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  He knew already that he could not go. For the white hands on the controls, if nothing else, he could not go. But there was else: the hands which held his face, and a universe which could still deliver such a surprise package …

  He had been tired for a moment. That was all.

  He felt a kind of rushing sensation, and once more his consciousness seemed to be at home in the body. There was pain now, but also he could feel the touch of Sola's hands as if a current flowed from them.

  He opened his eyes and looked up into her face. He could hold to consciousness only for a moment, but he saw that she knew he had come back, and from how far.

  Then he drifted down into ordinary darkness, but from somewhere he thought he heard Sola say, "He will live, Spock. And you will have no excuse not to deal with what I am."

  "What you are—is his."

  "Spock, I may be the only non-Vulcan who would know why it will take more than words to save you. There is only one act which will."

  Spock spoke then in the tone of murder. "Do not presume to pity me!"

  "Never, Spock. But I do not give you permission to go, either."

  Kirk tried fitfully to stir, alarm bells going off in his head. It was always a mistake to think of the Vulcan as if he were Human. He was not. What deadly Vulcanism did Sola and Spock know about, which Kirk did not? Something which was triggered by what Spock could not deny he had felt for Sola? And something which Spock could not have, because he counted her as belonging to Kirk …?

  Abruptly Kirk knew that he had seen Spock's stressed, fevered look before, long ago on Vulcan. It was the pon farr—the time of mating, the madness which Spock had dreaded and hoped to be spared.

  Kirk fought for consciousness, but he could not make it. And would she know what she had to do …?

  McCoy stirred and opened his eyes. His own pain was blinding, but he held the dislocated arm to his side and hitched himself over to where Sola worked over Kirk. He read the settings she had used on the spray hypo and looked at her with a new professional respect. But when he ran the scanner over Kirk, he scowled. "He's hanging by a thread," he said under his breath to Sola. But Spock heard. McCoy saw the look on his face and wished he had kept his mouth shut.

  In moments Spock was signaling the Enterprise and matching velocity to settle them into the landing bay.

  "Full medical team to the landing bay," Spock ordered. "The Captain's condition is critical."

  Then they were in and the landing deck was pressurizing around them. The moment it was pressurized, Chapel, M'Benga, and a medical team were swarming toward the scoutship, guiding null-grav stretchers.

  But Spock turned from the controls without a word and came and took Kirk up in his arms. Sola surrendered him without comment, but kept her hand on her pressure-hold which was still stopping the bleeding.

  McCoy thought that the look in the Vulcan's eyes warned of some dangerous Vulcan state. Spock carried Kirk out into the landing bay and walked through the medical team without pause.

  McCoy signaled the stretchers aside. It was quicker, even easier, to use the Vulcan's strength and move Kirk directly to Sickbay. And there was something to be said for being carried by a living presence rather than a grav-stretcher. Especially if it was by the Vulcan, who had carried his Captain off of more than one battlefield. That presence and the touch of Sola's hand might well register with Kirk wherever he was, and keep him somewhere within reach of coming back.

  Chapel inspected McCoy's dangling right arm as they moved to the turbolift. "What do you think you're doing moving around with that, Doctor?" she asked.

  McCoy shook his head. "That's the least of my worries."

  In the turbolift Chapel shot McCoy's shoulder joint full of neo-procaine and the pain eased. But McCoy would not take time to have the dislocated arm put back in place.

  They were arriving at Sickbay. Spock put Kirk down carefully on the main diagnostic table. The life-sign readouts were shockingly low. At McCoy's signal Dr. M'Benga brought an instant IV to replace blood. Chapel moved in with a pressure clip to replace Sola's hold.

  Sola had to pry her fingers loose, McCoy saw, and did so, not paying attention to it. McCoy reached over and caught her left hand with his. "Muscle spasms," he said. "You must have been holding on to him as if your life depended on it."

  She looked up quietly and nodded. "That's right, Doctor."

  The Vulcan stood by without expression, looking down at Kirk.

  Then Sola turned to Kirk, and while Chapel and McCoy checked the readouts, the Zaran seemed to do her own evaluation—or perhaps treatment. She put a hand on Kirk's forehead, on his temples, on the injured arm.

