by 05(lit)
Bele's face was a study in the attempt to retain a bland mask over anger. "As always," he said, "Lokai has managed to gain allies, even when they don't recognize themselves as such. He will evade, delay and escape again, and in the process put innocent beings at each other's throats-for a cause they have no stake in, but which he will force them to espouse violently by twisting their minds with his lies, his loathsome accusations, his foul threats."
"I assure you, Commissioner," Kirk said, "our minds will not be twisted by Lokai-or by you."
"And you're a leader of men-a judge of character?" Bele said contemptuously. "It is obvious to the most simpleminded that Lokai is of an inferior breed..."
"The evidence of our eyes, Commissioner," Spock said, "is that he is of the same breed as yourself."
"Are you blind, Commander Spock?"
"Obviously not; but I see no significance in which side of either of you is white. Perhaps the experience of my own planet may help you to see why. Vulcan was almost destroyed by the same conditions and characteristics that threaten to destroy Cheron. We were a people like you-wildly emotional, often committed to irra-tionally opposing points of view, to the point of death and destruction. Only the discipline of logic saved our peo-ple from self-extinction."
"I am delighted Vulcan was saved, Commander, but expecting Lokai and his land to act with self-discipline is like expecting a planet to stop orbiting its sun."
"Maybe you're not a sun, and Lokai isn't a planet," Kirk said. "Give him a chance to state his grievances- listen to him-hear him out. Maybe he can change; maybe he wants to change."
"He cannot."
"Change is the essential process of all existence," Spock said. "For instance: The people of Cheron must have once been monocolored."
"Eh? You mean like both of you?"
"Yes, Commissioner," Kirk said. "There was a time- long ago, no doubt-when that must have been true."
Bele stared at them incredulously for a moment, and then burst into uproarious laughter.
While he was still recovering, the intercom sounded. "Scott here, Captain. We are orbiting Ariannus. We're ready with the decontamination procedure and Ariannus reports all ground precautions complete." "Very good, Scotty, let her rip. Kirk out."
"I once heard," Bele said, still smiling, "that on some of your planets the people believe that they are de-scended from apes."
"Not quite," Spock said. "The apes are humanity's cousins, not their grandfathers. They evolved from common stock, in different directions. But in point of fact, all advanced forms of life have evolved from more primitive stages. Mutation produces changes, and the fittest of these survives. We have no reason to believe that we are at the end of the process-although no doubt the development of intelligence, which enables us to change our environment at will, has slowed down the action of selection."
"I am aware of the process," Bele said, somewhat ironically, "and I stand corrected on the detail. But I have told you that we are a very old race and a long-lived one. We have every reason to believe that we are the end of the process. The change is lost in an-tiquity, but it seems sensible to assume that creatures like Lokai, of generally low intelligence and virtually no moral fiber, represent an earlier stage."
"Lokai has sufficient intelligence to have evaded you for a thousand years," Kirk said. "And from what I've seen of you, that can't have been easy to do."
"Nevertheless, regardless of occasional clever individ-uals, whom we all applaud, his people are as I have described them. To suggest that behind both of us is a monochrome ancestor..."
The buzzer sounded again. "Captain, Scott here again. We have completed the decontamination orbit. Orders?"
"Program for Starbase 4. We'll be right with you."
Bele was showing signs of his strained and intense look of concentration which Kirk had no reason to recall with confidence. Kirk said, in the tone of an order, "Join us on the bridge, Commissioner?"
"Nothing I would like better."
But when they arrived, the bridge personnel were in turmoil. They were clustered around the computer, at which Scott was stationed.
"What's wrong?" Spock asked.
"I don't rightly know, Mr. Spock. I was trying to pro-gram for Starbase 4-as ordered-but I can't get a response."
Spock made a quick examination. "Captain, some of the memory banks are burned out."
"See if you can determine which ones."
