew, and the two

Rey guests clinging to the back of the bridge had

to wait another ten seconds before Uhura could

pull the crackling, choked message through the

ionization they were caught in.

"Dr. McCoy on audio, recorded,

sir," she said finally.

They all hung on to the tilted deck and

listened.

"Enterprise from McCoy. In my

estimation, there has been a murder and a likely

kidnapping committed on Ransom Castle.

My complete report, along with tricorder

readings, follows this message. Spock can

confirm the tracings from the galley on his library

computer. I believe the ship's cook was killed

to prevent her from reporting the kidnapping of the

Rey host, whose name is Turrice Roon."

No one reacted overtly, but attention stirred

toward Tom and Royenne.

Kirk knew what it was like to lose one of his

crew, even a finger off the hand of one of his crew.

He saw that digging shock in the faces of the two

Rey men as the doctor's message went on.

"My evidence is circumstantial, of

course--it could be that somebody just rubbed up against a

Romulan before coming aboard this ship, except that this

woman was alive and accounted for only three hours

ago. I can only speculate that the Romulans

are conducting some sort of experimentation or

analysis on the Rey and are using this poor

girl as a guinea pig. It's crucial that you

handle those people before they head back to their home

space, or we may never know what happened

to her. I don't think she'll be kept alive for

very long. McCoy, medical pro-tem,

Ransom Castle, out."

Silence fell under the hideous whine of the ship's

impulse engines grinding in their effort to hold

position.

Kirk yanked himself around and looked aft. There

were two completely innocent people whose culture had

done nothing to provoke anybody and, according to all

reports, couldn't if they wanted to. The two

large-eyed visitors were horrified. Grief

ruddied their faces, and if he'd ever seen

innocence ruined, there it was.

Tom looked shattered beyond thought, and could barely

keep his legs under him. He seemed to be withering

before the captain's eyes.

Grief plied Kirk too as he watched them.

He felt his own body grow tighter around his

bones, and he thought of the two women who were

sacrificed, one dead, the other likely so.

Hopefully so. Experimentation by the Romulans

was a mind-choking possibility.

Suddenly he could only think of those two

women.

In an era when women served equally with

men and wanted it that way, for James Kirk there

was still something about the death of a woman. Women were still

special and somehow instinctively precious to him,

no matter that they often chided him for thinking that

way. He couldn't help it. In spite of the

pressures of expanding society, he was a 19th

Century man in those ways, and to him every woman

looked like a work of art. He wanted to protect

them all. Women were the charm of the open galaxy, and

their needless death shredded his heart.

He forced himself to look away from Tom and

Royenne, forced his feelings down before he became

too angry. What would the Romulans want with a

Rey captive?

"We've got to get out of here," he said,

suddenly breathless. "It just became a matter of

life and death. Spock--hypotheses?"

There was no answer.

Kirk pulled himself to the rail, battling the

deck as it pitched another degree in the wrong

direction.

"Spock?"

On the upper deck Spock caught the back

of his chair and barely kept himself on his feet.

He kinked forward as though he'd been punched in the

chest. For anyone else, it might've only been

a cough, but for Spock, whose reactions were so

subtle, so reserved--

The captain collected his strength and was there in

four steps.

Spock didn't look at him. "I'm

sorry, Captain--"

Kirk caught his arm and kept him from slipping

sideways onto his computer panel. "You all

right?"

With a pale hand clutching the neck of his

monitor hood, Spock battled for control

over a creeping misery. "One moment," he

rasped. "Fighting it."

"Fighting what?"

"I don't know."

If anyone else felt nauseated at what

they were going through and what they'd just heard from

McCoy, Kirk wouldn't have been surprised.

He saw it in all their faces and felt it pull

at his own features like weights attached to his

muscles and bones.

The burden in Spock's eyes was suddenly

contagious--Kirk could feel it.

They'd shared empathy before, but this kind?

As though they could reach down and pick it up?

"Never known you to be space sick before," the

captain said quietly.

"I never have been ..."

"Are you dizzy?"

"Not ... yes, somewhat."

The mid-answer change was tantamount to a cry

for help from anyone else.

"Sit down." Kirk drew him to his chair

and he didn't resist.

He didn't resist.

And now, as Kirk saw the effort there ...

"Fine time for McCoy to be off board," he

muttered. "Can you hang on?"

Spock turned the chair and pulled himself back

to his feet. A knotted shudder wracked his

arms. He held his breath, stiffened, and fought for

control. When he looked up, his black eyes were

resolute through a glaze.

"Yes, Captain," he said. "A few

moments to process McCoy's forensics ..."

He was asking to be left alone. Kirk

balled his fists and forced himself to walk away, all

the way to port, to draw attention away from

Spock.

"Uhura, call Mr. Scott to the

bridge."

"Yes, sir," she said. There was strain in her

voice too, as though a plague were sweeping the

bridge.

Clinging to his panel, Spock turned.

"I'm all right, Captain."

"Precaution, Mr. Spock," Kirk

insisted, in a tone that wouldn't take backtalk.

For a second time, Spock didn't resist.

His face was crumpled with stress. Weakness

dragged at his elbows. He forced himself back

to his work, obviously disturbed that he might need

relief just when the ship was in trouble.

Scott was on the bridge two minutes

later, scowling and shaking his head, and without waiting

to be asked he said, "Intermix levels still

jumping, sir. Very bad exertion. She's huffin'

and puffin', but we're holding her down from red-line

and managing to keep from slipping deeper into this

hole."

"Understood," Kirk said. "Stand by,

Scotty."

"Better I get back to my engine room,

sir--"

"I need you here."

Scott dropped to his side on the lower

deck. Tied into the engine's heart, soul, and

sinew though Montgomery Scott might have been,

there was enough of the pub bartender in him that he was hard

to fool and quick to pick up on what he saw in the

captain's gaze as Kirk watched the upper

starboard deck.

Scott leaned in and asked, "Something wrong,

sir?"

Allowing himself a custodial glance to starboard,

Kirk muttered, "Well, he's not tearing his

hair ..."

"Think he's ill?"

"Give him a minute."

Scouring his mind for crazy ideas, the last

refuge of the desperate, he wiped his face with a

hot palm and paced around the helm--if he could

only think.

"Captain," Spock said, fighting for every

breath, "molecular examination of the data Dr.

McCoy's tricorder picked up in the galley

... no longer any doubt--there were Romulans

on board Ransom Castle within the past

twenty hours. In my opinion, this shores up the

doctor's hypothesis ... I must agree that the

Rey girl was kidnapped by Romulan

intruders."

Kirk stepped toward him, prepared to ask the

ugliest question, but Tom arose from his silence, moved

to where Uhura sat clinging to her console, and beat

them all to the awful question.

"Mr. Spock?" he began. He was clearly

forcing himself just to get the ^ws out. "Would they keep

her alive?"

"She is a witness to her own victimization,

sir." Spock lowered his voice, but everybody

heard him, and there was heavy sympathy in his

inflection. "It is unlikely she would be kept

alive."

Tom's face crumpled as grief gathered with

shock. He pressed a palm to the back of

Uhura's chair, and he slipped to his knees.

He held himself there, in misery, though he made

no noise, andwiththe other hand he covered his face.

Kirk started toward him--only now pierced by the

common sense that should've hit him hours ago. He

should get these people off the bridge. All this was too

much for them. Tom was folding. Royenne wasn't

much better, over there huddled against the

wall in the turbolift vestibule, watching

Tom's breakdown.

As his feet thumped up the short steps to the

upper deck and he found himself standing over Tom,

about to reach down, Kirk got a truncated,

dreamlike view of Tom here, gutted by grief,

and Spock over there--the same.

Suddenly Spock could barely stand, leaning almost

his entire weight on the heels of his hands,

pressed to the control panel, no longer even

pretending to try to work. His vandalized senses were

battling in his face.

Vandalized ...

From between the shreds of thought in a mind that had gone

blank, something clicked.

He reached down, put his palm on Tom's

shoulder, dug his fingers into the red-and-black

flannel shirt, caught a strand of Tom's

fair hair between his fingers, and pulled the Rey

man halfway around.

And way over there, Spock flinched--and

turned.

"So that's it," Kirk breathed.

Instinc t boiled up and he moved

protectively between Spock and Tom, backed

off a step, and looked down at the young Rey

man. Royenne stumbled toward them, and the two

guests stared at him like stranded calves.

"It's you, isn't it?" Kirk said bluntly.

"Somehow it's you."

They didn't say anything. They didn't

really have to. Unlike Vulcans, those faces

didn't hide much.

"Where's Osso?" the captain demanded.

"In our quarters," Royenne said. "He

didn't want to ..."

"Overwhelm us?"

Royenne lowered his sorrow-laden eyes.

Sadly he admitted, "Yes."

The bridge crew watched. Kirk felt their

attention like needles in his skin.

"Tom," he said, "you got anything to say?"

Still on his knees, his face glossed with sweat,

Tom struggled to gain control over his own emotions

--and obviously just tried to keep them to himself. His

voice was a braid of grief and effort.

"Turrice was my sister," he said.

"It's not Tom's fault!"

Royenne suddenly towered over the

captain, protecting his companion. Probably

the first time any Rey had felt inclined to defend

his own against anyone from another world.

And it had to be on the bridge of Jim

Kirk's Enterprise.

"Before the Federation came to our planet, we

didn't think it would affect anyone else,"

Royenne said anxiously. "We never thought about

it!"

Suddenly his shoulders slumped. His hands moved

back and forth a few times as though someone was working

him on strings, but after a moment he frowned and

huddled near Tom.

Kirk knew without looking that Spock had come

close behind him. The captain felt like a bulwark

when Spock deliberately stayed back there.

Kirk let himself be a barrier. Everyone, even

Spock, was entitled to a twinge of childhood from

time to time.

"Is it possible?" Kirk asked. "Can all

this be because of them, Spock?"

"Vulcans are somewhat telepathic,"

Spock said, forcing past the strain. "Romulans

may be also, instinctively, though they do not seem

to have developed it as a discipline." He paused,

his curiosity overcoming the Rey effect upon him,

though he still stayed behind Kirk's shoulders. "There

is no ruler by which to measure telepathy,

Captain. I can't scientifically prove I

am feeling what is on me now."

"That's why fake psychics have thrived through the

age of science," Kirk agreed. "It can't be

proven not to exist."

Spock's eyes were tight as he nodded. "I

suspect this trait is of no more concern to the Rey

than perspiration or hair color is

to humans."

"And we don't suspect our own hair

color to be driving somebody else mad." He

looked at Tom and Royenne, felt his own inner

empathies at work, and couldn't help but feel

mellow toward a people who hadn't wanted to hurt

anyone, but only wanted to talk to the outside

galaxy, and not be left alone in the dark. "I can

feel it, but I can push it down. Why?"

"Vulcan and Romulan instincts are much

stronger than humans," Spock said, fighting

to stay clinical. "And humans handle emotion

daily. You ... do it better."

Kirk avoided tossing him a

thank-y. "We handle a hundred ups and downs

every day. Their happiness was contagious, but the more

violent emotions don't do much more than make us

edgy. But to a Vulcan--"

"Or a Romulan ..."

Kirk swung around and jabbed a finger at

Tom, then at Royenne. "You knew about this,

didn't you?"

Royenne's expression was layered with shame and

apology. He looked past Kirk to talk

to Spock.

"At first we never considered it. When we found

out it affected others, we were afraid you wouldn't

talk to us anymore."

"We thought you might turn away from us!" Tom

blurted. "That you wouldn't want us in the Federation.

We never thought it bothered anything but ... but--"

"Lower life forms," Royenne finished.

They both seemed to think they were insulting

Spock, and cutting off their chances for a future

at the same time.

"Likely evolved as a way to cause

predators to be frightened," Spock said.

"Vulcanoids are susceptible because at one time

we were of high emotion. We developed our

controls because our violent base emotions were

destroying us. We did not slay the dragon,"

he added, "but we drove it back to its cave."

"And something about these people brings it back out,"

Kirk concluded. "And the Romulans stumbled on

it. They must be afraid the Federation might use the

Rey against them!"

He sucked a breath, cleared his head, and

managed to throw off the creeping grief radiated

from the two gentle, unusual beings with their faces

grilled by the situation. He stalked the deck,

past Spock, toward the bow, then back again, and his

eyes took on a devilish gleam.

"Not a bad idea," he added.

"Captain!" Chekov gasped. He glared with

unhappy horror.

Scott watched too, but his dark eyes carried

a blunt comprehension that junior officers hadn't

had beaten into them yet.

"What they don't understand is Federation

ethics," Kirk allowed. "We wouldn't

sacrifice any Rey by putting him--or her--

in proximity with Romulans just to get the upper

hand. They're not bait," he said, waving his hand

at Tom and Royenne. "They're people."

"And this "talent"' isn't voluntary,"

Spock offered. "The Rey would have to be in a

deadly situation to illicit this response, and that

negates their value as weapons."

"I don't care if it does or doesn't.

We wouldn't use them that way. But the Romulans

think we would." The captain turned and glared with

bare accusation at the forward screen. "So where is

Valdus? He's got the girl ... has he

rushed out of the area? Or is he still here, pretending

to run the race? What's his plan? Why would he

want to involve himself in an event that culminates

at a planet full of the people he must fear?"

Tom bolted to his feet and grabbed for the

rail, his face worried as a rotten peach.

"They can't hurt my planet, can they? They

couldn't do that, could they?"

"It'd take days to cut up a planet,"

Scott said, "even if they had enough firepower."

"Firing on the planet gets them nothing but

dead," Kirk interrupted. "Valdus is

experienced enough to know that. He's not the suicide

type. If he were, they'd have been at

Gullrey long ago. And they wouldn't wait for a

public event with four Starfleet vessels and a

fleet of rugged independent merchants and excited

weekend adventurers--"

Suddenly he stopped.

"Captain!" Sulu gasped.

Chekov blurted, "Another ship!"

"Sacrifice another vessel!" Sulu said.

"Hyperlight engines--"

"Atmospheric corruption," Scott

decided. "There's nothin' to it, sir!"

Kirk twisted toward Spock. "Andwith all these

ships going to that planet, nobody would suspect

anything was wrong. Spock, what would they need

to corrupt an atmosphere?"

"A ship with ..." Spock tried to think, but

paused, still struggling. One hand was pressed on the

buffer board along the communications panel. The

other hovered in midair with nothing to lean on. His

shoulder muscles worked for control. "A ship with

irreversible warp field chain reaction

capacity."

"Like a starship." Kirk used his own voice as

a bridge. He stepped toward Spock.

"They might covet a starship, sir,"

Scott swaggered from the lower deck, "but woe's

them if they tangle with a Starfleet

crew. A smart tiger stalks the weak zebra

first."

"Yes, he does. And Valdus struck me

as a smart tiger, Mr. Scott. Assuming

he's found out whatever he wanted to know from Tom's

sister, he's moving to the second leg of his

plan. He needs a ship that could corrupt a

planet. That means ships the size of Haunted

Forest, Blackjacket, New Pride of

Baltimore--"

"Ransom Castle would serve, sir," the

engineer added.

"Think so?"

Scott chuckled grimly. "Oh, aye."

The pieces clicked into place, and Kirk

squinted sharply. He dropped to the lower deck and

circled his chair along a well-worn path.

"That's it! He's focused in on Ransom

Castle. That's how he made his choice of which

Rey guest to kidnap."

"But why kidnap anybody at all?" Sulu

asked. "I don't understand, sir."

"I know why," Kirk said. "I saw it in his

face."

"Why?" Tom begged. "Why would he take my

sister?"

Kirk couldn't bear to look at him. "He

wanted to be sure he was on the right track. That

he wasn't about to attack a planet of the wrong

people."