  It was Chapel who pointed out that where Sola touched him there was electrical activity registering on some of the instruments. "Like the old Kirlian patterns," Christine Chapel said to McCoy, "which were said to show results of psychic healing."

  "What are you?" McCoy asked Sola.

  "A female of my species," she said. "Unfortunately an unbonded one. Therefore of erratic powers. But it should be of some help."

  "Psychic healing?"

  Sola shook her head. "Not precisely. It is a Zaran psionic technology for the transfer of life-energy."

  She stood then at Kirk's head, letting her hands rest on his temples, and McCoy could almost see the life-energy flowing out of her and into Kirk. McCoy saw no harm in it. There was not much harm anyone could do him, now. The vital signs showed that Kirk was dying.

  Then even the instruments began to agree. The computer display showed a flow of warmth, energy, circulation. McCoy saw Christine Chapel's eyes riveted to the computer readouts. "Vital signs improving, Doctor," she said.

  McCoy saw Spock's face, the Vulcan control eroded almost completely. "He is still critical, Spock," McCoy said. "But she's giving him a chance."

  "Still critical?" Spock asked. He scanned the life signs. "There is," he conceded, "visible improvement."

  McCoy nodded. "I'm saying it's still touch and go. The cumulative stress—and some kind of pretty virulent poison. But you know him, Spock. He'll fight."

  "With what, Doctor?" Spock asked with what sounded like bitterness. "How many times?"

  Sola swayed fractionally, and McCoy saw that her face was drained. He moved toward her. "You have to stop now," he said.

  But she shook her head microscopically and continued, going suddenly white to the bone. Then Spock stepped behind her and put one hand on her shoulder, one into the mane of tawny hair, the long Vulcan fingers seeking contact points known to Spock's own psionic technology. "Let her continue," Spock said. He seemed to make some massive effort, and McCoy had the sudden feeling that it was at the expense of the last of his mental reserves or controls.

  McCoy started to protest, but there was a new flow of life-force to Kirk, as if she could draw it from the Vulcan and pass it on.

  The Vulcan must have divined that it would work, and it did.

  They kept at it until Spock also looked drained white, and McCoy feared for the Vulcan, whom they all tended to think of as indestructible. He was not, as McCoy very well knew, and he knew that Spock would drain the last drop of his own life-force for this.

  But Kirk's vital signs were beginning to move toward the low normal range, and his face even had a touch of color. On McCoy's signal Chapel had given Kirk another powerful detoxicant against the poison and sealed up the bleeding arm. It would have to do.

  McCoy moved in and took one of Sola's hands where it touched Kirk's temples. He could almost feel the flow of something himself—a tingle in his hand. "That's enough. Stop now."

  Slowly she opened her eyes and focused on McCoy.

  "You've done the job," McCoy said. "Stop before I have two more patients."

  She started to look over her shoulder at Spock, but the movement overstrained some precariously maintained balance, and she swayed. Spock held her and reached down himself to pull her hands away. Finally she let go.

  After a moment she straightene
d and took her own weight, then turned to face Spock. "Thank you, Mr. Spock."

  Spock shook his head. "Necessary." He still looked at her stonily.

  "Spock," McCoy protested, "she almost certainly saved his life."

  Spock turned to him bleakly. "She was the cause of his danger. As I was."

  "Those overgrown werewolves were the cause of his danger, Spock," McCoy said impatiently. "Not to mention a few kinds of hell he's been through lately. And what did she—or you—do? Take a few seconds to deal with the unprecedented?"

  "With emotions, Doctor. Mine," Spock said.

  Abruptly McCoy felt his medical alarms going off. When the Platonians had tortured and humiliated Kirk, Spock had actually admitted to emotions for the first time, but only to insist that "You must express your emotions—and I must master mine." Over the years Spock had perhaps lost that battle in certain crucial respects, but he had never surrendered.

  But now what kind of Vulcanism would it touch off if Spock could neither master nor deny what McCoy had seen in the clearing? And what was Spock supposed to do about it if he had also seen what Kirk felt? Just when you thought you had Spock figured, there would be some Vulcan booby trap opening under all their feet—swift, and probably lethal.

  "Mr. Spock, I want to examine you," McCoy said.

