
           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 stared 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 everywhere, 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
 maple-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 rail 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 in 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 in 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 monitoring 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, and 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 answer 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
 something 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 shoulders
 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
 gaze 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 dust 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

   "Captain, 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.
   Instinct 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
 civilization. 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
 starbase."
   "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 sure 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 the 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?"
   "Deflection 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 that 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 at 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 whatever 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 infinity 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 others.
 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."