"A Romulan?" Chekov barked. "Why would

a Romulan care?"

"Because he's a decent man, Mr. Chekov,"

Kirk said. "And Romulan or not, there's nothing

more dangerous than a decent man who's convinced

he's doing the right thing."

Chapter Seventeen

Red Talon

"This is the Subcommander. Is the engine power

up to full standard yet?"

"In a quarter hour, Subcommander."

"If it is one moment longer, you will be

executed!"

The crew glanced up, but no one said anything.

In fact, they began to work a degree faster, a

degree harder.

"Romar ... such flames,"

Valdus commented from his command center.

With his face flushed amber, his body a

bundle of agitation, Romar pointed viciously

at the communication unit. "I will kill him!"

"Oh, I understand," Valdus said, "but take

care. Your enthusiasm may disarm you."

"Nothing will disarm me."

Valdus didn't argue. His command chair

felt uncomfortable to him today. Behind him, Romar

continued to pace. Valdus knew how he felt--

the experience fresh in his system, the inability

to accept the plundering of his mind. Poor Romar

... not seventy years, but only seventy

minutes to get used to what had happened to him.

Valdus forced himself to be tolerant, and allowed

the younger man to rumble back and forth across the

bridge, his rank sash swaying so hard it

wrapped across his torso. The bridge crew

kept their eyes averted. They knew something was

wrong--had felt the intrusion into their own minds--and

now looked to their leaders to deal with the threat.

"Where are the other vessels in the race

field?" Valdus asked. He twisted to look

over a shoulder at the centurion.

The centurion flinched as though stricken, then

went to a different monitor than the one he'd

been hunched over. "Scattered, Commander," he

said. "Many unaccounted for. I assume they have gone

ahead while we were detained in the cloud. The

race may be nearly won by now."

"Then we shall have an audience when we arrive at

the finish line," Valdus commented. "We will use

the Ransom Castle for what the humans call

a Trojan horse. While the Federation ships

attend Red Talon with their suspicions, we

can approach that planet with our disguised conquest."

He glanced back at Romar and lowered his

voice. "Its contaminated warp core will do the

rest--"

"And our agents will hunt down every last Rey

who escapes the eradication--crush any chance that

we could be surprised a hundred years from now!"

He wasn't trembling but heaving with each

breath. There was less anger in his ^ws than oath.

"Commander!" the centurion interrupted. "Aft

sensors show the Federation starship is powering toward

the opening of the gravity well. Attempting

to extricate themselves."

As Romar suddenly stopped pacing and stood

hideously still, Valdus pushed to his

feet and crowded the monitor. "They are

escaping? With their power reduced twenty percent?

Unthinkableffwas

The centurion moved aside. "You see for

yourself."

"Confirm this immediately!"

"Yes, Commanderffwas

Valdus went to Romar's side and spoke

quietly. "If they extricate themselves from the

cloud, they can head us off."

"They must not!" Romar boiled. He closed his

mouth, swept a hand across it, and fought to keep himself

in check, but didn't do a very good job.

"Commander," the centurion said, "readings show the

starship holding position, power levels slowly

increasing. I must conclude they are building for a

single surge out of the well."

"We should have killed them!" Romar roared. He

threw his arms into the air and spun around

pointlessly.

Valdus sighed. "My fault," he

murmured. "I had the chance to sweep the field,

and I failed to do it."

Romar fumed at him with a ferocious loyalty.

"Commander--y lie to yourself! I will have no witnesses

to such feelings you have about yourself! Centurion, turn

the ship around. We will go back to the cloud and

obliterate those we should have obliterated before!"

The centurion, and all who heard, suddenly

stopped working and stared at their leaders. The order was

violent, yes, but unexpected and unplanned, and

Romar had made the order without waiting for

Valdus to make it first. What should they do?

The bird-head helmets of the crewmen flashed

with lights from the struggling of the ship as the engineers were

bringing Red Talon back up to full power, and

in their eyes Valdus read a certain confusion--but

also anxious anticipation. They approved.

And then he looked at Romar. It was the look

on his face that convinced him.

"Very well," Valdus said. "Turn the ship

around. Bring weapons to bear. We will make our

subcommander a satisfied man."

"Captain!"

Chekov swung around so hard he almost threw

himself out of his chair, but he succeeded in getting the

captain's attention.

"Contact, sir," he gasped. "The

Romulan vessel!"

Everyone turned to the forward screen, squinting

through the snapping cloudy electrical mess at the

one shape they never in a thousand years expected

to see here.

"Are they coming back to help us?" Chekov

wondered, staring.

Kirk pulled himself forward to the helm. "I

think we can rule that out, Mr. Chekov. All

hands, red alert. Shields up."

"Shields are already at maximum under these

conditions, Captain," Spock said, his voice still

thready.

"Enhance screen to maximum, Mr. Sulu.

I want to see that ship's movements."

"Aye, sir ... maximum enhancement." The

helmsman tampered with his panels, but the view

on the screen remained foggy and glitterbound.

"That's as clear as it'll get, sir--sir!

They're powering up weapons!"

"Hail him!"

Uhura hesitated an instant, held

briefly by the glow of the photon ports shining through

the cloud from that Romulan ship's great extended

neck.

"He's receiveg us, sir."

Kirk held the helm with both hands as the ship

grabbed for a place to hang on in the residual

spin, and didn't even try to keep the anxiety

out of his voice. "Put him on visual if you

can. Hurry, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir, attempting visual."

He tried not to be distracted from what was coming, but

he was suddenly aware of their guests--the subtle

cause of all this--sitting on the starboard steps

between the upper deck and the command deck.

Tom sat huddled, his arms crossed at the

wrists in his lap, his hands limp, and he stared at

the screen. His large eyes were glazed with tears,

but he was fighting to keep his emotions in control.

On the upper deck Spock was fighting, too,

but his attention to the ship and the moment had a tighter

grip on him than Tom did.

Uhura tapped and tapped on her console,

pulling in every pixel, every sliver of visual

science available to the struggling, incompatible

systems, and when she got the picture, she

didn't even announce it.

She just put it on.

Jim Kirk straightened his shoulders as much as

he could and glared at the forward screen,

at the calm face of the Romulan Commander.

Valdus. The decent man.

"Captain," the Romulan said,

"apparently you are clawing your way out."

"You don't have to do this," Kirk said to him.

Valdus showed no surprise, no attempt

to appear vague. He seemed to know that Kirk had

figured it all out.

"I do," Valdus said. "I thought about

killing you, Captain, a few times. I searched

for a utilitarian hatred, but found it unworthy.

Having met you in person, and having seen the light

in your eyes ... I resisted being the one who put

out that light."

Surprised by the intimacy, Kirk held

silent a moment. He only watched, sought

weakness, looked for lies.

He didn't see any.

Moving slowly forward around the helm, he kept

both feet under him as much as possible.

"I have the same sensibilities about you," he

admitted. "Fortunately, my phaser banks

don't feel that way. I'll fight if you force

me to."

Valdus nodded. "ally don't understand what

I am attempting?"

Kirk held out a hand, felt his blood rush

hot in his fingers. He let his instincts draw the

conclusions. "How can anyone think of killing an

entire civilization?"

"The stripping of the mind, Captain

Kirk," Valdus said, suddenly harsh,

serious. "There is nothing like it. If someone could

control your mind, drive you to madness you couldn't

even see coming, wouldn't you want to contain that

person? Even if you had to kill him? If a

predator gets in your house--"

"They're not predators!" Kirk lashed out

to his side, got a fistful of flannel, and

hauled Tom to the center of the bridge, presenting

the baffled Rey man fiercely to those who feared

him the most. "Look at him! These are innocent

people! Possibly the most innocent the galaxy

has! You know that!" He threw Tom to one side

so hard that Tom ended up on one knee beside the

steps. "I understand your fear, your concern, but there

are other methods."

"Methods we would have to consult the Federation

about, now that the witch planet is joining you,"

Valdus said. "Because of what is done

today, the temptation will never arrive years from now, a

century from now, for you to use those people against us. I do

not hate them, Captain, but if I don't kill

them, they will eventually kill my people."

"You're letting your fears rule you," Kirk

insisted. "You should try something different."

Valdus's brow creased. "This is not fear.

You know us. We have no fear. We have fought you before

and will fight again, in any contest, with anyone. But

this--th is fundamental! This can destroy our minds

--our minds!"

"We haven't attacked you--we never will,"

Kirk roared. "You don't have any reason to act

in self-defense!"

On the screen, a younger Romulan officer

pushed into the screen so sharply that his face appeared

twice the size of Valdus's, and the screen

blurred as it tried to compensate for the distortion.

"You're right--th is not self-defense!" the

young officer bolted at them. "This is

survival!"

Valdus drove forward, grasped the officer

by the shoulders, and pulled him back, but made no

attempt to quiet him.

Kirk raised his voice. "If your empire

would join us in a common purpose, you wouldn't have

to worry about survival."

"If we join you," Valdus said, "we

become weak like you. Then someone else comes along

and conquers us. If the weak survive, Captain

Kirk, eventually all are weakened."

"How weak are we?" Kirk shot back,

boiling mad and striking his ^ws like matches. Down

at his right, he caught a glimpse of Tom

turning to watch him instead of the screen, but he

didn't turn from his glare at the two

Romulans. "Decades ago we beat you

back. The Klingons haven't gained an inch either.

Open your mind, man! Freedom is more potent

than force!"

A portentous silence fell. The bridge of the

Enterprise throbbed around him.

"ally cannot turn me, Captain," Valdus

said, and his voice confirmed his ^ws. "Be

comforted. I know you would be willing to die to save a

crewman. Instead, you will die to save a

civili zation. Your disappearance and the destruction of the

Rey world will prevent war between our intergalactic

peoples. There may be a chilling between us, but no

war. All with the sacrifice of one ship

and one world. I will forever speak of you with honor."

The screen crackled, and the picture dissolved.

Before them, the Romulan ship hovered in her

veil of static. Two fluorescent blue

glows swelled upon her hull and spat two white

hot lancets directly toward the engineering hull

of the starship.

"Incoming!" Sulu shouted.

Chapter Eighteen

Enterprise

The photon torpedoes blazed a couple of

paths through the ionization and hard radiation of the

cloud, and the cloud argued. The telltale white

lancets turned to bright sizzles, streaked under the

viewscreen, and into the engineering hull.

The Enterprise cannonballed downward,

impulse engines moaning as their strength drained

away. The deck dropped out from under them as the

crew grabbed for their controls and tried to hold her

together. The red alert Klaxon sounded again as the

ship plunged deep into the gravity well, caught

in the inside of the natural tornado.

"Valdus!" Kirk shouted. "Get him

back, Lieutenantffwas

"Too late, sir," Uhura called back

over the whine.

"Slipping into the well, Captainffwas Spock

rasped over the noise of the ship twisting under them.

His voice was rough and taxed, his stone-cut

features blanched. "Losing thrust against the

current! Mark plus five! Plus seven!

Plus nine!"

"They kicked us down into it." Kirk swung

around, pulled himself across the bridge--the longest

distance in the universe, sometimes, especially at

times like this, when he wished he didn't have to be the

one in command, but couldn't have tolerated watching

anyone else do it. His heart hammered against his

breastbone. "Chekov, assist with helm control,"

he called. "Damage report!"

One of the junior engineers turned, clinging

to his panel, his voice passionate with effort.

"Impedance in the electropneumatics, sir.

Voltage indicators falling out of sequence.

I don't know which inputs to accept!"

They watched the starship begin to come apart around

them. Warning bells peeled. The shriek

of effort buzzed up through the internal structure as

though the ship were caught in a drill press.

"Slipping, Captainffwas Spock shouted.

"We cannot push up against the flow pattern at this

depth."

"They shoved us down--now we're stuck,"

Kirk grumbled, his teeth gritted. "Scott,

we need power!"

The quickly sculpted confidence in his voice

didn't fool Scott, whose ruddy complexion

was almost as red as his division shirt. His

piledriver accent put an extra sting on every

syllable and a brutal immediacy to the next few

seconds. "Those starbase stumblebums removed

parts instead of just shutting them down, sir. We're

manufacturing facsimiles. Trying to get power

up to the nineties."

"How long?" Kirk demanded.

His engineer shrugged. "I can't say, sir."

He paused, "Not soon enough, though."

"All right, if we can't get out the top,

we're going to have to go out the bottom."

Spock turned again. "Impossible,

Captain. We cannot break the laws of physics.

The deeper we fall into the well, the greater the

pressure."

Kirk slammed a hand down on the rail. "I

don't want to break them, Spock. Just bend them

for a minute. Come on--how can we do it? How can

we introduce chaos into the system?"

Spock's face crumpled with the effort of

thinking. "Magnetic field disruption ...

rupture of the current--"

"Breaking the flow pattern?"

"Very little chance--"

"But our only one. Sulu, arm photon

torpedoes!"

Sulu looked baffled, but poked the weapons

panel. "Armed ... ready, sir."

"Prepare to fire down into the well. When the

torpedo detonates, it might disrupt the well

long enough for us to get out."

Sulu hesitated, worked his controls again, then

croaked, "Ready, sir--"

"Captain," Spock called again, and somehow

maneuvered toward him with the dark prediction it was his

duty to provide. "Our hull will be crushed."

"Not if we break this thing open first," the

captain said, his lips tight with determination.

"Sulu, plot a course to follow the

photon torpedo down into the well as close as

possible. Try to find a path for the torpedoes that

won't cough them right back up at us. Chekov,

rig the photons for remote detonation, five

hundred kilometers."

"Sir!" Scott thumped down from the engineering

station, his face pasty, tension apparent in his

voice. "A blast at that proximity could take

our warp nacelles with it."

"You got an alternative, Mr. Scott?

Now's the time."

"Uh ... no, sir, I don't have one of

those."

"Then prepare to stabilize all systems as

they break down."

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"And Tom, get off the bridge."

"No! Noffwas Tom pulled to his feet and

held onto the rail. "No--y're fighting for

your lives and the lives of my people--I don't

want to know for the rest of my life that I crawled

away just when I should stay. Captain Kirk,

I've learned so much from you--y wouldn't let them

frighten you. I have to keep control and teach my people,"

he said, and stabbed a finger toward the forward screen,

"or his fears will come true."

Kirk found five seconds to gaze at the

cause of the trouble and saw in Tom's face the

hope of a young civilization moving out of its own

adolescence with every step toward Federation

membership. Tom, andwith him his culture, would have

to learn the responsibility of being good

neighbors.

Tom wanted to learn it, no matter how much it

hurt.

Kirk looked past the gentle fair-haired

man to his very antithesis, pleat-perfect

Spock, there on the upper deck, his face

drawn with tension. Even the colors they were wearing

were opposites.

Spock gazed down, and he nodded at the

captain. Not even for his own sake would he ask the

Rey man to leave the bridge and remain a child.

"Captain!" Scott interrupted. "Red-line

plus twenty on the external shields!

Breakdown at any minute!"

"All right, Tom," Kirk said, "get ready

to learn. And hold on." He slid partly onto

the seat of his chair and hung on to the edge with one

thigh. "Ready remote detonation."

"Ready, sir!" Chekov squawked, his

throat sandpaper.

"Prepare to fire the salvo on my mark.

Three ... two ... one ... fire!"

The photon torpedo spun down into the well,

and after it came the starship.

Starships were tough, but they weren't spandex. A

ship that seemed impenetrable could suddenly tear itself

inside out. What had been pliant safeties and

springboards built into the beautiful systems were

being pushed into brittleness and a good third of them were

snapping as pressure increased.

James Kirk held onto his command chair and

willed his ship to stay in one piece. His head

started to ache, reacting to the change in pressure.

Behind him, Uhura made an almost inaudible

squeak, and before him Sulu and Chekov hunched their

shoulders in pain.

