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  "Of course," Kirk said, with the tone of discovering a law of nature.

  "Of course?" McCoy protested. "Spock jumps at a conclusion across a few light-years—and it seems obvious to you? Vulcan 'logic' must be contagious these days."

  Spock looked as if he might for once have the grace to be embarrassed. "The inference was somewhat remote, but compelling, Doctor."

  The woman smiled. "Indeed. I would be interested to hear that logic, Mr. Spock."

  Spock faced her with some expression McCoy could not read. "I have made something of a study of your record."

  Kirk turned to make his own study of the Vulcan.

  "Sola Thane," Spock said, "was, among other things, the first non-Vulcan to participate with distinction in a Vulcan mental event which requires a high order of philosophical sophistication and pure logic."

  "I suppose that's your department, Mr. Spock," Kirk said. "She also served with some distinction in Starfleet—including saving a starship in the Endurance incident." He turned to the woman almost accusingly. "If Mr. Spock is right—and I am sure that he is—you were slated to command a starship—when you resigned and disappeared."

  She met Kirk's eyes. "I observe that you have made something of a study yourself, Captain Kirk. As I of you."

  "Why did you give up your starship?" Kirk persisted.

  "There was a question I had to solve. It required going back to my own roots."

  "There was no record," Spock said, "of your planet of origin."

  "No."

  "It was Zaran," Spock said definitively.

  It was not a question, but Sola Thane nodded. "We are both hybrids, Mr. Spock. We share your Human mother's world, which was my father's world."

  "That explains it," McCoy muttered. He had been trying to place her look, her species. She was half-Human and looked almost wholly Human. But her other half was no more Human than Spock's Vulcan heritage—and it doubtless held as many surprises and pitfalls for them as mere Humans. The native species of Zaran was little known. It was supposed to have been a hunting species and was now kept in some form of subjugation by Humans who had fled Earth in the collapse of the old totalitarian empires. McCoy seemed to remember a couple of medical notes on the Zaran aboriginal species. He had not expected to meet a specimen here. "The females of your species," McCoy said, "didn't they have some special role in the hunt?"

  "Doctor, they were the hunt." She looked at McCoy for a moment but did not pursue it. "Captain, we have very little time. This environment is hazardous. I have been broadcasting a signal which may discourage some predators, but its time is running out. I propose we adjourn to the Enterprise. If some mysterious effect has claimed you, it has done its job so thoroughly that I cannot detect the difference. And if it had claimed me, I believe you would be lost in any case. I require fast transport. Millions of lives and the survival of my species on Zaran depend on it."

  Kirk looked at her carefully for a long moment. "Fast transport is all you require?"

  "The rest I must do myself."

  Kirk pulled out the command code message from the Chief of Staff and handed it to her without comment. A Free Agent would be able to read it. Or a Starship Captain. No one else.

  But the tawny eyes read more than the message. "I see," she said. "Your ship has been placed at my disposal. I have not been entirely out of touch. Captain Kirk, you have become something of a legend. It is a legend of a ship which runs on loyalty to one man, and of a First Officer who serves only that man. All legends have their reason. It is unwise to tamper with them. I do require your ship for my purpose, but I require it with its working legend intact."

  Kirk inclined his head fractionally. "My impulse would have been to cooperate fully with a Free Agent. The matter was not left to my impulse or judgment."

  She nodded, seemed to come to a decision. "Captain, if you were less than you are, I would not tell you why the Chief of Staff would give me this authority. Your judgment is not in question. But you cannot know my mission. And my mission involves not only the fate of my species, but the fate of Starfleet. And, incidentally, of the Old Man himself. Possibly even the fate of intelligent life in the galaxy. My authority does not extend to telling you how."

  Kirk was silent for a moment. "I thank you for telling me that much. I should warn you that I don't work well—blind."

  She nodded. "Nor do I. But I cannot help you beyond that." She extended the card to him. "Let us agree, however, to endeavor not to reach the point which would make me use this over your resistance."

