by 02(lit)
"How dare you?" Kor shouted.
"You can't just stop our fleet," Kirk said, equally an-grily. "You've got no right..."
"What happens in space is none of your business..."
"It is being stopped," Ayelborne said. "Unless both sides agree to an immediate cessation of hostilities, all your armed forces, wherever they may be, will be totally disabled."
"We have legitimate grievances against the Klingons," Kirk said. "They've invaded our territory, killed our citi-zens..."
"The disputed areas are not your territory," Kor raged. "You were trying to hem us in, cut off vital supplies, strangle our trade."
"Look here," Kirk said to the Organians, fighting himself back to some semblance of control. "We didn't ask you to intervene, but you should be the first to side with us now. The two hundred hostages who were killed..."
"No one has died, Captain," Claymare said calmly. "No one has died here for uncounted thousands of years. Nor do we mean that anyone shall."
"Let me ask you, Captain, what it is that you are de-fending," Ayelborne added, gently, as if amused. "Is it the right to wage war? To kill millions of innocent peo-ple? To destroy life on a planetary scale? Is that the 'right' you refer to?"
"Well, I..." Kirk said, and stopped. "Of course, no-body wants war, but sometimes you have to fight. Eventually, I suppose, we..."
"Yes, eventually you would make peace," Ayelborne said. "But only after millions had died. We are bringing it about now. The fact is, in the future you and the Klin-gons will become fast friends. You will work together in great harmony."
"Nonsense!" Kor said. Kirk realized that he had been standing shoulder to shoulder with the Klingon and moved away hastily.
"Of course, you are most discordant now," Ayelborne said. "In fact, you will have to leave. The mere presence of beings like yourselves is acutely painful to us."
"What do you mean?" Kirk said. "You don't differ significantly from us, no matter what tricks you've mas-tered."
"Once we did not differ significantly," Claymare said. "But that was millions of years ago. Now we have developed beyond the need for physical bodies at all. This ap-pearance is only for your convenience. Now we shall put it off."
"Hypnosis!" Kor cried. "Captain, those weapons may never have been hot at all! Grab them!"
Ayelborne and Claymare only smiled, and then they began to change. At first it was only a glow, becoming brighter and brighter, until they looked like metal statues in a furnace. Then the human shape faded. It was as if there were two suns in the room.
Kirk shut his eyes and covered them with both arms. He could still see the light. Finally, however, it began to fade.
The Organians were gone.
"Fascinating," Spock said. "Pure thought-or pure en-ergy? In any event, totally incorporeal. Not life as we know it at all."
"But the planet," Kirk said. "The buildings-this cita-del..."
"Probably the planet is real enough. But the rest, con-ventionalizations, no doubt, just as they said. Useless to them-points of reference for us. I should guess that they are as far above us on the evolutionary scale as we are above the amoeba."
There was a long silence. Finally, Kirk turned toward Kor.
"Well, Commander," he said, "I guess that takes care of the war. Since the Organians aren't going to let us fight, we might as well get started on being friends."
"Yes," Kor said. He thrust out his hand. "Still, in a way, Captain, it's all rather saddening."
"Saddening? Because they're so much more advanced than we are? But it took millions of years. Even the gods didn't spring into being overnight."
"No, that doesn't sadden me," Kor said. "I'm only sorry that they wouldn't let us fight." He sighed. "It would have been glorious."
COURT MARTIAL
(Don M. Mankiewicz and Steven W. Carabatsos)
The Enterprise weathered the ion storm somehow, but one man was dead, and damage to the ship was con-siderable. Kirk was forced to order a nonscheduled lay-over for repairs at Star Base 11, a huge complex serving the dual role of graving dock and galactic command outpost.
He made a full report to the portmaster, Senior Cap-tain Stone, a craggy Negro who had once been a flight officer himself; Kirk had known him in those days, though not well. The report, of course, had to include an affidavit in the matter of Records Officer Benjamin Finney, de-ceased, and Kirk turned that in last and only after long study. Stone noticed his hesitation, but was patient. At last he said, "That makes three times you've read it, Cap-tain. Is there an error?"
"No," Kirk said, "but the death of a crewman... When you have to sign these affidavits, you relive the moment." He signed the paper and passed it to Stone.
"I know. But you can't fight Regulations. Now, let's see; the extract from your ship's computer log, confirming the deposition?"
"In the other folder."
"Good... though it's a great pity too. The service can't afford to lose men like Officer Finney. If he'd only gotten out of the pod in time..."
"I waited until the last possible moment," Kirk said. "The storm got worse. We were on double-red alert. I had to jettison."
The office door swung open suddenly. A young woman was standing there-young, and pretty, but obviously under great stress. She glared wildly at Kirk, who recog-nized her instantly.
"There you are!" she cried. "I wanted one more good look at you!"
"Jame!"
"Yes, Jame! And you're the man who killed my fa-ther!"