The ship started sizzling around him. Hissing,

snapping--

His stomach rattled like a sack of rocks.

He resented the call echoing in his head and he

resented himself for hearing it.

What the hell am I doing here?

One day nature would get him. Maybe that was

why he wasn't afraid of enemies who could

think.

As long as he didn't crack, as long as he

didn't give the order too soon to do any good

--the fight would go on until they won or broke

in half.

On the forward screen, the glow of the photon

torpedo's track blazed a path before them down

into the gravity well.

"Pressure nine thousand PSI and increasing!"

Scott reported.

"Captain!" Sulu called. "We're losing

helm control!"

"Stay with her, Mr. Suluffwas Kirk's

eyes were squinted and his face felt heavy.

"Follow it down!"

His fingers dug hard into the arm of his chair, his

starship.

"You're coming back," he gritted to her.

Sweat drained down his face. He thought his

skull was imploding. His voice hummed inside

it.

He caught Sulu's pained glance and clamped

his lips shut. The helmsman had heard

something over the whine. The captain's voice? An

order to detonate?

Not yet.

"Twelve thousand PSIFFWAS

Scott's voice was a distorted boom over the

scream of the ship.

Kirk tried to turn his head. The pressure

pounded at him. Beyond Tom, who was huddled there on

the deck, he could barely see Spock--j in the

corner of his eye ...

Spock looked at him, brow puckered, eyes

tight. Another few seconds ...

Kirk found one last breath in his collapsing

chest. "Detonate!"

No one responded.

Chekov and Sulu both moved a little, but he

had no idea which one of them detonated the

torpedo.

The forward screen exploded into a nearly

solid white flash that overtook its frame and

seemed to fill the bridge, so bright that no one could

see for several seconds.

If Sulu could keep control over the helm,

he didn't need his eyes to pilot the ship

clear--

The pressure fell off abruptly, fast enough

to cause pain even in the relief. Kirk grabbed

for his scattered senses. He tried to turn

to Spock, moving one shoulder in that direction, but

the deck fell away and he hurtled starboard, as

though falling off a steeplechaser, and landed on

top of Tom. Chekov landed on top of them,

Spock beside them. Through the deck Kirk felt

quakes as the other bridge crew hit bottom.

The ship convulsed--might as well have been

Kirk's own body. He wanted to take hits

for her, but he couldn't. Some things she had to take

for herself. She was in a crash dive out of the well's

axle. He tried to see it in his mind, but all

he could do was cram his eyes shut and hold his

breath.

Forward force held him to the deck. If he could

only think--

He willed his eyes to open. Past Chekov's

shoulder he saw Spock pressed to the upper

deck, and the bridge rail over them all. One

hand ... just one hand ...

He reached upward with his right hand, fingers spread

toward the struts of that rail.

I just have to feel it in my hand ...

His fingers bumped the strut, then clamped around

it. Suddenly he felt like an acrobat with one

hand on a trapeze, and he wasn't about to let

go. Pain bit into his fingers.

He shoved Chekov an inch to one side and

pulled against his own weight. The muscles in his

shoulder and arm trembled for relief, but he kept

pulling. He had to get up. He had to be on

his feet! If nature was going to beat him, it was

going to beat him standing up.

He was about halfway there when the ship roared

suddenly and the pressure lifted. His head buzzed

and turned light, andfor an instant he couldn't see

anything more than the upper deck and Spock's

legs nightmarishly elongated in front of him,

or hear past the ringing in his ears and the clacking of his

sinuses.

"All stop!" he shouted. "Stabilize!"

Had they heard him? He couldn't hear his own

voice. Was there an echo? Or was it--

"All stop, aye!"

That was Sulu. Good.

Kirk reached over the rail and grasped

Spock's arm and pulled him to his feet. Then

he looked around, checking on the bridge crew.

Uhura was at her station, wobbling but working. Sulu

was crawling back into his chair, though somehow in

spite of the kicking, he hadn't let his hand be

pulled from the controls. Magic, probably.

Scott was working with one arm--the other was numb at

his side, but he was on his feet.

"Scotty, report!" Kirk demanded.

"Clear of the well, sir," the engineer gasped.

"Not as bad as I expected."

"It wasn't?"

Only now realizing he'd bumped his head on

something, Kirk made the mistake of shaking it.

"Secure from red alert. Go to yellow alert

..." He paused as the blur in front of his

eyes recoagulated into a bridge. "Maintain

general quarters. Damage control parties

report to--ffMr. Scott."

"Aye, sir."

"Sickbay," Kirk said.

"Sickbay here. Dr. Rothbaum."

"Report, doctor."

"ationo deaths, sir. Sixty-two

injuries, mostly in the propulsion and

magnatomics areas. Twenty of those are down for the

count. I can have the others back on duty

within ten minutes."

"Acknowledged, Doctor, bridge out.

Lieutenant Uhura, reposition standby crew

to those twenty stations."

"Redistributing assignments, Captain.

Having some trouble staff+ the reactor loop."

"Put earth science staff up there if necessary.

Those positions have to be manned."

"Yes, sir."

Still holding the rail as his legs rattled under

him, Kirk turned to Spock. "Condition of the

vessel?"

"Intact," Spock said, then paused for

breath. "Some ... exterior structural

damage ..."

Though Spock was trying not to breathe as heavily

as he needed to, his hands were twitching.

"Are you hurt?" Kirk asked him.

"I don't believe so," Spock answered.

"Are you?"

"My head feels as if it's been

sledgehammered. We've got to get McCoy

back on board so he can tell us we're all

imagining it."

Spock only nodded, but seemed relieved.

"Captain," Uhura said, her voice weak and

fighting upward, "Process Control Chief

Edwards insists those positions in the loop can't be

manned by anyone other than systems interns or

supervisors."

Scott snapped up and thundered, "Strangle

him and step over the body! Get those panels

green-lighted. And put one of 'em on

spectroanalysis and the feedbacks."

"Yes, Mr. Scott."

Kirk offered him an approving nod, but

Scott hadn't waited for it. He was already back

at his station, tending to the ship.

The captain reached down to the deck and caught

Tom's elbow, bringing him to a standing position.

Tom pressed back the hair that had fallen

into his eyes. Kirk saw him beat down the fear

he'd been trying to control--for everyone's sake.

"Thank you," he said. And he pulled his arm

away. "I can stand alone."

"Keep to one side. This isn't over,"

Kirk said. "We've got to catch up to the

Romulans and deal with them while they're still out in

deep space. All hands ... this is the

captain. Report to battle stations.

Screens at full magnification. All

departments bring your systems back up

to Starfleet regulation level as quickly as

possible. Arm all weapons batteries.

Shields up."

"Full magnification, sir."

"All phaser and photon systems ready and

functioning, sir."

"Nine-three percent shields up, sir.

All stations report battle ready."

"Very well. Brace yourselves. We've got a

real race to run now. Mr. Sulu, full

ahead, warp factor five."

"Warp five, aye!"

BLOOD SPORT

Chapter Nineteen

Below Decks, Ransom Castle

"Take cover!"

The hungry whine of phased light. The slash

of knives. Wretched unforgiving violation of

living bodies torn atom from atom.

Primitive weapons given work in the modern

age side by side with the hand tools of space

conquest. Blood-spattered passageways.

No warnings. No questions. No prisoners.

Only the efficiency of predators, unforgotten

from eons past. Unforgotten ... and refined.

An Imperial visitation.

Violence boiled through the ramshackle,

weather-scarred tramp packet, bringing a

crescendo of losses. A scorched, hacked, and

pitilessly savaged crew of innocent men and

women slammed through narrow companionways and

hatches in many directions, moving on blind

impulse, trusting to reflex, and losing.

Leonard McCoy had no idea how many he

had been forced to leave behind in the

disruptor-smashed corridors as he was shoved

headfst into Ransom Castle's forward

lazaret. Three people piled in after him, and all he

heard for five seconds were screams and the ping of

fire returned from a captured disruptor.

"Kill the crawlway lights!"

"Get in! All the way in!"

"Here they come!"

"Gimme room--back! Back! Okay,

I'm in!"

"Shut it!"

The lazaret portcullis, two separate

slabs of metal sandwiched between the bulkheads,

rolled out and clanked shut--lesslam ...

clack.

"Oh ... God."

McCoy knew the sound of injury when he

heard it, and in the dimness he grabbed for it.

"Set her down. Can we get any light in

here?"

"Yeah." Mike Frarey's big bulk moved

in the haze of disruptor smoke. "Marilyn,

let me get past you. There's a utility

worklight right ... here someplace. There."

Three tiny pinkish lights popped on in a

row along the far end of the ceiling, and McCoy

forced his eyes to adjust.

He found both his hands on Nancy

Ransom's bloody upper arm, and the irascible

young captain pressed up against the portcullis,

both knees bent, her face crushed with pain.

"Where's Mike?" she gasped.

"I'm right here," Frarey wheezed. "Big as

life."

Nancy squinted at him. "I saw you go

down."

"Yeah, well, I went down for a minute.

My head's swimming some."

"Let the doctor look at you."

"Nah, forget about me."

"I'm busy looking at you right now, Captain

Ransom," McCoy said.

"Mike! Quick, tell 'em what's going on.

No surrender!" Nancy tossed something to Mike

--a remote of some kind--and he plugged it into a

little glowing access in the wall.

"Attention!" he rasped. "We're boarded!

Take cover and fight. It's Romulans! Our

people are being killed. Take cover and double-lock

yourselves in. Fight if you can!"

"Okay, okay," Nancy said, stopping before his

warning started to sound like panic. "If they haven't

got that, it's too late."

"You, come over here," McCoy said. He

gestured to a goggle-eyed crewman about twenty

years old. "What's your name, son?"

"I'm ... Sam Oats."

"Come over here and see if you can't stop this

bleeding. Just hold this chamois over it. Now,

don't pretend to be an intern and make it too

tight."

He left Oats to deal with Nancy's upper

arm, and went after the pasty faces and shivers first.

Burns, cuts, gashes, even stab wounds could

wait. That cold sweaty shock had to be handled

first.

Didn't seem to be any fractures. No

one was collapsing. No spurting punctures.

No breakdown. They were all drenched in sweat,

beaten to shadows because they had protected him by pushing

him out of harm's way and taken the brunt of the

Romulan attack for him. He knew the signs

of decency when he saw them.

"Are we safe in here?"

"I don't hear anybody trying to get in,"

Nancy muttered.

"Everybody stop moving around. There's a lot

of blood and I can't tell where it's coming from.

Calm down so you can feel where your pain is.

Breathe and conserve strength."

He had his work cut out for him. There were four of

them crammed into a six-by-six refuge,

squeezed between winches, brackets, chain hoists,

devil's claws, bumpers, fenders,

double-fluked antiroll hooks, all equipment

for maneuvering large cargo in space. There were also

boxes of chamois cloths and dirty rags.

At the moment, the dangling ordnance looked a

lot more alive than the poor wretches gasping

between them. Their faces were pasty or flushed, some

looked queasy or faint, others sharply suffering.

They looked like a club of longshoremen in their

olive drab turtlenecks or black

jerseys, less uniforms than just a shipment of

factory seconds they'd stumbled onto.

"What the hell do they want?" Frarey

choked. "Are they looking for cargo?"

"We aren't carrying anything," Nancy said

heavily. "We had to leave it all at the

starba se."

"Romulans aren't pirates, generally

speaking." McCoy dabbed at Frarey's bleeding

black eye. "Does the air circulate in

here? Will we be able to breathe, trapped like this?"

"It circulates everywhere on board,"

Frarey said. "We don't take chances with each

other."

Nancy forced herself to one knee. "Who'd we

lose?"

"I saw Eric go down," Sam Oats said,

his voice a pathetic shatter. "And Luke and

Clancy. Dead or out, I don't know which."

"Marilyn and Mitch and a couple of others are

trapped in the stacks, Nancy," Frarey said.

"I saw the hatch close."

"How many raiders have--we got--" A wave

of vertigo hit their struggling captain, and she

thunked sideways against the portcullis.

McCoy caught her good arm. "Simmer down,

will you? Panic won't serve us any."

"I'm not panicking," she insisted, flaring with

insult.

"Don't get defensive. What's this ship

built like? I might need to know."

Sam Oats and Mike Frarey blinked at

him as though they'd never heard of such a thing, then

Frarey shrugged. "Forward, the commons, where we

eat and sleep, and the larder. In a square from there

back to the engine room, there's a causeway we

call the quadrangle. It's just a walkway

along the ship's gunwales."

"I got it. Go on."

"Well ... in the midship is the dry

stores, then the lazaret, where we are now, the ore

bunker, the wet stores--t's where we put

barrels, casks, and tanks. Then the bunkers

and the coops and stores are all divided up with

reinforced airtight removable wall sections.

Then there's the engine room, and that's about it."

"Solarium," Sam Oats gasped, licking

a swollen lip.

"Oh, yeah, there's a solarium on top of the

dry stores, where we can, you'know, get away from

each other once in a while."

McCoy crawled a few inches deeper into the

vault and went after Oats's bloody leg.

"I don't know what they want with my ship,"

Nancy growled, speaking out of her corner. "But

I've got weapons on board and I'm going

to start using them."

"Wait!" McCoy grabbed for her sleeve.

"How many of these people do we have to kill?"

"All of 'em, Doc," she said.

"But why? There are ways to fight them without

slaughter. They hear too well--we can bombard

them with high-frequency sound. Or we can drop the

temperature on the ship because we can maneuver in

cold better than they can. They're used to breathing

thinner air than we are. We can use that! Or

we can make them itch, or any number of

alternatives!"

"I don't want alternatives. I want

dead."

"But the Enterprise will be coming! All we have

to do is hold out until she gets here."

"Oh, get off it," Nancy spat. "You

telling me you think the Romulans let that starship

haul itself up out of that well without a fight? I'm

not going to believe it."

"Believe what you want, Captain,"

McCoy told her sharply. "I've seen Jim

Kirk throw off some mighty big chains in his

time."

"He's dead. Give it up."

McCoy glared at her, anger swelling

to sadness. He hadn't thought of it that way. Jim

Kirk dead ... the ship gone ...

The death of one, the death of a hundred--he

couldn't swallow it bluntly like that.

Nancy eyed him in the dim ugly light. "You

some kind of pacifist?"

"I just don't like to kill when there's another

way," he said. His voice gave away his

emotions.

"Well, great," the quaking woman said. "You

go out and pacify them. Maybe you keep some

high-frequency noise in your pocket, I

don't know. But I can't let 'em take my

ship." She looked at him closely. "Have you

ever had to fight for your life?"

The question was almost light, for Nancy. It told

McCoy that they were in trouble. Sympathy growled

in his conscience. How long had he grumbled about

space travel, yet continued on, deeper and

deeper into space, comforted by the fact that he had the

bulldog James Kirk doing his talking and his

fighting and his bloodsweating for him. How willing

would he have been to do his part without Jim Kirk

to lie down on the daggers first?

All I've done is shadowbox,

he thought. Maybe it's all we've all

done, except for the few captains who dare put

their necks on the line. All us crew people who just

expect the answers to be there in that chair up on

the bridge. I never saw so many captains in one

place, and I never thought they might all be a little

bit Jim Kirk ... and it looks like I'm not

giving Nancy her due. Seems to me she's

willing to hold up her end against the galaxy's

evil princes.

Nancy suddenly sighed. "You really think that

starship and Mr. Highpockets are going to get

here?"

Her question was tinged with hope.

He could have given her an arrogant answer, a

starship answer, but something told him not to.

"I think there's a good chance, Captain," he

said.

"Okay," she said. "Then we'll assume that.

Mike! Tie me into the sensors. I want the

whole system crashed."

"Crash the sensors? On purpose?"