  "Doctor," the Vulcan snapped, "you will not pull medical rank on me now. I suffer from no condition which you could detect or correct."

  "Do you suffer from a condition which I could not detect or correct?" McCoy demanded.

  "Physician," Spock said, "heal thyself. I have duties." He turned on a heel and stepped to the intercom. "Bridge. Maintain survey orbit. Assume attempt at concealment of starship trap. Maintain increased security on the ship. Spock out."

  McCoy was about to start in again when he felt Sola attach herself to his injured shoulder. The agony had come back. Before he could protest a further draining of her power, she slipped a hand under his armpit, and by some swift move of strength and precision, she slipped the bone back into its socket. There was a moment of blinding pain—and then under her hands the pain left as if it had never been—and he felt healed in more than the shoulder. McCoy looked at her incredulously. "Who's the doctor around here?" he complained.

  She smiled. "You are, Doctor. That is merely the trail skill of a huntress."

  "Or a miracle," McCoy muttered.

  But Spock cut him off. "Will the Captain die?" he asked Sola.

  She turned and met Spock's eyes. "No. Not again."

  "Come with me," Spock ordered.

  Her eyes seemed to take up some challenge. "Yes, Mr. Spock," she said, and turned to obey.

  Chapter 10

  Sola Thane matched the Vulcan's stride through the corridors of the Enterprise, and she was perhaps the only female aboard who could have matched his pace. He was an aimed bullet. Certainly she was the only being aboard who could meet his strength in what was to come. Humans were far too fragile. She recoiled from the thought of what his strength, unleashed, in his present state, would do to fragile Human flesh. She wanted to back away from what it would do to her own.

  Worse, she knew that what the Humans would have called her heart was not here. It was back in Sickbay with the man who had won a still-fragile victory over death—perhaps for her. She wanted nothing more than to go to him. But she had wanted nothing more than that for years.

  It had not been possible. She was not Human, at least not in those vital respects which could make her a danger to him unless she won her own fight. Strictly speaking, it was not possible now. But she had felt her years-long resolve to stay away from him crumble when she faced him in the clearing. If the chemistry she had long expected had not materialized, they could have backed away. As it was, he would not back off. Nor would she.

  Except that what neither of them had expected was Spock.

  That had been an error in her own philosophy.

  She looked at him now, hard, taut, angry with her for the danger she had allowed to Kirk and for the death sentence she had sealed for Spock himself. She was probably the only non-Vulcan in the galaxy who could understand that completely. Her training on Vulcan and her need for help with her own powers had led her finally to a link with T'Pau of Vulcan.

  Spock reached a door and stepped into the field to open it for her. She stepped through, the moment when she met his eyes stressing that she did not hesitate. The turbolift had deposited them in officers' country. The door opened on Vulcan—a red weapon wall, a demonic looking flame-idol.

  He engaged the privacy lock, not offering explanation. He had brought her to his quarters. She wondered whether he had already reached the stage where the life force took over in a last effort to save his life and he would not be able to control his actions—or even to remember them. If so, things would move very quickly. And she found that she was not prepared.

  "Free Agent Thane," he said in the strained tone of cracking discipline, "you are of command rank and the ship has been placed at your disposal. You will now assume command and have me locked away."

  "No, Mr. Spock," she said. "I will not."

  "You have no alternative. I cannot be responsible for my actions. I will not explain, and an explanation would be unavailing. Lock me away. It is my right."

  "No, Spock. It is not. You have an obligation—to the man whose life we just fought for."

  "Yes," he said grimly. "I do." He said it as a sentence of doom.

  "To die nobly?" She shook her head fiercely. "It is not going to be that way, Spock."

  "You do not understand."

  "On the contrary, I do. I did not study on Vulcan for nothing. Yours is perhaps the only free species which shares some of my Zaran half's ferocity and powers. But we do not try to suppress emotion to the point where it must explode—fatally. What you do not wish to tell me is that your mating bond was challenged and broken, and you have spent years attempting to get out of that box, before your control broke and sent you amok on a ship of Humans."

  He looked as if she had hit him. She had read the secret he had defended even from Kirk. And she knew that she had to hammer through the rest of his defenses while he was still vulnerable, and still in control. "What did you plan to do, Spock—if it hit you between the stars? Perhaps it would hit when you were alone with one or two Humans, then what? Lock yourself away? But you would break any lock when control broke. What would you do then?"