  For the first time Kirk smiled fractionally, a little wryly. "I note you do not say that you will not."

  "No."

  His eyes took up the challenge. "All right. That's fair warning."

  Her eyes laughed. "No. It is not. But perhaps you will not have to find out everything I should have warned you about."

  Kirk smiled dangerously. "Then I won't warn you, either."

  McCoy sighed, and if he had set words to that music, they would have been "Here we go again."

  He turned to look for the expression of patient tolerance on Spock's face—and did not find it. The expression which was there McCoy could not read, or did not want to believe. Nor, McCoy suspected, could the Vulcan believe it himself. It was not even the prehistoric look McCoy had seen when Spock's reversion to the past in the ancient ice-caves of Sarpeidon had permitted Spock to want Zarabeth. It was much worse than that, and McCoy had the sudden sense that it was much more dangerous.

  This was not the euphoria of the spores, nor the effect of some virus. This looked a lot like Spock, in his right mind, hit by some effect he himself had never experienced before in response to a woman.

  McCoy looked back to Kirk and suddenly he knew that they were all in trouble. It was not even "Here we go again." It was some look McCoy had not seen since Kirk had found—and lost—Edith Keeler. Perhaps not even then. Edith had reached to summon the future out of the past where she had been born but never belonged. But this woman was at home in their present and in the stars—doing the one job which matched the danger, the scope, the moral hazard of a Starship Captain. Given Kirk, how could he not respond to that? And God help them all, how had McCoy never realized that there was bound to come a time when two men who had virtually become one would be one in this, too?

  He saw Kirk turn to Spock, see the Vulcan's look, start to dismiss it as if he must have read it wrong, then look again and know that he read it exactly.

  "Spock?" Kirk said almost involuntarily.

  Spock visibly pulled himself together. "Nothing, Captain."

  Kirk did not believe it, but he saw that Spock wanted badly to get back into his Vulcan suit. "Very well, Mr. Spock."

  But the woman had caught it, too. "Mr. Spock," she said, "you also have become legend—on Vulcan and between the stars. I have long known of that legend and followed it with interest, and with a wish to discuss one or two points of philosophy and logic with you. But now I would like to know what caused you to study my record."

  Spock looked at her stonily now, but did not attempt a denial. "In the legend about you—your behavior sounded … logical. That is not—common."

  "In my sex?" she asked.

  "In your species. At least—not in the one we share."

  She laughed then, a low, clear chuckle. "And did you find my behavior logical, Mr. Spock? I would be most interested in your opinion."

  "Yes," Spock said. "But you seemed to be enjoying it."

  She laughed again. "There, Spock, is the point of philosophy I wanted to discuss with you."

  "Not here," Spock said. "I have permitted myself to become illogically distracted. We should not have remained here."

  "Now we can go," Sola agreed. She turned toward her scoutship. "Beam up. I will need the scout."

  But then McCoy saw her whirl, crouching, even before his bio-belt gave warning—as if her senses were built into her own skin.

  Some animal leaped out from the sheltering flank of the scou
tship.

  It resembled no Earth animal, but the jumbled impression which came through to McCoy was of something like a saber-toothed wolfhound—as tall as a man, and faster.

  It leaped for Sola Thane's throat …

  Chapter 8

  Spock saw the coil of light flash out from Sola Thane's hand, circling the animal's throat, stunning it and bringing it down at her feet.

  Spock's phaser was in his hand, but he had not been quick enough to fire before she had struck.

  "There is a pack," she said as calmly as a Vulcan might have.

  But Spock and Kirk were already moving, as if choreographed, to stand at her shoulders and cover her back. And McCoy moved in, fast, to form a hollow square.

  "Beam up," Spock said, reaching for his communicator. But the clearing erupted animals. They were faster than snarth and could cover a hundred meters while a hunter thought about it.

  But Sola Thane's coil of light was there to meet them, its tip flipping from one to another by some dynamic of skill which Spock did not understand but was forced to commend as a fighting skill to equal any he had seen. He saw no fear in her, merely an intent concentration—somewhat superior to his own at the moment.