"The whole thing. If he's right and that starship can

get here, then I don't want the Romulans

on board here to see them coming. Come on, boys,

let's hold up our end of the deal."

Red Talon

"The conquest is secure, Commander. We have their

ship."

Romar's face was flecked with shaved metal

dust from the fighting aboard the target ship, and there

was a small gash on his right jaw, but otherwise

he was in control of himself. His breath came with an

effort. The metallic fibers in his uniform

tunic were pulled in several places.

Allowing himself a moment to look carefully at his

subcommander, Valdus viewed the results of

hand-to-hand combat which so seldom presented itself to a

spacebound crew.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Romar halted suddenly, hesitating on one

foot. "Am I?"

"Yes," Valdus said, and even allowed himself

a moderate smile. "y."

Pressing a hand to his chest, Romar looked

down at his tunic and his legs as though he might

be doing something wrong or have forgotten something.

"It's a simple question,

Subcommander," Valdus said. "Don't you know

now it fits the mission?"

"I ..."

"From infancy we have it drummed into our heads that

we are tools of the Empire first and always. Too

often we sacrifice our own personal value

to this and we forget that we have any."

Taken more off guard than if he'd been

struck from behind by stealth, Romar stammered, "Thank

you ..."

"You're welcome. Report."

"The ... the vessel is under our influence.

Its crew is locked away in various

locations."

"Not taken prisoner?"

"Some, but most have locked themselves away. Shall I

order they be drilled out and taken?"

After a pause for thought, a calculation of the time

available to them, Valdus said, "Since they are

contained, leave them where they are. There is little

sense in expending energy to capture and hold them

when they are holding themselves. You made a show of

taking the vessel?"

"Yes, they all know they have been conquered. We

were quite noisy."

"Then let them sit in their confinement. We must

concentrate on our own crew's efforts."

"If I were in confinement," Romar said, "I

would be trying to break out and sabotage the boarding

party, Commander."

"If they show themselves," Valdus said, "kill

them as they appear."

"Yes, Commander."

"Romar ..."

"Yes, Commander?"

"Stop ending every response with "Commander."'

You're beginning to sound like a security beeper."

"Yes."

"Show me the graphic you developed."

"Oh, I had almost forgotten." Romar laughed

nervously and led the way to one of the small computer

access screens on the glossy, dark panels.

He tapped at the controls. "A simulation.

Fairly simple. The ship will be impregnated

with the adulterant you so smoothly smuggled into this

space ... and it will slam at warp speed into the

planet's surface."

On the screen a pretend ship bolted toward

a green planet with a thread of mountain ranges and

hammered into the planet's mantle,

instantly blistering the surface.

"Because of the high velocity, the explosion

actually occurs miles inside the planet. A

huge fusion explosion ensues ... the mantle

cracks ... there are massive earthquakes

..."

The screen rippled with color as Romar's

narration was given a disturbing illustration. The

green planet swelled, cracked, was laced now

with volcanic blight, then--v suddenly--

swallowed by heat from its own core, first in a

surge of red, then a gaudy purple. The

color of plague.

"A supersonic fireball engulfs the

planet along with a dense cloud of highly

radioactive cobalt vapor. Everyone who is

not a hundred meters below the surface is dead from

the cobalt vapor. Anyone below is dead from

earthquakes. It is very simple, Commander."

Valdus reached forward and turned off the

screen. A whole planet. On his ^w alone.

"I value your work," he said.

They faced the forward screen, neither looking at

each other. Instead they fixed their eyes on the

main viewer's picture of the merchant workship they

now possessed.

"Romar, I will transport aboard that ship and

take responsibility. When I do, I want

you to move off. We must have deniability. I

don't want war with the Federation. I never did.

Go back to Imperial space and forget me."

Distress creased Romar's dust-coated

features.

"Commander ... I assumed you would rig that

vessel for high speed on automatic navigation

and ... that you would beam back."

"I never said such a thing."

"Please say it now."

Valdus started to respond but noted that Romar

didn't want to follow his order to move off,

didn't want to save his own skin and the Red

Talon's until he could be sur e that Valdus

wasn't sacrificing his life for nothing.

"Call a legion to the bridge," Valdus

said.

"On their way--" Romar responded, and it was

obvious that he had to choke down a "Commander."

Valdus glanced now at his second and tried

to remember what it was like to be second in command.

Since he was considered somehow special

for surviving an attack and preventing the

attackers from advancing, he hadn't been

second for very long. The Praetor had personally

ordered him a ship of his own.

He tried to remember those days, but all he

could see in his mind was Scorah.

His eyes lowered. "I know you are ...

uneasy."

Wrenching suddenly to face him, Romar gulped,

"But I am not unsure! I know we are doing the

right thing. I know it. I have felt it for myself!"

"Then you have the advantage." Valdus inhaled

deeply and sighed. "I have never been very sure of

myself, Romar, not even in my most glorious

moments. Even as I stood before the Praetor and

received awards for my successes, I would think

back and wonder if those successes were genuine,

or if I had spun onto them through the misfortune

of others or simply my own happenstance. I've

never been completely convinced of my own worth."

Quaking, teetering on the edge of disillusionment

--perh with everything but the person before him--Romar

choked out a raw whisper.

"I believe in you," he vowed. "You told me

the need of our Empire, then you showed me that you were

right. What more could I ask? When has the galaxy

been simpler for me?" He put his hands out, one,

then the other. "I know what I must do."

Valdus rubbed his hot palms on his thighs and

watched Romar for a few moments, only watched

him. Leaders learned early in the Imperial

fleet not to expect too much loyalty or

stretch it too much.

And yet here it was, bending before him.

He wanted to pay Romar a compliment, and

tried to do it with his expression, but to come out and say

such a thing at this instant of conquest and question--he

couldn't.

Always there had been awkwardness at such times for

him. Not because he couldn't find it in himself to be

benevolent, but because he had found too much of that in

himself and had never polished the timing. Awkward,

always awkward.

"I've never believed in myself as much as others

have believed in me," he said. "You are

fortunate."

Frustration colored Romar's face a

mottled olive and even made the wound on his jaw

bleed again.

"Commander--"

"Yes, I know," Valdus said, and smiled.

Nervous strain pulled at the corners of

Romar's mouth. The bridge was empty, for they

had sacrificed the bulk of their crew to board the

other ship and man the transporters, but he

spoke as though a crowd pressed at his shoulders.

"Shall we ... turn back, sir?"

Dismay crossed both their faces in a single

crawling shadow. They were sons of a culture whose

millenarian demands made a cynical chime and

allowed no quarter. Chances were few and

irrecoverable. Would changing their minds be less

vulgar than making a single savage attack

without authorization?

"If we turn back now," Valdus said,

"the Empire will have to answer for our actions. If

we push forward, you and the ship are merely tools

of a commander gone mad. No, we shall push forward with

my insanity. And what happens will be our

responsibility. Save yourself the distress I

see in your eyes, Romar. The galaxy boils

with crude reason."

As poor Romar stood in knee-high torment

and stared at him, brow troughed and mouth open without

any noise coming out of it, the aft doors opened and

eight armored legionnaires thundered onto the

bridge. The senior among them stomped toward his

two senior officers and asked a question with his eyes.

Valdus held up a staying hand.

"One moment, Subcenturion," he said.

He offered Romar a grip on the shoulder that

failed to comfort either of them.

"I treasure your confidence. I won't fail

it. Once our plan is in motion, and before I

board the acquisition, you and I must pause and

talk. We have a pact to make."

While apprehension plagued Romar's face,

he seemed willing nonetheless to tweeze his body

hairs out one at a time if that was what was needed

to push this ghastly situation from the doorstep of their

homeworlds.

Valdus smiled a graveyard smile, shook

his head, and gave up for now. He offered the

impatient subcenturion a nod.

"You may begin."

The subcenturion spun and gave a single

motion to his squad. The others pulled tools from

their belts, then broke into couples and dispersed

around the bridge.

And they began to dismantle the walls.

Enterprise

"Contact, Captain."

At Uhura's announcement, James Kirk

pushed out of his chair and flexed his hands, coiled with

impatience and a frantic flush to grab for the

controls himself. His voice was gravelly and

chopped through the bridge clicks and blips.

"Sulu, identify it."

"Contact is ... I believe it's the

Alexandria, sir."

"Speed?"

"Warp three point five, sir."

"Scan for Romulan presence aboard."

It took a few damning minutes. Kirk

damned every tick. Even then, he didn't get

what he really wanted.

"Their shields are not up," Spock

reported. He looked at the captain.

"Scanning is erratic. I wouldn't trust it."

"All right. We'll do it the hard way.

Reduce speed to match."

"Aye, sir," Sulu said, his voice tight.

"Reducing speed ... warp five ... four ...

three point seven ... point five, sir."

Kirk hammered his direct contact panel.

"Bridge to security."

A few grueling seconds prickled his skin

before an answer came up.

"Security here. Chief Hanashiro."

His blood boiling and his mind reeling with

pictures of the dozens of possibilities, what

could happen and what might not, which of his guesses

would be wrong and which people would pay--Kirk forced himself

to concentrate on one gram of information at a time.

"Prepare an armed boarding party. Heavy

gear, combat conditions. All weapons on heavy

stun setting. You're going to take over a

vessel."

There was a distended pause on the other end, then

Hanashiro's voice came back, a fifth

higher. "Yes, sir! What's the mission?"

"Unannounced beam-in to the vessel

Alexandria, assuming the ship has been

overtaken by hostiles. Assume innocent crew

are being held aboard and that Romulan

antagonists are in charge of the vessel." Kirk

leaned forward and started to talk through his teeth. "Go

over there, and take it back."

"allyes, sir. I will! Any preliminary

contact?"

"Negative. Contacts can be faked."

"Orders when we have possession?"

"If there aren't any Romulans on board,

confiscate the ship under Starfleet authority.

Establish a Section Three security

blockade. Stop and check every vessel that

passes you. If all's well, send them on their

way with orders to be cautious for possible

takeover."

"Aye-aye, Captain. Boarding detail

will be in the transporter room in three

minutes."

"I'll hold you to that. Kirk out."

He glanced at Spock, needing--and getting--

that stable glance that was longer, calmer, more reassuring

than any other he might have found.

Was he doing the right thing? Was he jumping to the right

conclusions? Was fear, or maybe anger, clouding

his experience?

Could he be as cold as he needed to be? Was he

cold enough right now?

He'd been frightened before in his career, frightened for

his own existence and those of others, prepossessed

with the safety and sanctity of his starship, within whose

walls ran his own blood, pumped from his own

heart, but there were many kinds of fear and anyone who

said anything else was lying. Fear for himself or his

ship was one kind. Fear for another ship ...

A panic at heart level, a kind in andof

itself.

Especially when that ship had one of his two

closest friends on board.

"Sir?" Engineer Scott tipped

cautiously into the captain's periphery.

"Yes, Mr. Scott?"

"I thought we decided our course of action,

sir."

Kirk kept his voice stable. "I've got the

armed parties. I'm going to use them to secure this

sector if I have to go down to the last man on this

ship and drive her myself."

Scott's face took on a quirkish

admiration and he rocked on a heel. "Very good,

sir."

"Thank you, Mr. Scott," he said

solemnly. "Authorize transporting of the

assault team onto Alexandria. Then take

us back to warp five."

Scott nodded, and there was almost a wink.

"Aye, sir, will do."

The captain dropped his gaze, tightened his

shoulders, then released them, and half expected his

neck to snap. He heard Scott move away,

back toward the engineering station to carry out the

orders. In his bones he felt the transporter

humming, and in his mind saw the beams carry his armed

detail to another ship, there to draw arms and take

over.

Half his blood curdled at the idea. The

other half was still boiling. He scanned the

flickering viewscreen as though searching for a

beacon, though he knew helpless others were watching

the night, waiting for him to be their beacon.

A second later, Commander Scott motioned

to Sulu. The starship vibrated with summoned

power. Warp four ... Warp five ...

Ransom Castle

The two Romulans never saw what hit them.

That was because Mike Frarey hit them. Frarey

was a big man, but he was quiet and fast. So he

managed to knock the tails out from under the two

invaders before they even realized the bulkhead had

opened behind them.

"Get their weapon! Mike, pull them into the

closet. Lock them in there."

Nancy kicked at the unconscious invaders

as Mike got them both by th e metallic collars

and hauled them into the utility closet. Sam

Oats slammed the hatch and locked it, then

Nancy pulled out a lipstick dispenser and marked

the wall with a Z.

"What's that supposed to mean?" McCoy

asked, careful to keep his voice down in case

there were more Romulans coming along the quadrangle.

"Zorro. What else?" Nancy popped

off. "So we'll know where they are, and nobody'll

just open the door without being ready to fight. My

crew's trained, too, you know. Now, what's that

thing?"

She limped down the passage, to a

coffin-size piece of metal hanging from two

antigravs. It kept hovering and waited to be

pushed along.

"Why were they moving a hunk of metal through my

ship?"

"It looks like a folded section of

wall material," Frarey said. "See the bolt

holes here? And down there--"

"That don't make no sense." Oats went

to look. "Why would they invade us, then bring a

piece of a wall?"

"Pardon the expression," McCoy

interrupted, "but why don't you ask the logical

questions? Ask yourself where they were heading with it. What's

down that way?"

"Nothing, just the engine room," Oats

supplied.

"The engine room's not nothing, boy," Nancy

grimly told him. "It's a hell of a lot of

power."

"But they got their own engine room!"

"Shut up. I'm trying to think."

McCoy stepped between them to the wall section.

"Let's let the tricorder do our thinking.

Hold that section up, Frarey."

Frarey lifted part of the folded wall section.

One side was white crystalline, the other side

silver. McCoy ran the tricorder along both

sides.

"The white side is lithium hydride ...

hydrogen gas bonded to lithium. Why would they do

that?"

"So the gas could be molded, that's why,"

Nancy said. She was suddenly pale.

"And this silvery material ... is cobalt."

McCoy swiveled from face to face. "What's

the significance of that?"

"I'll tell you what. They're taking this

stuff down to our engine room in order to fuse it

to our warp core, that's what. It means they've

been planning this since they left their own space.

It's not an arbitrary hit."

"What's that mean?" McCoy badgered. "Do

I have to keep asking?"

Bending in a pool of regret and grief,

Nancy looked as though she was ready to throw up.

"It means we're part of a long-range plan of

some kind. The only thing they can do with lithium

hydride and cobalt is turn this ship into a real

big, real filthy bomb."

Chapter Twenty

Bridge of Ransom Castle

Transporting had always seemed to Valdus a

necessary evil of modern technology.

He thought of this all the way through the conscious

moments of the process, and through its stomach-turning

aftermath, until he could move and speak again.

The instant he could see again, he remained

unsure if the transportation process had

truly finished. All he saw around him was a

distortion of shadows and flat areas, indistinguishable

as a ship's bridge or any other organized

work area. Only as he focused in the dimness

did he realize the bridge was made this way on

purpose, painted with blacks and flat dull

colors to confuse the eye, without consideration

to beginnings or endings of panels and consoles,

corners or intrusions.

His analysis was confirmed when one of his own

soldiers came toward him, lips parted to make a

report, and instantly tripped on a set of

steps which were painted the opposite of how anyone in

their right mind would paint steps. The ups appeared

as downs. The poor lighting here perfectly

complemented the illusion.

Valdus caught the poor stumbling sod's arm

and hauled him to his knees.

"Forgive me, Commanderffwas the soldier begged as

he staggered up.

"Keep your eyes open, Legionnaire. This

is a ship patterned with unwelcoming.

Report."

"The ship is ours, sir. Its crew is

imprisoned or locked away. Transportation

of the wall sections has commenced from Red

Talon, and we are moving them one by one through the

ship to the engine room."