"Do you really think that?" Kirk said.
"More than that! I think you deliberately murdered him!"
"Jame, Jame, stop and think what you're saying." Kirk stepped toward her. "We were friends, you know that. I would no more have hurt your father than I'd hurt you."
"Friends! That's a lie! You never were! You hated him, all your life! And you finally killed him!"
Stone, who had been discreetly pretending to study the documents, rose suddenly and moved between them. Jame was obviously fighting back a storm of tears. Kirk watched her in dismay.
"Captain Kirk," Stone said in a voice as hard as his name, "you say you jettisoned the pod after the double-red alert?"
"You have my sworn deposition," Kirk said. "Then, Captain, it is my duty to presume you have committed willful perjury. According to the extract from your computer log, you jettisoned the pod before the dou-ble-red alert. Consider yourself relieved of command. A board of inquiry will determine whether a general court martial is in order."
Kirk never saw the board. As far as he was concerned, the inquiry consisted of Portmaster Stone and a recorder, which was to produce the tape the board would study.
"Where do you want me to begin?" Kirk said.
Stone pushed a cup of coffee toward Kirk. "Tell me about Officer Finney."
"We'd known each other a long tune. He was an in-structor at the Academy when I was a midshipman. But that didn't stop us from beginning a close friendship. His daughter, Jame, the girl who was in your office last night, was named after me."
"The friendship-it rather cooled with the years, didn't it? No, please speak, Captain, the recorder can't see you nodding."
"Yes, it did. I relieved him on watch once, on the USS Republic, and found the vent circuit to the fusion chamber open. If we'd gone under fusion power, the ship would have blown. As it was, it was contaminating the air of the engine room. I closed the switch and logged the error. He drew a reprimand and went to the bottom of the promotion list."
"And he blamed you for that?"
"Yes. He'd been kept on at the Academy as an instruc-tor for an unusually long time. As a result, he was late being assigned to a starship. He felt the delay looked bad on his record. My action, he believed, made things worse. However, I couldn't very well have let an oversight of that magnitude go unreported."
"Comment by examining officer: Service record of Officer Finney to be appended to this transcript. Now, Captain, let's get to the specifics of the storm."
"
Weatherscan indicated an ion storm dead ahead," Kirk said. "I sent Finney into the pod." For the benefit of possible civilians on the board, Kirk added, "The pod is outside the ship, attached to the skin. One of our missions is to get radiation readings in abnormal conditions, in-cluding ion storms. This can only be done by direct expo-sure of the necessary instruments in a plastic pod. Howev-er, in a major storm the pod rapidly picks up a charge of its own that becomes a danger to the rest of the ship, and we have to get rid of it."
"Why Finney? If he blamed you..."
"He may have blamed me because he never rose to command rank. But I don't assign jobs on the basis of who blames me, but whose name is on top of the duty roster. It was Finney's turn. He had just checked in with me when we hit the leading edge of the storm. Not bad at first. Then we began encountering field-variance, force two. The works. I finally signaled a double-red alert. Fin-ney knew he had only a matter of seconds. I gave him those seconds, and more-but it wasn't enough. I can't explain his not getting out. He had the training, he had the reflexes, and he had plenty of time."
"Then why, Captain," Stone said, "does the computer log-yours, made automatically at the time-indicate that there was no double-red alert when you jettisoned?"
"I don't know," Kirk said.
"Could the computer be wrong?"
"Mr. Spock, my first officer, is running a survey now," Kirk said grimly. "But the odds are next to impossible."
Stone looked at Kirk long and penetratingly, and then reached out and shut off the recorder. "I'm not supposed to do this," he said. "But-look, Kirk. Not one man in a million can do what you and I did: serve as a starship captain. A hundred decisions a day, hundreds of lives staked on every one of them being right. You've been out nineteen months on this last mission. You've taken no furlough, had virtually no rest in all that time. You're played out-exhausted."
Kirk was beginning to get the drift of this, and he did not like it. "That's the way you see it?"
"That's the way my report will read," Stone said, "if you cooperate."
"Physical breakdown," Kirk said. "Possibly even men-tal collapse."
"Well... yes."
"I'd be admitting that a man died because..."
"Admit nothing," Stone said. "Let me bury the matter, here and now. No starship captain has ever stood trial be-fore. I don't want you to be the first."
"But what if I'm guilty?" Kirk said steadily. "Shouldn't I be punished?"
"I'm thinking of the service, dammit! I won't have it smeared by..."
"By what, Portmaster?"
"All right!" Stone said explosively. "By an evident per-jurer who's covering up bad judgment, cowardice, or something even worse!"
"That's as far as you go, Captain," Kirk said, instantly on his feet, "or I'll forget you are a captain. I'm telling you, I was on that bridge. I know what happened. I know what I did."