  He focused on dropping animals. And on keeping an eye on Kirk. The Human was not up to his usual standard and this sudden stress could drain him, cause him to make a wrong move. Spock noted that he was trusting Sola with part of the job of guarding Kirk's back, as if he could trust both her logic and her commitment. But though her logic and her light coil were used faultlessly, it was not enough. Animals fell, stunned—but not soon enough. Momentum carried the great beasts, even unconscious, to crash at the fighting party's feet, or through it.

  Spock pulled Kirk out of the way of one, Sola deflected another. A third caromed off McCoy's shoulder, knocking him half-senseless until Sola steadied him.

  Kirk was fighting and dodging with most of his usual agility, but Spock knew that the Human was burning his last reserves and could not keep it up.

  Spock reached his communicator, but it was knocked out of his hand as an animal hit him squarely. It was an impact which would have broken Human bones. Spock was jarred. He was still rolling up from the fall when two animals broke from the cover of the scoutship and leaped for Kirk's throat.

  Sola dropped one out of the air, but the other was past her and at Kirk's throat. Kirk got an arm up, and the animal's teeth closed on the arm, not the throat. But twice Kirk's weight jerked at the arm and hit him, at express speed, bearing him down. He fell, hard, and was out.

  Sola's light-line coiled around the animal's throat, knocking it out and pulling it off, and Spock poured a phaser stun into it when it was clear of Kirk.

  But Kirk did not move and Spock saw the white-to-the-bone look of deep shock in the Human's face. Spock dropped to one knee beside the Human's body and his left hand clamped a pressure point to stop the bleeding from the arm. He fired across the body as the animals kept coming.

  Sola fought her way toward Spock, foot by foot, until she stood beside him. Her free hand dropped to touch his temple and he felt the flow of some kind of mental contact which was alien to him, something which struck him as born of jungles and of ancestors even more fierce than his own Vulcan breed. It cut right through the shield he had set up, and he knew it would undermine his defenses, perhaps fatally. But he sensed her purpose was to save Kirk, and he could not deny her.

  Then the mental touch seemed to gather amplifying force from him and to flow out through her in some great and terrible mental warning—the psionic hunting cry of the most formidable species on its planet.

  Spock saw the charging animals pull up or veer off, confused, and in some dim recess of their rudimentary brains—terrified.

  One crashed into McCoy again at the last second, and Spock saw him again get hit on the already damaged shoulder and knocked out.

  "The scoutship," Sola ordered in the tone of command, and Spock was giving no argument. It would take the Enterprise longer to hear them and beam them up than they had.

  He picked Kirk up in one arm and was not surprised to see Sola get an arm around McCoy and move him bodily toward the double doors of the scout.

  The animals were losing their terror, starting to move in again. The scout's double-doors opened to Sola Thane's voice, and she heaved McCoy in and turned to cover Spock as he stepped up with Kirk. She dropped an animal as she jumped in after him. The doors closed on the muzzle of another great beast, then recoiled like turbolift safety doors, threatening to let it in. Sola snapped the last of her weapon's charge straight into its face and it fell back. The doors closed with finality.

  The scoutship began to shake with the impact of animals still crashing into it in their fury. As a rule, they could not have damaged it, but Spock was dubious of the recent repairs.

  Sola bent swiftly to check McCoy and appropriated his medical kit. "The doctor is unconscious, an arm dislocated, but in no danger," she said. She turned to Kirk, running McCoy's medical scanner with precision.

  "He has been suffering from old injuries and cumulative stress," Spock said flatly, "and I believe that a Oneness has made persistent efforts to absorb him, with some momentary successes. He is in great danger."

  She read the results on the scanner, and Spock saw her face, under the tawny look, go white. It told him all he needed to know, about both of them.

  "Mr. Spock," she said. "I assume you can fly this antique. I have had some medical training as a Free Agent."