"Moving them? You couldn't beam them directly

to the engine room?"

"No, Commander," the legionnaire said. "This

vessel has some kind of antidissolution

shielding in its after third. We attempted

to transport directly, but the best we could do was

to transport the plates into a freight--"

Valdus slapped his hands against his legs and

snapped, "Why did I fail to think! I should have

chosen one of those pleasure vessels when I had

a chance to do so!" He stalked the confusing bridge,

and the only thing he did right was observe the

deck and not trip in front of his minion. Finally

he stopped his stormy circle and thumped the back

of his hand on the helm. "Fool."

"Commander! The sensors! They're shutting

down!"

The soldier plunged for the nearest panels as

half the indicator lights suddenly flickered and

died out.

Valdus swung to his side. "Damage?"

"No damage--power is cut! The power is

cut! How can they cut the power! We have locked

them all away!"

"They must have a remote access of some sort,"

Valdus grimly told him. "Likely they are

familiar with being boarded and have prepared for this.

Quickly--check communications."

They both grabbed for the afterdeck, where the

ship-to-ship communications hid under a black

hood, but after a moment's frantic attempts

to tap into the system, Valdus felt his brow

pucker and he turned to look at the whole

bridge, to take in the appearance of the control

systems as a unit--and realized what had

happened.

"The computer system!" he said. "They've shut

the entire ship down!"

Enterprise

"Contact, Captain--extreme distance. Two

vessels."

"Identify them, Spock."

"Not possible at this distance, sir."

Jim Kirk drew in an uncomforting breath.

"Moving? Are they race contestants?"

Spock squinted into his screens and sounded

unsure when he reported. "Very little movement

registering, sir."

"Two vessels, no movement ... I have

to assume it's them." He paced back and forth behind

the helm. He saw the rigidity in Sulu's and

Chekov's shoulders. Both men had their eyes

fixed on the forward screen, but there was nothing to see

but empty space, and it looked suspiciously

innocent out there.

"Is long-range communication available yet,

Lieutenant?"

Uhura obviously heard the compacted rage in

his voice and lowered her own voice to compensate.

"Long-range subspace is still

flooded, sir. No chance of calling ahead."

Kirk ground his teeth at the high-reaching

effects of somebody's racing trick and pounded the

comm panel on the arm of the command chair. "Mr.

Scott."

"Engineering. Scott here."

"Power situation?"

"She's up to ninety percent sensor

capacity, eighty-three percent thrust and

weapons, eighty percent maneuverability,

seventy-nine percent shielding--"

"Make weapons and shields the priorities.

We'll need them within ten minutes."

"Aye, sir, working."

"I want warp six as soon as you can get it,

and full warp capacity immediately thereafter. Kirk

out. All hands, red alert. Go to battle stations.

Arm all weapons."

Uhura didn't acknowledge, but her voice

instantly flowed through vessel's internal

communications systems.

"Red alert. Battle stations ... all hands

to battle stations. This is not a drill. All

hands report to battle stations ..."

Realizing he'd just ordered Scott to wave a

magic wand over the weapons, and no excuses

allowed, Kirk paused to listen to Uhura's

voice and think of what his four hundred plus

crewmen were doing below decks--rushing to their stations,

snapping all systems on line, double-manning

critical positions, and he felt as though he'd

been given a stimulant.

That made him think of McCoy.

"Mr. Spock," he said, but then he paused.

He leaned in a tense manner on his command chair,

but couldn't bring himself to sit down just when everyone

else on board was up and operating. He was glad

they'd put Tom updeck in the engineer's chair

Scott had abandoned. He couldn't see Tom's

face. He didn't want to look at that gentle

expression of hope in the midst of all this and

remember that an entire culture was sitting on

his shoulders.

Spock had his hands on his controls, but he was

watching Kirk. He'd been alerted, and now he

was waiting for orders.

That means I have to come up with something, the

captain thought. Something Valdus won't

expect. He thinks we're dead--we have

to behave like a ghost.

"We're going to do something we've never done

before," he said. "Attention all decks ... rig

for silent running."

Everyone hesitated for just a moment, to absorb

the ^ws. They'd all heard about it, all been

trained for it, but this procedure was one of those things

that appears in an Academy class for two or

three days, shows up on a test, and is almost

immediately forgotten. Silent while the ship is shut

down, waiting out a situation--t was one thing.

Silent at high speed and closing on an enemy

... that was something else.

"Turn off all running lights," Kirk

said. "Shut down all systems but thrust,

weapons, and life-support, including all

automatic reaction controls and deflector

shields. Mr. Chekov, plot our course to the

two ships we detected, then shut down the

long-range navigational guidance systems."

Chekov glanced at him. "Navigate without the

computer, sir?"

"Navigate with charts and your own hands and

eyes, Ensign. Navigate with a stick if you have

to, but don't let them see you coming. You've been

trained to do it--now's your chance."

Now Sulu twisted around to him, too. "Are

we going into a battle situation without shields

up, sir?"

"De flection energy can be detected," Kirk

said. "The Romulans will be looking for an

active ship. We're going to try to become part

of the background, like a dead rock in space.

That's enough, gentlemen. I don't intend

to explain myself any further."

The two of them snapped forward, chimed a

muddled, "Yes, sir," and didn't glance

anymore.

The bridge of the Enterprise was normally a

fairly loud place. Bleeps and hums,

whirrs and clicks, machines and people working,

correlating information, logging new things, revising

old things. Suddenly the lights started to shut

down. The bleeps began to fall silent.

Harmony and countermelody began to fall off,

drop away. The breath went out from the starship like a

body going to sleep.

The greatest fear of space travelers is that the

kindly shell of precious air and heat should cease

to protect them, and that was what this looked like.

As the lights on the panels shut

down section by section, and finally even the overhead

lights went dim, everyone paused instinctively

to watch, to see how far into blackness the bridge

would retreat. In minutes there were only a few

amber lights left on the panels--no green

ones--andthe milky glow of Chekov's navigation

astrogator.

The Enterprise crept forward, shrouded in

silence.

"Mr. Spock ..."

"Sir?"

"Bring all personnel inward from the ship's

outer areas, secure those areas, then turn off the

heat. Bring the ship's outer shell down to four

degrees Kelvin. Do your best to make sure

there's no leaking heat, and disguise any exhaust

to the extreme aft portion of the ship."

"Yes, sir."

Working under the lingering strains of the Rey presence

on the ship, and in his own way engaged in a

battle of will, Spock forced himself to concentrate as

he fed the orders throughout the ship. There was strain in

his face, tension in his arms.

And enough was enough.

Kirk turned to the port side. "Tom," he

said. "It's time for you to go below."

Tom looked more afraid to leave than to stay.

"Oh, please, Captain, I'm trying to be

calm--"

"No arguments. You're affecting my crew."

Kirk raised a sharp finger. "Off."

The Rey man stood up, unsteady,

disappointed, blinked those big eyes, and went

shame-faced to the turbolift.

As he turned back to the forward screen,

Kirk heard the hiss of the lift doors and thought

better of watching Tom actually leave.

Spock gazed at him briefly, and remained

silent.

"Mr. Spock," Kirk said, "secure the

ship, then shut off all sensor emissions."

Surprised, Spock drew his hands from his

panel and straightened. Uhura spun around. The

two engineers on the port deck popped up from

their controls. Even Chekov turned. Sulu was

the only person who didn't overtly react, and

Kirk could see him fighting not to.

Spock stepped down to the command deck and came

to the captain's side. "We will be flying blind,"

he said. "We may not be seen, but we will

not be able to see."

"I know that. I'm going to assume Valdus

put his power back up to one hundred percent almost

immediately after leaving Starbase 16. I was running

the race, and didn't. Now we're ten to eighteen

percent below power, and if we don't get in the first

kick, we're finished. I want you to shut the

ship down completely except for the warp engines.

All hands keep movement to a minimum. Stay

calm. No unnec activity. Clear the

corridors. Prevent any electronic

leakage. I don't want anything but speed,

Mr. Spock, speed and readiness. Hold the

impulse drive in abeyance. As little active

power as possible. Once silent running is in

effect, I want you to emit a subspace

signal of one watt."

Spock's dark eyes went narrow and he

hesitated. "One watt, sir?"

"Yes, one watt. Only one."

"A very ... small signal, sir."

"That's the idea. I want the Romulan

to squint into the darkness because he thinks he's seeing

something. We'll look like anything but a starship.

I want all his sensors fixed on that one little

watt as we approach. When we get up

close, we broadcast everything we've got in

one singular blast--blow out their sensors

completely. He'll be squinting into the dark, and

we'll shine a spotlight in his eyes. Get

ready to do it."

He slid into his command chair, his thighs aching.

Unable to send or receive, without so much as a light

on her hull, the starship didn't even hum around

him today, but only streaked through the darkness of

space, now dark herself and no more than a slice

of the night.

"We're flying blind and we could pile into a star,

but if that's the chance we have to take in order to save

a planet of strangers, then that's what we'll

do. They've killed people and they've ruined an event

that was intended to generate nothing but goodwill.

They've made me lose the race, and I've had

enough. It's time for them to lose."

Red Talon

"Subcommander ... a signal. Very faint."

"Where?"

"From the direction we came."

Romar crowded the subcenturion at the science

panel and looked at the readouts. "Another

racing vessel?"

"Not enough signal to be a vessel, sir," the

subcenturion said. "Reads only point zero

zero zero one."

"Moving?"

"I can't tell with something so small."

Frustration gnawing at him, Romar pushed in

closer. "Can you tell if it is natural?"

"What else can it be?" The subcenturion

leaned back and held a hand to the screen in a

gesture of disgust. "Nothing can be so minuscule

while representing manufactured power."

Still, Romar could not trust what he saw on the

screen. "Heat readings? Energy emissions?

Thrust trail? Nothing? Are you looking at your

controls?"

"I read nothing, Subcommander. You see it for

yourself."

"What can it be, then?"

"A probe perhaps? That drifted into the area on

the currents of the race exhausts. So many ships

in one area--"

"Space is vast, Subcenturion," Romar

snapped. "Too vast to be stirred up. Turn

all available sensors on that blip, high

intensity. Pull in every emission it may put out.

And put me in contact with Commander Valdus."

"Communications on the other ship have been

debilitated--"

"Then use his hand-held communicator! Are you

waiting for a night's rest?" Romar leaned past the

subcenturion and struck the necessary pads.

"Commander, this is Romar. Do you receive?"

Several seconds plodded past. The hand-held

communicator took more power, and more time, to draw in

the signal and notify the landing party of the hailing.

"This is Valdus."

"We have contacted a signal, Commander, but it

is much too faint to be a ship."

"An emission? Is there power involved?

Movement?"

"Impossible to tell at this distance. We're

focusing all sensors at full intensity upon it,

attempting to identify it. It may be a probe,

or one of the Race Committee markers ... but it

seems too faint even for those."

"Romar ... raise your shields."

Romar leaned closer--absurd, because

the officers on the bridge could have heard a

whisper, and he had no intent to whisper.

"My shields?"

"allyes."

"But we have taken and secured our target. No

ship can possibly approach us without alerting our

sensors and having the shields come on

automatically. ... I resist using the shields

without reason. They could be detected from far off.

Our plan could be foiled for our caution. And if

our shields are up, we won't be able to contact

you through the hand-held system."

Silence blended briefly with the tension that always

came with a mission of conquest. If only those who

were conquered could realize that fewer deaths would come with

simple submission.

"I suppose you're right."

"Don't fear, Commander," Romar said. "I will

keep sensors focused on the signal. If it

increases or grows near, the shields will go up."

"Very well. Soon we will be finished altering

this ship's warp core, and we shall send her on her

way to the planet of witches. Nothing will stop it

then--no one will think to stop it."

"Do you want more personnel there? Is the

ship's crew still fighting back?"

"There is some sparse resistance. We can

deal with them. No matter, Romar, for in a few

minutes the entire crew of this ship will be fused

to the planet of Gullrey, and Gullrey will be

melting before the eyes of the Federation."

Kirk could have picked up the tension on a

knife and used it to butter bread.

"Approaching the Romulan ship's last known

position, sir."

Chekov's voice cracked.

"All hands, stand by ... sensor emitters

on alert ... prepare for amplification of all

systems, maximum broadcast. All

frequencies open ... all lights on standby

... heat emission control, prepare to flood the

outer sections. Phasers, stand by to fire, tight

beam, short range. Avoid hitting the

Castle with heat wash."

"All systems on standby, sir. Ready

to flood all emissions power grids."

"Position, Mr. Chekovffwas

"Coming up to five-tenths light-years distant from

last noted position--three-tenths ...

two ... one ... ten light-days ..."

"Helm, reduce speed! Now, Mr.

Spock--blow them away! All systems on!

Phasers--fireffwas

"Overload! Overloadffwas

The bridge of Red Talon erupted in

sparks and smoke as their own power was fed back at

them in a violent gush.

"Full shields! Return fire! All

systems to battle condition!"

"It's the starship, Subcommanderffwas the weapons

officer gasped. "How can they be here? We killed

them!"

"Obviously we failed to kill them enough!"

Romar snapped, and backhanded the shocked man

across the cheek. "Fire at them! Fireffwas

He thrashed across the bridge, pushing injured

crewmen out of the way and shoving blinded and confused

others into positions where they might be able to operate

something. The putrid stink of burned circuits

flushed up at them so thickly that they could barely

breathe.

"We can't aim!" the subcenturion shouted

across the flashing consoles.

Nearby, the centurion batted at a fire and

gasped, "Contact the Commander! Warn him!"

"No! We need the shields!" Romar shouted

back. "Return their fire!"

"I can't aim at them!" the weapons officer

choked. "The targeting computer is backwashed!

They're everywhere!"

"Then shoot at everything!" Romar brayed.

"Shoot!"

The officer grabbed for his console with burned

hands, and took potshots into the darkness.

Romar clung to the helm as the ship was struck

from above and plunged on the descent, then almost

immediately was struck from the side, and twisted

backward, and was struck again as it turned.

A dozen times they aimed and missed until their

weapons board was flashing with lights warning of

depleted power. A dozen times the starship whipped

at them out of patches of sensor blackness caused

by the sudden sensor blinding. By the time Romar

realized how deeply crippled his own ship was,

there were six men lying dead on the bridge and warning

buzzers driving him to madness, and there was only one

more course.

"Veer off!"

The centurion spun around and staggered toward

him. "We're abandoning the commander!"

"Then abandon him!" Romar grabbed the man by the

collar and drew him close, then pitched him

viciously across the deck. "It is his own order!

Veer off! Veer toward Imperial space!

High warp!"

"Yes, Subcommander ..."

"Corus! Get someone up here to plot a

path! Corusffwas

"Corus is dead, Subcommander."

"Then get someone else!"

Romar faced the forward screen, its image of the

starship looping toward them again with her phaser

ports glowing, and the glowering image of the Ransom

Castle in the background--

And in an instant that image was suddenly

launched into the distance, falling farther and farther behind.

He fixed his glare on the two ships. Even

in the thunderhead of battle, he found himself searching

in his own soul for what he had seen in Valdus's

eyes, to catch that fading memory from a generation

ago, to wonder if he was making the right decision.

He understood the latent content in those eyes ...

a man who thought he should have died years ago

aboard an ill-starred ship.

Ghosts of Scorah were in Valdus's eyes.

The commander was summoning the crypt of his fellows,

that he too might crawl in.

Romar bit down on thoughts of turning back,

to beg a change in what was happening. The course

was set and would snap to bits if he tried

to change it. The starship was there, and nothing could be

done to drive it away.

He wiped a bleeding cut on his face with the

back of his hand, and fought to get a whole breath of the

contaminated air in his lungs. He felt his

innards tighten. Waves of grief thrashed over

him.