  Spock looked at her without flinching. "Die," he said.

  She nodded. "It's not going to be that easy, Spock."

  "Free Agent Thane, there exists on this ship a powerful collective mind which was already eroding mental barriers—mine, his, doubtless others. For a Vulcan the link between mind and body is strong. Under normal circumstances perhaps I would have retained the capacity to resist. My circumstances have not been normal for some time. I do not expect or require that you understand."

  "You went home to Vulcan," she divined, "and tried to pay the price of Kolinahr—of total non-emotion—for the safety of the Humans who had come to mean too much to you."

  His eyes narrowed and she saw the fever flare in them. "Do not understand me too well," he warned.

  She did not back off. "You knew there would come a day when Uhura or Christine Chapel or someone else would pay a price to save your life. How could anyone who knew your value, who loved you, not save you? But the price paid would be too high. So you went. But there was a catch in that theory, too, Spock. If you loved them enough to leave them and to lock yourself into the straightjacket of Kolinahr, then any claim to non-emotion you ever had was a fraud and Kolinahr was forever beyond your reach."

  His eyes were lethal now. "I do not require you to give me a lesson in philosophy."

  "Spock, I am a lesson in philosophy. I am possibly the only lesson you still needed to learn. That was what your body knew in the clearing. That is what it knows now. And that is what will kill you if you do not finally break out of that box."

  He moved suddenl
y and she thought he would take her throat in his hands. But he lifted her chin with one hand, not gently, his fingers biting into her. "Do not patronize me. Do you wish me to admit that I see you match my logic without giving up emotion? Very well. I see it. Do you wish me to admit that you were the straw which broke a Vulcan's back? I admit it. I am far beyond the point where admissions can harm me—or help me. I require nothing of you, except that you leave now and set an interlock I cannot break. Go!"

  She shook her head.

  His hand tightened on her face, making her realize that his steel strength could break bones, even hers. "I have already lost physiological control in one significant respect," he grated. "Go now!"

  She did not move. "I said it would take more than words to save you, Spock. There is only one thing which will. We both know that I am not going."

  Through his hand she felt him caught by a sudden uncontrollable shudder. She knew that some deep part of him fought for the life she offered. But he shook his head. "Even if I would and you would—we could not. You do not belong to me. You belong to him. We both know that you always have. No. He is my friend."

  She let her own temper flare. "Whereas your death of course will solve his problem!" Her tone was fierce now and she let him see that she would fight for his life, even against him. "And of course it will solve mine," she continued scathingly. "I will go to him over your dead body, and we will live happily ever after!"

  Her hunting blood was up and she could see that his blood burned. His eyes were flame. His grip tightened on her and then flung her back as if in a last effort to save both of them.

  "Fine," she said. "You have given him a taste of unity—and withdrawn it. Die now and you will drive him into the arms of Oneness. He will have nowhere else to go. But spare yourself, Mr. Spock. Don't bother to fight for your life. Or—your love. It is much easier to crawl off into your own old pattern and die than to break out of all boxes and live."

  He took a step toward her as if he would break her neck. Suddenly she did not care if he tried. And she knew that she had succeeded not only in rousing him to fight her. She had summoned her own Zaran half to meet him, as she had intended. She lived in her Human half a good deal around Humans. But the Zaran in her was neither safe nor civil. It did not, in hot blood, know the meaning of fear—although she knew fear still as a kind of swift undercurrent which was almost a pleasure. Here was jungle to match her jungle, the desert-bred Vulcan who would match wit and muscle against a le matya the size of Tyrannosaurus Rex. He was entitled to the ferocity of his passion. And her Zaran was entitled to the ferocity of her own. Her Zaran did not so much love the sunlit wholeness of Kirk which another part of her worshipped. Her Zaran was drawn to the ragged and monumental effort at wholeness which was Spock. She had seen it in the clearing and known that life would never be simple again. If there was an error in his philosophy, and there was, it was a giant error, possible only to a giant. And she must be making an error of a similar size—because she knew now that it was not for his sake, nor even for Kirk's that she would take him on. It was for herself …