"It's in the transcript," Stone said, equally hotly, "and computer transcripts don't lie. You decide, Captain. Bury the matter and accept a ground assignment-or demand a general court, and bring down on your head the full disciplinary powers of Star Fleet."
"I have already decided," Kirk said. "Turn the record-er back on."
The courtroom was stark. There was one main viewing screen, a recorder, a witness chair, one table each for prosecution and defense, and a high bench where sat Portmaster Stone and the three members of the court-martial board. The prosecutor was a cool, lovely blonde woman named Areel Shaw, who as it happened was an old friend of Kirk's. ("All my old friends look like doc-tors," Bones McCoy had commented, "and all Jim's old friends look like her.") It was on her advice that Kirk had retained Samuel T. Cogley, a spry old eccentric who put his trust not in computers, but in books. He did not inspire much confidence, though Kirk was convinced that Areel had meant well.
Stone called the court to order by striking an ancient naval ship's bell. "I declare that the General Court of Star Base Eleven is now in session. Captain James T. Kirk will rise. Charge: culpable negligence. Specification: in that, on Star Date 2947.3, by such negligence, you did cause loss of life, to wit, the life of Records Officer Ben-jamin Finney. Charge: conduct prejudicial to the good order of the service. Specification: in that, thereafter, you failed accurately to report the same incident in your cap-tain's log. To these charges and specifications, how do you plead?"
"Not guilty," Kirk said quietly.
"I have appointed, as members of this court, Space Command Representative Chandra and Star Command Captains Li Chow and Krasnowsky. I direct your atten-tion to the fact that you have a right to ask for substitute officers if you feel that any of these named harbor preju-dice harmful to your case."
"I have no objections, sir."
"And do you consent to the service of Lieutenant Shaw as prosecuting officer, and to my own service as chief judge?"
"Yes, sir."
"Lieutenant Shaw," Stone said, "you may proceed."
Areel Shaw stepped into the arena. "I call Mr. Spock."
Spock took the stand and passed to the recorder at-tendant his identity disk. The recorder promptly said: "Spock, S-179-276-SP. Service rank: commander. Posi-tion: first officer, science officer. Current assignment: USS Enterprise. Commendations: Vulcan scientific Legion of Honor. Awards of valor: twice decorated by Galactic Command."
"Mr. Spock," Areel Shaw said, "as a science officer, you know a great deal about computers, don't you?" "I know all about them," Spock said levelly.
"Do you know of any possible malfunction that would cause one to recall an event inaccurately?"
"No."
"Or any malfunction that has caused an inaccuracy in this one?"
"No. Nevertheless, it is inaccurate."
"Please explain."
"It reports," Spock said, "that the jettison button was pressed before the double-red alert-in other words, that Captain Kirk was reacting to an emergency that did not then exist. That is not only illogical, but impossible."
"Were you watching him the exact moment he pressed the button?"
"No. I was occupied. We were already at red-alert."
"Then how can you dispute the record of the log?"
"I do not dispute it," Spock said. "I merely state it to be wrong. I know the captain. He would not..."
"Captain Stone," Areel Shaw said, "please instruct the witness not to speculate."
"Sir," Spock said to Stone, "I am half Vulcan. Vul-cans do not speculate. I speak from pure logic. If I let go of a hammer on a high-gravity planet, I do not need to see it fall to know that it has fallen. Human beings have characteristics that determine their behavior just as inani-mate objects do. I say it is illogical for Captain Kirk to have reacted to an emergency that did not exist, and im-possible for him to act out of panic or malice. That is not his nature."
"In your opinion," Areel Shaw said.
"Yes," Spock said with obvious reluctance. "In my opinion."
The personnel officer of the Enterprise was called next. "With reference to Records Officer Finney," Areel asked him, "was there, in his service record, a report of discipli-nary action for failure to close a circuit?"
"Yes, ma'am," the P.O. said.
"This charge was based upon a log entry by the officer who relieved him. Who was that officer?"
"Ensign James T. Kirk," the P.O. said softly.
"Speak louder, for the recorder, please. That is now the Captain Kirk who sits in this courtroom?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Thank you. Your witness, Mr. Cogley."
"No questions," Cogley said.
Areel next called Bones McCoy to the stand, and went after him with cool efficiency. "Doctor, you are, on the record, an expert in psychology, especially in space psy-chology-patterns that develop in the close quarters of a ship during long voyages in deep space."
"I know something about it."
"Your academic record, and your experience, doctor, belie your modesty. Is it possible that Officer Finney blamed the defendant for the incident w
e have just heard your personnel officer describe-blamed him and hated him for being passed over for promotion, blamed him for never having been given a command of his own, hated him for having to serve under him?"
"Of course, it's possible," McCoy said.
"Then, isn't it also possible that all that hatred, di-rected against Captain Kirk, could have caused a like response in the captain?"
"You keep asking what's possible," McCoy said. "To the human mind almost anything is possible. The fact, however, is that I have never observed such an attitude in Captain Kirk."