"I am your son now," he murmured, "and I

will fulfill your purpose."

Chapter Twenty-one

Below Decks, Ransom Castle

A nauseating shimmer and whine dispersed, and in its

place were the bracketing walls of this ship's

port quadrangle passageway.

James Kirk shook off the effects

and gripped tightly the phaser in his hand. He

glanced to one side, then the other, at his five

security men.

"Disperse," he said.

Two men went forward, two aft, and one stayed

with him.

"Let's go," he snapped to the man who would be

his personal backup, and led the way laterally through

the dark passages of Ransom Castle.

Only now did he remember what an

industrial ship looked like on the inside.

Color-baffled shadows, unseen ledges, dark

doorways, bolted hatches. The ship was built

like a medieval castle, with double locks and iron

hasps, back-to-back freight holds, cold

crawlways, and spiral steps between decks.

As he moved, he whipped his communicator up

in a single motion that opened the grid without having

to use more than one hand.

"Kirk to Enterprise."

"Spock here."

"Are the close-range sensors back on

line yet?"

"There is some frequency confusion after having

the systems shut down, but we are clearing it.

Mr. Chekov is endeavoring to pinpoint the

Romulan anatomical readings aboard

Ransom Castle. So far we have only three

readings, all of those in the after sections near the

engineering deck. Security Officer Brennan

is on his way there with his squad. He already forced

open two holds and found several members of the

crew, injured but alive."

"Any sign of McCoy?"

The silence was suddenly heavy before Spock

answered.

"Still searching, sir," the Vulcan finally

said. And another silence followed. "Sir, are

you using the transporter aboard that ship?"

"Me? No, of course not. Why?"

"We're picking up unauthorized

transporter use and cannot isolate the source."

"Could it be a malfunction in your alert

system?"

"Very likely, given the shutdown. I will

pursue it."

"What about the Romulan ship?"

"Their course was directly back toward the

Romulan Empire at substantial warp.

They do not appear to have come about."

"We gave them a good hammering," Kirk said.

"They deserved it--"

"Captain!" The security man grabbed him

by the shoulder and the two of them hit the floor of the

narrow passage just as a disruptor bolt sizzled

over their heads.

Without asking for permission, the security man

returned fire, leaning with an elbow between

Kirk's shoulder blades.

Kirk tried to get up, wriggled backward,

but the guard wasn't about to let him up when there was

a chance to protect him.

"Back off, Ensign--"

"DeCamp, sir," the man said, and fired

two more times before he dared let the captain up.

The two of them skirted under an open hatch in

the ceiling, and ducked around a corner.

"Romulan disruptor, sir," DeCamp

said. "I'd know that sound anywhere."

Kirk clipped, "How would you?"

"Heard it in my head a hundred times. Been

waiting for this my whole life."

Kirk looked at the young man, andfor all the

enthusiasm, it was a sorry sight.

"Let's hope you have to keep waiting," he

said, and pushed the guard back another step.

"Sir, let me go first. I'm expendable."

For a nice down-home polite kind of kid who

probably used that "sir" on his father as well as

his commanding officer, DeCamp had a hell of a

grip.

"Nobody's expendable in my crew,

Ensign," Kirk said. "But thanks. I'll go

low, you go high."

"Yes, sir, I'm ready." The boy

grasped his phaser with both hands and pushed closer

to the corner.

Kirk dropped to one knee, and the two of them

came around the corner firing.

In the flash of their weapons two helmeted

Romulans went down, and two more found an

instant to dive for cover, shielded by their comrades'

flailing bodies.

Kirk rolled to the other side of the passage,

giving DeCamp a clear shot--but before they could

aim again, the two remaining Romulans were

dropped by shots from behind them--f the other end of the

passage, around another corner.

The deck was littered with fallen Romulans

now, and the passage fell ghostly

silent.

Kirk stayed down, his phaser aimed.

DeCamp had his long arms straight out,

holding his own phaser braced in his hands. He

looked at Kirk, and the captain nodded.

"Attention!" DeCamp called. "This is

Starfleet! Drop your weapons and come out of there

right now!"

Nicely said. Not an expletive to be

heard. A polite takeover.

I'd have had an expletive for them,

Kirk thought.

The shadows moved at the end of the passageway.

He braced his legs.

"This is Dr. McCoy! Are you from the

Enterprise?"

Kirk stood up. "Bones, it's me. Are you

secure?"

McCoy's flushed face popped out at the end

of the passage, and an instant later came

Nancy Ransom with her first mate and another

crewman who was limping.

"Stand guard here," Kirk said to DeCamp, and

jogged out to meet them. When McCoy got to him

first, he asked, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Jim. Boy, am I ever glad

to see you!"

Nancy Ransom stepped over a tangle of

two Romulans and said, "Yeah, I'm even a

little bit glad to see you."

"All this ship's sensors and computers are

down, Jim," McCoy said, "which gave us the

chance to sneak up on them, section by section. It was

Nancy's idea."

Kirk looked at her.

Nancy blushed and palmed back some of her

scruffyou brown hair and said, "A trick I

learned at the Academy. You can kick the girl

out of the Fleet--"

"But they sure didn't get the Fleet out of the

girl," Kirk said mildly, and found a grin for

her. "Congratulations. Your engine room is

secure too. Have you got a report for me?"

"Yes," Nancy gasped, sucked breath.

"The Romulans beamed over here and brought

sections of wall plate with them and started moving

them down to my engine room. We analyzed the

plate and found out it's a lithium hydride and

cobalt compound. There's only one thing they can use

that for."

Kirk's heart hit his feet. "Fusion

incendiary."

"And I think I know why," McCoy

interrupted. "It's those Rey people. They--"

"They leak emotion, right?"

Astonished, the doctor glared at him. "How

did you find out about it?"

"Spock's a sponge."

"Oh--t makes sense. Well, what do you

know? Wish I'd been there ... after talking

to Mike here, and Nancy, and a couple others, I

concluded that the Rey's emotional levels are

contagious somehow."

"Yes," Kirk said. "They have a little control,

but not much. After all, you can't will yourself to sweat.

Or to stop sweating, for th at matter. The

Romulans are susceptible, and because of that,

they're scared." He paced down the

passageway, looking at broken railings and

shattered remains of disruptor fire. "I'd be

scared too, Bones."

"But what about the lithium hydride and

cobalt?" Nancy persisted. "They bound it around

my warp core."

The picture got uglier and uglier in his mind

as Kirk sifted back through his education--the

unspoken part of his education, the part with subtle

killing and assault training, and how to make

bombs out of toothpicks and saltine crackers.

"I see ..." he murmured.

Mike Frarey shook his head. "What do you

see? What were they going to do with our ship?"

He lowered his voice. "Early hydrogen

bombs were actually fission bombs surrounded

by fusion bombs. The fission bomb was the

detonator. This time, the Romulans planned

to use your warp engines as the detonator, so they

surrounded your warp core with the fusion material.

As the engines exploded, the heat would set off a

fusion chain reaction in the hydrogen, and there would be

an incredibly massive explosion."

Frarey stepped forward, his face reddened. "But

what's the point of the cobalt?"

"After the ship punched a hole in the Rey's

planet atmosphere," Kirk told him, "and

drove through the mantle and ignited, the cobalt's

purpose would be to salt the bomb. It would

vaporize and release a cloud of intensely

radioactive cobalt vapor into the jet stream.

The Romulans would have eradicated what

they must perceive as a potent weapon against them."

"Gives me the drains," Nancy said.

"I'da killed 'em all if I'd known."

Kirk gestured down the passage at the lump

of unconscious enemy bodies. "You'd have

killed 'em all anyway, Nancy.

DeCampffwas

"Sir!"

"Secure those Romulans."

"Aye, sir!"

Nancy snapped her fingers at her first mate

and crewman. "You two, help him tie up those

suckers." She waved her confiscated Romulan

disruptor and said, "I'm going down to take charge

of my engine room. You got any problems with

that?"

"None at all," Kirk said. "Bones, you go

with her and render medical assistance. Authorize

to our boarding party that she has command. They're

to assist in freeing any of her crew and securing

any other hostiles on board."

"Right!"

As they flooded down the passage, Kirk

snapped his communicator up again. "Kirk

to Enterprise."

"Spock here, Captain."

"This ship is nearly secure, Mr.

Spock. What are your sensor readings now?"

"I was about to notify you, sir. We have

hazy readings of several low-level Romulan

presences--"

"Probably the unconscious ones."

"allyes. And one additional reading that is

relatively strong. Slightly agitated but

regular lifesigns, and moving about."

"Moving where, Mr. Spock."

"The bridge, Captain."

"Take over the boarding operation. I'll

notify you in a few minutes."

"Captain ... you're not going alone."

"Yes, I am, Mr. Spock, I am.

I'm going up there and box the ears of the

individual who ruined our good time. Beam me

directly from here to the bridge of this ship."

"Ready when you are, sir."

Kirk glanced at his phaser. Heavy stun.

He squeezed the hand grip.

"Energize."

"Commander, stop where you are."

Valdus turned sharply. Why hadn't he

heard the whine of transportation? Concentrating

too hard? Too much excess noise from the

crackling systems broken and burned when his

boarding party took this ship?

No matter now. There stood the captain of the

Enterprise, alone and armed. He hadn't come

through the open hatchways, but beamed directly here,

for he stood beside the viewscreen's vision of open

space as a sentinel stands a post.

"Captain," Valdus said.

James Kirk pursed his lips in annoyance

because now he had to be polite, even for a minute.

"Stop what you're doing."

Quiet, subdued, Valdus said, "Some things

cannot be stopped."

Valdus didn't move or make any

attempt to defend himself, reading that a Starfleet

captain would talk to him before taking more primitive

action.

Simply watching the Enterprise's captain

was an education, and he allowed himself that. A compact

and muscular young man, James Kirk had an

old man's eyes. Pouched with gamesmanship,

strict, shaded, sparked from internal

electricity, those eyes were angry magnets.

Unable to look away, Valdus wasn't

sure he wanted to. He knew he had put

those lines of anger there today, and somehow he was

proud.

He leaned forward. "This is the warp core

detonator. I'm sure you know all about that

by now. The thoroughness of Starfleet boarding parties

has a reputation."

"I know about it. Move away or I'll stun

you."

"Look at the way I'm standing. If you stun

me, I will fall forward onto the detonator."

Kirk glared. "Better that," he said, "than

let you take this ship and poison a whole

planet. I'm as ready to die as you are, as long

as it's out here, in the middle of nowhere."

Valdus offered him a judicious nod. "You

look furious, Captain Kirk."

Kirk's eyes flicked to the open hatches,

then back to Valdus. Caution dominated every

muscle in Kirk's body.

"It's fun to be furious," he said.

"Until you push that thing down, you're under arrest.

Charges range from barratry--fraud,

smuggling, plundering and violation of treaty--

to conspiracy to commit mass murder."

"A very big charge," Valdus said. He

kept his palm on the detonator but remained

motionless.

Kirk tried to despise him, but it wasn't

easy. Soft-spoken, contemplative, not harsh,

not cold, Valdus wasn't like other

Romulans.

As if I've met that many ...

Maybe it was only the reputation, or the

rumors, that he was remembering. He felt the

withering of an old habit--a human's peculiar

tendency to think about Romulans as just Vulcans

gone sour.

That wasn't what he was seeing right now.

What prodigal creatures they are. I

wish we could get them to join the Federation.

With one eye on Valdus, Kirk scanned the

helm with the other. Wouldn't do any good to stand here

talking while some timer ticked away that he

didn't know about.

"You can stop me, Captain," Valdus said.

"I understand. But there are things that cannot be stopped.

The flame is going out of Starfleet's

adventure. Some day there will be no flame left.

You will go from day to day and preen your feathers with nothing

else really to do."

Kirk scowled at him.

"Not in my lifetime," he said.

Valdus paused, searching the captain's

glare, and understood. James Kirk wasn't

going to let the flame die, not as long as he was

alive to pester questions out of the galaxy, then hammer

the answers into place. What a unique young man

... with such genuine electricity in his eyes.

Valdus had expected arrogance. After all,

Kirk had stopped him. With the wide switch

cupped under his palm, Valdus could blow this ship

to slivers and accomplish nothing.

But the Starfleet leader wasn't satisfied

yet. He was still concerned about the other people in the lower

decks. Anger was building in that face and in those

eyes, fury was still rising.

Valdus felt a wash of confidence. The

Empire would ultimately prevail because this

captain was still concerned about a gaggle of the conquered.

"I can forgive your reasons, but not your

actions," Kirk said. "It's not my job

to decide what to do with you." He wagged his

phaser toward one of the two large step-through

passageways. "Either push the button now or

I'm going to turn you over to my security squad

and turn this ship back to its captain and crew."

He angled toward the step-through that led to the lower

decks.

Valdus blinked at him. Nothing else. His

lips were parted but there was no sound. The muscles of

his throat shifted and pulsed. Breath was caught

deep in his throat.

Kirk stepped toward him. "I said move."

There was a flash of movement behind Valdus.

"Tom, no!"

But the Rey had already moved.

Valdus collapsed forward, over the helm.

His hand skidded across the three-inch diameter

detonator switch, then his elbow, then his chest.

Kirk plunged forward, but the button was down.

An instant later they were nothing but a giant

ball of ignited incendiary glittering in some

distant planet's midnight sky.

So why were they still looking at each other?

Kirk shoved Valdus off the button, then

caught Valdus by both arms as the Romulan's

legs buckled and he went down on his knees on

the deck.

Unauthorized transporter use ...

Tom stood on the ladder of the deck hatch,

halfway up into the bridge, his hands still raised,

still clutching his weapon by its neck.

An old glass whiskey bottle, the

bottom smashed away to a jagged glass shard, was

embedded deep under Valdus's right shoulder

blade. The fabric of his command jacket puckered

around the bottle's body, and there wasn't even

any blood yet.

The Romulan canted forward over Kirk's

arm, unable to take a whole breath because of the jagged

glass buried in one lung. Against his arm Kirk

felt the palsy of agony and astonishment. Enmity

dissolved under Valdus's begging grip, so clear

that Kirk put down his phaser and devoted

attention where it was needed.

"Tom! Get your hands off him!"

He slapped Tom's hands away from the

bottle, then suddenly didn't know what to do

next. The incongruous formed glass shape

protruded at a horrid angle from Valdus's

back, brutally efficient in its unlikely

purpose, and Kirk actually felt the

pain spread deeper.

The Rey man turned loose of the bottle and

recoiled. Valdus fell forward, rolled against

Kirk's grip, and landed on a thigh on the

deck.

Kirk held him up and stared a t the big

orange detonator button.

"A dummy!" he spat. "You were distracting

me. Why?"

He shook Valdus.

The commander coughed, but it came out as a wheeze.

Kirk took a step to keep his balance, tripped

twice on the clunky deck structure, and

somehow kept the Romulan from falling backward

onto the thing protruding from his back. Underneath

all his cautions and the strung-up tension of just

getting here, there was a plain human being who

couldn't help but react when he saw that look in

somebody else's eyes--t helplessness, caught

in the unkind grip of pain.

"Tom!" Kirk scathed. "Is this the way

to stop anything they're doing? What's the matter with

you!"

Blinking those big brown eyes from a shadow,

Tom looked like a sad child. He wasn't proud

of himself, even though there weren't any regrets in

his face.

"We aren't very strong, Captain Kirk," he

said, "but we're not idiots."

That seemed to be his whole story.

After saying it, the Rey man looked away,

down.

"What about your sister?" Kirk demanded. "You

haven't given us a chance to try to get her

back."

Without looking up, Tom said, "I don't

tease myself that my sister is still alive."

Exasperated, Kirk nodded toward the

Romulan. "If you were here, why didn't he

feel it?"