  Spock merely nodded. If it flew, he could fly it. A Free Agent had the field-medical skills of a doctor. At her gesture he yielded Kirk into her care, putting him down on a narrow bunk while she knelt beside it and replaced Spock's pressure-hold with her own.

  Spock stood up and looked down at Kirk's bone-white face for a moment, but what he saw was the shape of a long emptiness if the last of that living color and presence ran out.

  He went forward, and his eyes and hands methodically read the controls of the obsolete Starfleet-type scout—possibly one of the small Federation ships which had vanished in the Marie Celeste sector. He could have flown it, blind—which was virtually the case. He no longer tried to disguise from himself that the mental assault from the Oneness and his unsuccessful efforts to shelter Kirk from it had eroded his own mental defenses against the one thing he feared most. And the woman had completed his undoing. He felt a dark rebellion against his fate, a fate which she had sealed. But then again, perhaps he had already been too far down that road to save himself. There was nowhere to go and no one to go to. Vulcan was weeks away at maximum warp. Humans were far too fragile, even if he would, or could—

  Spock fired the impulse-power engines and lifted the ship slowly out of the clearing, careful not so much of the jury-rigged repairs but of Kirk's life hanging on a thread which might snap at any sudden acceleration or stress.

  Spock flew the scoutship as if its cargo were infinitely fragile and infinitely precious.

  He saw his hands locked whitely onto the controls, and Spock of Vulcan knew that the non-emotion disciplines were finally crumbling entirely, and that that was his death sentence.

  Chapter 9

  Kirk's consciousness seemed to float somewhere above his body, as if he could look down and see competent, swift hands bind up his bleeding arm, press a spray hypo home, then hold a pressure-point again as even the dressing did not fully stop the bleeding.

  All of that seemed to have nothing to do with him.

  He was vastly remote from it all, unconcerned.

  It came to him rather quietly that this fit the descriptions of the death experience. Somewhere he rebelled against that, but even the rebellion remained remote, and he knew he did not give it the vital force he would have given it—had given it, many times. Once too often, possibly.

  "The animal's fangs injected some systemic poison," the woman's voice said. "I've given him everything I could against the poison and shock, but in his weakened condition—it could kill him."


  "We have killed him," Spock's voice said. "Emotions have killed him. We knew the danger. We stood there talking like children. I do not exempt myself. Least of all myself."

  "And me," she said, not evading the tone of accusation.

  "Yes." The Vulcan spoke in a tone of barely leashed ferocity.

  "It is not logic to ignore what is real, Mr. Spock. Including emotions. But it is true that I miscalculated, seriously."

  "How?"

  "I had thought you would still be locked into your Vulcan pattern."

  "Hope that I am. And that he does not die."

  "It is too late for you, Mr. Spock. If he lives, you will have to acknowledge what it means to you that I exist."

  "It can mean nothing," Spock said harshly. "Not if he dies. And not if he lives. In either case, I am a dea—" The Vulcan's voice broke off. "I am—a Vulcan," he amended, but Kirk still felt that he heard the Vulcan's voice saying "I am a dead man."

  Kirk felt himself jerked back toward his body as if his soul were on a string. Once, on Vulcan, when Spock had thought Kirk was dead, Kirk knew that the Vulcan had answered T'Pau's "Live long and prosper, Spock," with "I shall do neither, for I have killed my Captain, and my friend." That knowledge had pulled Kirk through a tough one once or twice. But what could the Vulcan mean now—that he was dead even if Kirk lived? Something to do with Sola? From some strange perspective Kirk could look down to see Spock's hands go white on the controls. But the Vulcan's face was drawn and faintly flushed, as if with some fever.

  "He will not die, Spock," Sola said. "And—neither will you."

  "What do you count on to save him?" Spock asked. "That he saw you? That he—loved you?"

  "Partly," she said. "But chiefly, that he knew you saw me. I do not think he would miss that. Nor leave you now. He would rise from the dead, if necessary. Which it may be …"

  She bent over Kirk then and took his face between her hands. "I do not give you permission to go. No one here gives you permission."