Tom glanced at the victim of his bottle and

his determination and simply said, "I wasn't

afraid anymore."

Kirk grabbed Valdus by the collar with one hand

and used the other to snap his communicator up.

"Kirk to Enterprise. Medical emergency.

Three to beam over, immediately."

With Tom hovering on the other side of the hatch,

Kirk only had Valdus to worry about. He

did all he could to hold the gasping

Romulan up, leaned against a deck box, and

waited.

Nothing happened.

He brought the communicator to his lips again.

"Kirk to Enterprise! What's going on

over there?"

"Contact, Captain," Scott broke

through. "Vessel passing at high speed!

Identification--the Romulan ship!"

"Evasive action," Kirk blurted. "Do

whatever you have to."

"They're not closing on us, sir!

Vectoring around us to a new course ... powering for

high warp speed. Bearing ... right for the finish

line!"

"Captain, that's it!" Tom gasped. He

crawled toward them on his hands and knees,

faultily pointing at the screen. "He was

stalling for time so they could get past you! A few

seconds at hyperlight speed--y'll never

catch up!"

As the three of them stared at the streak on the

forward screen, Valdus hung over Kirk's

arm and felt his bones shake, found the strength

to raise his head and seek the viewscreen.

Yes, there it was ... his ship, his Red

Talon, blazing past them at hyperlight

speed. He pushed forward against the captain's arm,

and the thing in his back bit him again.

He gagged on his own bile, but kept his eyes

on the forward screen, on the rushing hope of his

Empire.

"The beauty of light speed," he rasped.

"You'll never catch him now ... you can't stop a

fully shielded battleship barreling in at high

warp ... Expand or die, Captain ... my

civilization must be the one to survive."

Kirk leaned him against the deck box and knelt

to look at the Romulan at eye level.

"Why can't we all survive?"

Valdus choked as he tried to laugh. His

vision was closing in on both sides, the curtain

of his life closing on the image of his ship as it

disappeared into its destiny.

As the curtain darkened, he managed to turn

to Kirk.

"Because it never happens that way," he said.

Kirk looked at the forward screen, where

seconds ago the Romulan ship had shot

into high warp speed.

"If you want fair," he murmured,

"don't enter races."

He brought the communicator up.

"Enterprise, beam us aboard!" he shouted.

With his thumb he recalibrated his signal.

"Spock, come in, quick."

"Spock here, Captain."

"Transport back to the ship right now. This

race isn't over!"

THE REAL STARSHIP RACE

Chapter Twenty-two

Enterprise

"Full about, starboard!"

"Full about, aye!"

"Mr. Scott, emergency warp speed!"

"Helm! Phasers, three points abaft

starboard--fire!"

"Three points abaft starboard, aye ...

phasers firing! A miss, Captain. They're

beyond range for--"

"Uhura, hail that ship. Warn them off their

course."

"Trying, sir, but they've drenched the channels

in high-frequency noise--"

"Go to Flags and Pennants Code.

Semaphore ation-F to all other vessels.

Coming into danger. Try to flash X ray through to the

Romulans. Stop intentions. If they don't

understand that by now, they haven't been flying in the

same galaxy we have."

"Trying, sir ... sir, they don't accept

X ray. I doubt the signal's

flashing through the impedance they've put up."

"Keep trying. Scotty, I want more

speed."

"Warp four, sir. Powering up for warp five.

Maximum safe speed in ... three minutes,

sir."

"Uhura, try long-.tance communications.

Hail Intrepid and Hood at the Gullrey

solar system. Warn them what's coming and not to let

the Romulan ship through."

"Inhibitors still hampering the systems from the

Starbase mechanics. I'm trying to clear it, but

there's nothing I can do about the Romulans'

high-frequency noise. Doubt I'll be able

to pierce it."

"Try anyway. Send the warning. Somebody

might pick it up and relay it."

"Aye, sir."

"Warp five, Captain," Scott said as the

humming of the ship went from an easy harmony to a

notable strain.

Kirk snapped, "Go to warp six."

Everybody tightened a little. They didn't

look at him, but he felt the change.

He didn't need the glory. He would be

thrilled, relieved to let Ken Dodge or

T'ationoy take the medals for destroying the big

threat.

If only he could make that happen, he'd pin

the medals on them himself.

If he could just make it happen. Wish it.

Beg it. Whip it. Order it ... his hands were

shaking.

And his crew was sweating over their controls,

snapping at their own departments, pounding on their

equipment, but a starship against a warbird with plain

raw speed--

There were a lot of people here. The bridge seemed

crowded. Almost every station was manned. Scott had

an assistant with him at Engineering, Chekov had

a young lieutenant manning the upper deck

Navigation station, and another ensign was at the

Defense and Weapons subsystems monitor.

Everyone was at battle stations.

Where was the battle?

He wanted one. He always preached against

battle, but right now it was all he wanted. A

chance to stop and square off and use cleverness and

quickness, plunge this way and that, use his ship's

defensives and offensives the way he was

trained to and the way his experience had taught him, but

he wasn't being given that chance. The Romulan was

refusing to face off with him and let the best man,

ship, crew, win.

This was just raw running, wide open, into a wire

at throat level.

A big wire with a lot of innocent people standing on

it.

"Captain," Spock said, as he leaned over

his screen, "Romulan is at warp factor

six."

Kirk snapped a glare at him, then at the

forward screen.

"Go to warp seven."

Sulu turned and looked at him. They all

did.

Then Sulu said, "Warp factor seven ...

aye."

The ship hummed and protested, but speed whacked

into another dimension of warp. On the upper port

side, Engineer Scott started sweating. Then

everybody else started.

The indicator lights all over the bridge

flickered for attention.

Kirk prowled again. If they could just get

close enough for a phaser shot into the Romulan's

propulsion system ... one bolt without loss of

speed ... just enough to slow them down, overtake them

...

Speed. It was all he could think about. Speed.

"Captain," Sulu said, his voice gargling,

"he's pulling away from us ... now at warp ...

eight."

Some of the crew looked at Kirk. Mostly the

younger people. Then they looked at their immediate

superiors.

Some of the superiors were looking at Kirk now,

too. Scott, Chekov, Spock. Sulu

wasn't looking at anything but the screen, his

narrow shoulders hunched and his hands spread and

poised over the controls, shaking a little. But he was

listening.

Kirk swallowed once. Then again.

"Go to warp eight," he grated.

"Warp," Sulu began, then had to clear his

throat. "Warp eight, sir."

From the bowels of the ship beneath them, a low whistle

came up. A painful sound of effort. A

guttural buzz coming through the deck as system after

system was sacrificed to the speed. The

ship was going into automatic shutdown, conserving

everything but life-support, and even some of that.

They were all sheeted in sweat now, as

air-conditioning systems were reduced to the bare

minimum. Comfort was a privilege the ship couldn't

afford right now. She'd keep them alive, but that was

all.

He damned himself for letting the ship be hobbled

for any reason. They'd be on that Romulan already

if he hadn't agreed to run this race. He would

never again ask his ship to be less than she could

be. Now she was ripping herself apart because he asked

her to. He turned to pace the command deck again,

but this time, he stopped.

He found himself looking up at the science station.

At Spock. Yet it was the face of Valdus

haunting his thoughts. Honest, determined Valdus.

And he wondered how the Romulan Empire could

be made less afraid. He'd failed to convince

Valdus that the Empire had nothing to fear from the

Federation.

He'd failed, and he wanted somehow

to unfail. He wanted to fly into Imperial

space waving a big white starship and go stand before

the High Supreme whate ver and convince them.

If only he could do it in the next half

hour.

Spock came to the rail.

"What do you think?" Kirk asked.

"He is on a suicide mission," the

Vulcan said. "Burning his ship with excessive

speed has no effect on him. I doubt he'll

allow us to outrun him."

"What's his ultimate purpose? To just slam

a fifty-thousand-ton projectile into that planet

at high warp?"

"Possibly. Such an impact could

conceivably do much damage. The ship would

instantly disintegrate." Spock shifted his

weight from one foot to the other as though discussing

cabbage at a fruit stand. "However, I would

suspect this is a more clearly calculated

backup plan. They probably didn't

off-load all of their lithiumstcobalt compound, and

have sufficient supplies left on Red

Talon to--"

"To poison that planet, I know," Kirk

snapped. "What are the chances that Intrepid and

Hood could see him coming?"

"Under normal circumstances, fair,

given that they were posted outside the solar system."

"But?"

"But at last report the two starships were

intending to stand guard at the planet itself. Mr.

Chekov's analysis of his trajectory

implies the Romulan is screening himself with

Gullrey's sun. At such high warp, there will be

only instants between the sun and the planet. The

vessels standing guard at the planet--"

"Won't even see him," Kirk interrupted

again. "In fact, they'll become just part of the

fireball. We're finding out what Allied

ships found out during Earth's World War Two,

Mr. Spock. It's almost impossible to stop a

kamikaze. If we don't get him ...

nobody will."

Spock nodded. "Yes."

Kirk turned and raised his voice. It

rasped anyway. "Scotty."

Looking up, brow drenched in sweat, Scott

blinked. "Captain?"

On the command deck, James Kirk drew a

breath.

"Go to warp factor nine."

The ship was tearing itself apart around them. Kirk

could feel the shudder coming up through his soles. A

grinding that wasn't supposed to be there. And it was

getting worse by the second. He felt

slightly nauseated and knew the inertial damping

fields were being compromised.

Below decks, four hundred plus crewmen were

sweating and dashing, lashing and bandaging, trying to keep

the vessel in one piece.

"MIE shut down!"

"Leave it down."

"Structural integrity field's being

compromised!"

"Then compromise it."

The upper deck might as well have been a

ledge on a skyscraper. Passing the navigation

main station, Kirk was walking the ledge and trying

to decide whether or not to jump.

From across the bridge, Scott tried again with a

shout. "Captain, severe risk of meltdown!"

"It'll have to melt," the captain spat, and

turned his back on his engineer. "Lieutenant

Boles, how long for the Romulan to get

to Gullrey?"

At the upper deck navigation station,

Boles didn't answer, but only bent forward and

picked at the controls.

Ten seconds later, he was still picking.

Cranked up tight, Kirk asked, "What's

your report, Lieutenant?"

The kid glanced up at him and made the

mistake of explaining, "Just a little nervous,

sir."

"You're relieved," Kirk said. He

gestured to the ensign manning defense

subsystems. "Ensign Michaelson, take

over this position."

At the nav station, the lieutenant's face

dropped all its color. Some of that might've

been relief, but most of it was shock.

At least he had the sense not to argue as the

captain walked away.

Kirk didn't glance back. Somebody else

could do the coddling. That lieutenant would either never be

nervous again or would never admit it. Either one was

fine.

"Mr. Sulu," he said, "attempt

long-range phaser fire. Try to knock him

off course. Shave his speed down. Anything."

"Aye, sir," Sulu said, with a lot more

stability in his voice than anyone felt.

The phasers fired, a sense of electrical

power bolting through the ship and out into open space.

On the forward screen, thick lances of energy went

forward into infinity.

They were all thrown forward suddenly, as if

somebody had hit the brakes just for an instant,

then the speed fought to come back. Several people rolled

onto the deck.

Kirk ignored them.

"Do it again, Sulu."

"Aye, sir, phasers firing."

Again the energy coughed from the ship, and again the ship

balked under them.

"Loss of closing distance," Sulu reported,

glaring into his screen. "Attempting to close,

sir."

"Sir, every time we fire," Scott said, "we

fall off our pace by a hundred thousand

kilometers."

"I know," Kirk muttered, "I know. Cease

firing."

The science didn't add up. A strong

phaser bolt at superhyperlight speed gulped

too much power from the engines, caused a

speed fall-off that they couldn't afford. What could

they afford? The ship was falling apart. The

Romulan was falling apart too, but a kamikaze

doesn't care if the dive rips his wings off.

Bitter fury scorched him until he felt

his lips burn and his heart shrivel with the worst thing

of all--impotence.

"We can't break his shields at this distance,"

he ground out. "Can't get in front of him, can't

warn ahead ... we're racing behind him so we can

record the death of a civilization."

Impotence. Worse than dying, worse than

killing, the utter helplessness to do anything. He

hated it. The Enterprise was all that could

possibly stop Red Talon now, and they

couldn't do it.

"Spock," he barked, "give me an idea!

Any idea. Any of you--I'll take

anything!"

He dropped to the command deck and took the back

of his chair in his hand and shook it, just as he had

shaken Valdus by the shoulders and tried to make him

understand.

"Give me a way to stop him!"

The silence was damning.

The cleverest, the brightest, the most daring, and

nobody knew what to do. Nobody had a way.

Nobody had a suggestion that would let him drill

forward through the next few minutes and change the

future.

"Drill," he murmured.

Spock looked up. He was the only one who

noticed.

"Captain?"

Kirk's eyes cut into the forward screen.

"What's the extended range on a pinpoint

phaser? The same energy ratio, but roll it

all down to a stream a couple millimeters

across?" He looked sharply at Spock. "Could

it be done?"

Spock's expression turned suddenly

vague, then sharp again. "Concentrate the energy?"

"A diamond-tipped drill, Spock! Can

it be done? Would it punch through those shields at this

distance?"

Sulu tilted his head toward them without taking his

eyes off the screen. At this speed, he couldn't

afford to.

"Their hull structure's all self-sealing.

S's the warp core. It wouldn't do any

more than poking a finger through."

On the upper deck to their left, Scott

stomped to the rail.

"Even if it got through the shields," he said,

"it wouldn't bore through the warp core containment. But

with lithium hydride packed around it--he's

carrying the dynamite. All we have to do is light

the fuse."

"If that's what they've done," Sulu added.

"If not, sir," Scott said, "we'll have

lost too much speed to catch up. A maintained

phaser shot like that--"

But Spock interrupted, and a lilt of hope

sparked his voice. "It could work."

"I'll take the bet," Kirk bolted.

"Mr. Scott, you work on keeping our speed up

while we fire. I don't care where you get the

power. Just get it. Mr. Spock, adjust that

phaser down to a pinpoint. We're going to get

them with a needle instead of a club."

"Fire the phaser, Mr. Sulu."

"Firing phaser, sir."

The ship was rattling. Warning bells rang.

The overhead lights were so dim that the monitor

screens put out more glare. Conduits snapped,

sizzled, sparked, but other than jumping to keep

their hands from being burned, the crew was under orders

to ignore almost everything but the needs of warp nine.

Jim Kirk battled down a need to wrinkle

his nose at the smell of burning circuits.

He didn't want anyone to see him do that.

On the forward screen, a long red streak fed out

from the ship, thin as a fishing line, and reached into the

impossible distance until it disappeared somewhere in the

blackness.

"Phaser's causing an energy competition in the

reaction chamber," Scott sighed from up there.

"More speed, Mr. Scott," Kirk asked.

"Push harder."

"Already at warp nine point three, sir." The

chief engineer sounded like a whipped slave. "Could

blow up at any time."

No technical reports, no heat ratios,

no reactant injection numbers, no

catastrophic shutdown details.

Just "blow up." Dead men had no reason to be

specific.

None of the crew was warning him anymore. They

weren't telling him it couldn't work or

what was breaking down. They knew he wasn't

stopping.

Kirk found himself wishing to just get it over with.

Any instant now, boom. If they couldn't stop

the Romulan, better they just blow up. If they

lived, and the Romulan made it to Gullrey, then

there would be war. The Enterprise would be here

to testify.

He didn't want to testify. To start a war.

He would rather blow up.

Strange. If Valdus's original plan

had worked, there probably wouldn't be a war.

Nobody would quite understand what had happened. The

Federation and the Romulan Empire might have

fallen into another hundred years of distrust, but that

would have been all.

Now there would be war. A planet dies, a

starship lives to tell why.

He almost wished the ship would hurry up and

explode.

But she didn't. She held together. They pushed

and pushed, and she held.

Warp nine point three ... nine point four

... nine point five ...

The narrow red line kept on glowing out, forward

from the ship into the infin ity of space.

Under the science station the wiring trunk blew

open, sending sparks and bits of material against

Spock's shins, then on the other side at

engineering subsystems another one went. The crew

flinched and jumped out of the way. They glanced at

Kirk, but he didn't budge. Didn't even

look.

His heart kettledrummed in his ears. He

knew it was the same for all of them.

"Phasers overheating, sir," the ensign at

weapons reported.

"Maintain fire," he said. "Scotty,

take every safety off everything."

"She'll blow up, sir."

"Then let her blow."

Minutes. Long ones. To just stare at the

screen with nothing to do but think.

Spock and Sulu were pulling the phaser tighter

and tighter, even narrower than a fishing line.

Micromillimeters. Nobody had ever done that

before. Could it reach far enough? Would it even stand up

to particles in space?

The phaser only had to drill through for an

instant. Just an instant. All that energy

concentrated on one tiny point ... through the

shields, through the outer hull, the inner hull, through

the containments ... all it had to do was strike that

lithium hydride packed around the warp core.

A match on gasoline. Fusion was ready to start.

All he had to do was start it.

Even a partial detonation--enough to start a chain

reaction. Two or three grams beginning to fuse

... it would all be over in a microsecond ...

"Approaching the Gullrey solar system,

Captain," Chekov said. "We'll be there in

... three minutes. He will beat us by one

minute, twenty-six seconds."

The starship screamed in their ears. Bolts

exploded around the bridge as pressure tried

to release itself by breaking the least important parts

first.

Two ships, state of the art in two

cultures, blasted through open space at killing

speed, sutured by a fine red line.

Spectator Ship Gamma Star

"Look at that!"

"Wow!"

It was a good thing everybody happened to be

looking at the finish line just then. Anybody gone

for a hot dog or to the bathroom missed a hell

of a show.

A giant tangerine-colored blast of ball

lightning with a white cloud inside spread in a

sudden thorn tree of energy. Huge and blinding but

for the distance, still sparking bits of metal

illuminant and radioactive gas blew

outward, hot in spite of space, the ten

billion decimal candles of spitting

phosphorus shards couldn't decide whether they

wanted to burn up or freeze to death.

Moving at immeasurable speed, the savage

light show fumed out a cometlike white tail for a

few seconds--long enough to paint space and make

quite an impression.

And as if that wasn't enough, the crowd gasped

when a Federation starship suddenly bolted through the

giant plasma cloud, plunging out at high

speed, spitting red-hot sparks and leaving a

donut of atomic heat expanding behind it.

Everyone rjcd. She was beautiful! Every line of

her white wineglass body was as vivid as an

architect's pencil drawing, seductive and

broken-in, flying the best she knew how. The

viewscreens flickered and buzzed, trying to keep

up with her.

In their minds they all heard it--.Swoooosh.

As she slammed past them, they cheered and laughed and

ducked tiny yellow-hot bits of spark that showered

their ceiling-high viewscreens.

Jubilation pealed through the spectator ship.

What a race this had been!

As the sparks died in the cold of space, a

skinny great-grandmother asked, "Was that in the

program?"

Nobody answered her. Nobody really cared.

The outrageous pyrotechnics were still fresh in their

minds, and they couldn't wait to see it all again on

the stadium screen at the closing ceremonies.

The white starship suddenly veered--v sharply--

to avoid the planet of Gullrey, then seized out

of speed and appeared to be shivering as it dropped

to sublight faster than anybody thought was

possible.

A vacationing shuttle pilot shook his head.

"I didn't know any ship could stand that!"

The man beside him shoveled popcorn into his

mouth and nodded, "Those starships are tough."

"Was that an emergency shutdown?" a

twelve-year-old kid asked his teacher.

"Naw," the teacher said. "They're okay. Just

showing off."

"I dunno," the kid muttered. But he

didn't want to argue his way out of a good grade.

The applause settled down to ear-to-ear

grins as the crowd watched the starship drift along

on momentum, not even applying thrust, until she

simply drifted gracefully across the finish

line, with her wings high.

Applause erupted again as the spectators

watched the starship drift between the two committee

ships, officially finishing the race.

The performance was extravagant and madcap,

something people of all kinds appreciated, especially

when they'd come hundreds of parsecs to see it.

As one father herded his children through the crowd, away from

the enormous viewscreens, he glanced back at

his wife.

"Starfleet sure knows how to put on a great

show, don't they?"

EPILOGUE

Chapter Twenty-three

Closing Ceremonies, Monn

Oren City, Gullrey

"And it's with the greatest of joy, and in the name of

our broadening interstellar community, that I

present the First Place Platinum Plaque and

possession of the El Sol Doubloon

to Captain Miles Glover and the crew of

New Pride of Baltimore!"

The newly reelected president of the Federation

wasn't the dynamic type, but there was something

accommodating about him that the throng of spectators

appreciated. He was thin and economical of

movement, his hair a tumble of gray curls, his

faded blue eyes much slower than the brain behind

them, failing somehow to reveal a p-wise

intelligence that had won him a reputation for being

able to read minds.

Everyone knew that just by being here he was honoring

them, the starship race, and the Rey, because he very

rarely left Starbase One. And here he was,

about as far from there as he could get in friendly

space.

Behind him, a thirty-meter viewscreen had just

shown the parade of ships that happened yesterday, and

before that the balefire explosion not explained by the

newscasts until this morning. Now everybody

knew.

They knew about the sacrifice of at least two

innocent lives, maybe more, and the destruction of the

Romulan ship, though nobody had a clear

idea of what exactly had happened. The

reasons, apparently, had died with the Romulans.

At least, that was the public line.

Jim Kirk sat with his officers in the first ten

rows of seats, mantled by thousands of others in the

huge stadium. All over the Federation, the

ceremonies were being broadcast on screens.

He watched with perfectly settled emotions as

the energetic Miles Glover jaunted up to the

podium to accept the El Sol Doubloon on

behalf of his cheering crew, and bowed to the applause

of millions.

Suddenly Kirk was glad he didn't have to be

up there. All he wanted to do was sit here with

Spock on one side and McCoy on the other,

and let his shoulders relax, and nurse the

knuckle burns he'd gotten from touching the wrong

things on Nancy Ransom's ship. Around for

rows and rows of the competitors' section, were the

captains and crews of all the racing vessels.

He liked the feeling. He glanced past

McCoy and his own officers to where Nancy

Ransom sat with Mike Frarey and the officers of

Ransom Castle. They were cleaned up, but

somehow no amount of cleaning would take the rough edge

off them, especially with Nancy wearing a

telltale neck brace.

Oh, well ... they were alive and they were here.

Two points for the good guys.

Beyond them, Hans Tahl and his crew from Great

Lakes, T'ationoy and hers from the Intrepid,

and not far down there were Ken Dodge and the officers

of the Hood wearing sashes of honor--everybody

looked good enough to get married.

"The trophy for second place," the

president continued, "goes to Captain Kmmta

and the crew of 552-4."

After another round of cheers, the president handed

the trophy to an Andorian woman who approached

the podium, then explained what he was doing.

"Due to the life

support-requirements of the captain and crew of

552-4," the president explained, "they are

watching from their ship, and the trophy is being accepted

by Ambassador Yeshmal, Federation

representative to the Tholian Assembly."

The Andorian woman took the trophy, bowed

somewhat extravagantly, and went back to her

seat without glancing at the thousands of faces

watching her.

"Third place award," the president said,

"goes to Captain Sucice Miller and the crew

of the Ozcice, the host entry!"

The crowd went wild. The idea that the host

planet had managed to show in the first Great

Starship Race was especially invigorating for

everybody. Of course, there were jokes about the

race having been rigged, but nobody really

believed it, and beyond that, nobody cared.

Everybody had a good time, right?

Kirk sighed. His crew had earned a good time.

He hoped they were having one now.

"Part of decent competition," the president

went on, "is the trick of deciding whether to stop

when another ship has distress, or to take

advantage of that distress and gain ground. In

all fairness, most competitions consider it fair

to leap over a fallen entrant, and let

authorities handle the injuries. One vessel

in particular went above and beyond the call of

competition, even beyond the call of duty, by risking

their own lives on behalf of a fellow entrant.

Despite the fact that some might say this is their

job, certainly it is no mere job to place your

own vessel in danger on behalf of other s.

Nor is it the simple call of duty to stretch

all capabilities beyond limits ... for the sake

of a planet of strangers. A special award,

my friends, newly created just last night by the

Race Committee at the request of Captain

Nancy Ransom and the crew of Ransom

Castle."

His voice boomed in the audio equipment,

resounding across the stadium, across the planet, across

the Federation.

He looked down, to his right, into the

competitor's seats, and he held out a hand.

"To Captain James Kirk and the crew of the

U.S.So. Enterprise, we would like to present

the Spacemanship and Sportsmanship Award."

Before Kirk could even think of getting

up to acknowledge the completely unexpected

honor, Nancy Ransom pushed out of her chair

and went to the podium. She took the award from the

president and walked it down the aisle to where the

Enterprise officers were sitting.

And she handed the big platinum medal to Kirk

without a ^w.

Entire sections of the competitors' seating areas

rumbled to their feet, and the rumble was drowned out by the

roar of cheering. Somewhere in the vast audience,

somebody waved a handkerchief, and almost immediately the

trick rippled across thousands of spectators.

In a few seconds everything from handkerchiefs

to gloves, tissues to children's sweaters was being

waved in honor of those who had lent a hand.

In spite of the cool Gullrey spring,

everybody was a lot warmer when the crews sat

back down and the president was able to speak again.

"We who merely watched the race and were so

joyously entertained by it must from this day forward

remember the true definition of sportsmanship.

Therefore we must remember ... Enterprise."

After Kirk and his officers had taken their

reluctant bows and the raging applause finally

faded into the Gullrey skies, the president

spoke again into the booming mike, "We the living

citizens of the Federation happily welcome the

planet of Gullrey, whose people have so

enthusiastically embraced our people and our many ways.

You must, as we all must, accept the unsavory

events of this race and take those as a

pre-notification that there is a price to liberty.

It has been said that the price of liberty is

eternal vigilance. That is true. You have lived

at the edge of a sector that Federation people have defended

with their lives. Now we will extend our boundaries

to defend you also, and you are no longer strangers.

We expect you to give up your secluded

innocence and to share the responsibility, the pain,

and the great rewards ... of freedom."

As he paused, four Federation dignitaries

left their seats. They'd already been introduced--

Doctors Beneon and Vorry, the two

scientists who had been the first Rey to see life

from any other world, whose perseverance in watching the

sky had earned them that reward, and Captain Ken

Dodge and his first officer, who had followed their

instincts and answered a faded blip that most

spacefarers would log and ignore.

The four stepped to the front of the podium.

Together they raised a five-meter banner of

silver stars and a star chart on a navy blue

background--the shimmering seal of the UFP.

The president moved his thin body to the banner,

careful not to trip on the stage steps, reached over

the top hem, and attached a bright golden star to one

quadrant of the banner's star chart grid.

Then he stepped back to the microphone.

"Gullrey, welcome to the United Federation

of Planets," he said. "Welcome to the

future."

The balefire torch erupted across space,

one giant convulsion of gas, fire, and crystals

made a wild white tail of brilliant

radiation and seemed in complete control of its own

blast until the starship blew through it and changed the

ball into a ring.

On the taped picture there was also applause

and cheering, recorded on one of the spectator

ships as the unexpected final show occurred.

Then the screen winked out. The computer

politely regurgitated the cartridge, then

went silent.

Jim Kirk took the small recorder

cookie out of its slot, and backed off a pace.

"I thought you should see what happened. If it were

my ship," he said, "I'd want to be sure."

On the bed in the Rey hospital room,

plainly aware of the two Starfleet guards on this

side of the door and the four on the other side,

Valdus let his head lean back on the raised

pillows.

"Thank you," he managed.

Kirk gazed down at him and couldn't keep

empathy from chewing at him.

His own ship was undergoing repair. Would be for a

long time. There hadn't been enough power left on

board even to keep the Romulan in the brig or

under guard in sickbay. So they'd brought their

prisoner here, to a hospital on the host

planet, the first bit of interstellar crime to stain

the shores of Gullrey.

But he wasn't worried about this planet, or

even his own scorched and bruised crew. He was

worried about Valdus.

This was the worst thing that could happen to a ship's

master. To be left alive after his crew is dead

and his ship destroyed. The worst of all.

To go on living.

He looked at Valdus's tired eyes and the

sallow skin behind the beard that was meant to be

fierce, and somehow this person didn't look like either

a bastard Vulcan or a venomous Romulan.

This man was a culture all by himself.

Completely separate. Maybe something new.

"What will happen to me?" Valdus asked,

without looking at him.

"You'll be transferred to the Starship

Intrepid, sent back to Starfleet Command,

probably tried, probably incarcerated.

Someday you might be sent back or traded in a

diplomatic maneuver."

"I hope not. I'll go back disgraced."

"Or a hero." Kirk found himself offering a

charitable grin. "You never know how these things play

out. The long run can be very long, Commander."

They paused together without any more parrying, and any

trace of animosity that might have remained between them

just didn't seem to be there anymore. There also

wasn't anything to say. Kirk knew he

certainly wouldn't have accepted comfort if he had

to live beyond the lives of his crew, and there was no

point foisting comfort on Valdus just to make himself

feel better. Where this incident was concerned, neither

one of them would ever feel any better than this.

He tapped the computer cookie on his palm and

moved toward the door. The two guards stepped

aside, but at the last second, he stopped.

"Commander," he began, "there's one thing I

want you to believe."

Valdus turned his head to look at him.

Kirk ticked off a couple of seconds

until he could warm the Romulan's expression

with his sincerity.

"We have no intention of conquering the Romulan

Empire," he promised.

The commander raised a single brow--a gesture

Kirk found familiar.

"Then you've lost," he said. "Because we have every

intention of conquering you."

Maybe the lights were dimming. Or the sun was

going behind a cloud. A threat? Portents and

predictions? Vultures in the trees?

Serpents under the bed?

Maybe.

Jim Kirk grinned his snake-eating grin.

"But not today."

Chapter Twenty-four

Enterprise

"Feeling better after a night's rest, Mr.

Spock?"

"Very well, thank you, Captain."

"Your report?"

"At least two months' round-the-clock

repair at a starbase. Starfleet is arranging

for a hyperlight tug, and we are scheduled for dry

dock at Starbase 16 in ten days. The warp

nine strain, plus the hot metal bombardment and

electron shower as we came through the remains of

Red Talon, necessitate major

repair."

"Yes, of course. Convey my apologies

to Mr. Scott."

"I already did, sir."

"Oh ... thank you. Send a message ahead

to Starbase 16. I want Scotty

to supervise the repair himself and I don't care

how much the base engineers squawk about it.

Authorize leave for the crew for the duration of

repair."

"Very well, sir."

"And I don't want anything replaced that

isn't in pieces."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Enterprise just showed us how tough she is.

Her spine, frame assembly and exostructure

turned out to be a lot stronger than we thought.

Even stronger than her designers thought. I

don't want any of that strength repaired out of

her. I don't care if they have to glue her together

like a jigsaw puzzle. Make sure she's the

same ship when they're done."

"That is ... most discriminating, sir. I'll

oversee the step-by-step repair plans myself."

"Thank you, Spock."

"You're quite welcome. Also, there was a

private communiqu@e this morning to all

participating Starfleet officers, from the

president. On behalf of the Federation's many

independent systems, worlds, countries,

companies, and individuals ... he thanks you for

not winning the first Great Starship Race."