"I will save you that trouble, Mr. Spock," Bele said. "They are in Directional Control and in the Self-Destruct circuit. You caught me by surprise with that Destruct procedure before." As he spoke, the fire sheath began to form around him. "Now can we go on to Cheron without any more discussion?"
"Stand clear of him," Kirk said. "Guard, shoot to stun."
The heat promptly increased. "I cannot block your weapon," Bele said, "but my heat shield will go out of control if I am rendered unconscious. This will destroy not only everyone here, but much of the ship's bridge itself."
The Cheronian was certainly a virtuoso at producing impasses. As he and Kirk glared at each other, the elevator doors parted and Lokai came storming out to the Captain.
"So this is the justice you promised after Ariannus! You have signed my death warrant! What do you do -carry justice on your tongues? Or will you fight and die for it?"
"After so many years of leading the fight," Kirk ob-served, "you seem very much alive."
"I doubt that the same can be said for many of his followers," Spock said.
Bele laughed contemptuously. At once, a fiery sheath grew also around Lokai.
"You're finished, Lokai. We've got your kind penned in their districts in Cheron. And they'll stay that way. You've combed the Galaxy and come up with nothing but monocolored primitives who snivel that they've out-grown fighting."
"I have given up on these useless pieces of bland flesh," Lokai raged. "But as for you, you-you half of a tyrant..."
"You image in a cheap mirror..."
They rushed together. Their heat shields fused into a single, almost solid mass as they struggled. Its edges drove the crew back, and wavered perilously near to the control boards.
"Bele!" Kirk shouted. "Keep this up and you'll never get to Cheron, you'll have wrecked the bridge! This will be your last battlefield-your thousand years of pursuit wasted!"
The combatants froze. Then Bele threw Lokai away from him, hard. Lokai promptly started back.
"And Lokai, you'll die here in space," Kirk continued. "You'll inspire no more disciples. Your cause will be lost."
Lokai stopped. Then his heat shield went down, and so, a moment later, did Bele's.
"Captain," Spock said, "I believe I have found some-thing which may influence the decision. I can myself compute with moderate rapidity when deprived of the machine..."
"Yes, and beat the machine at chess, too. Go on."
"Because of our first involuntary venture in the direction of Cheron, our orbit around Ariannus was not the one originally planned. I believe we can leave it for Starbase 4 in a curve which will pass us within scanning range of Cheron. With extreme magnification, we might get a visual readout. I can feed Mr. Sulu the coordinates; he will have to do the rest of the piloting by inspection, as it were, but after the piloting he did for us behind the Klingon lines* I am convinced he could fly his way out of the Cretan labyrinth if the need arose." *See Spock Must Die!
"I believe that too," Kirk said. "But what I don't see is what good you think will come out of the maneuver."
"Observing these strangers and their irreconcilable hatreds," Spock said, "has given me material to draw certain logical conclusions. At present it is only a hy-pothesis, but I think there would be value in testing it."
Anything Spock said was a possibly valid hypothesis was very likely to turn out to be what another man would have called a law of nature. Kirk said, "It is so ordered."
The visual readout of Cheron was wobbly, but growing clearer; Sulu had sufficiently improved upon Spock's rather
indefinite course corrections so that the moment of closest approach would be not much over 15,000 miles. It was an Earthlike planet, but somewhat larger, by perhaps a thousand miles of diameter. Both Bele and Lokai were visibly moved by the sight. Well, a thousand years is a long time, Kirk thought, even for a long-lived race.
"There is your home, gentlemen," he said. "Not many details yet, but if you represent the opposing factions there typically, we must be picking up a raging battle."
"No, sir," Spock said from his console. The words could not have been simpler, but there was something in his tone-could it possibly have been sadness?-that riveted Kirk's attention, and that of the Cheronians as well. "No conflicts at all."
"What are you picking up?" Kirk said.
"Several very large cities. All uninhabited. Extensive traffic systems barren of traffic. Vegetation and lower animals encroaching on the cities. No sapient life forms registering at all, Captain."
"You mean the people are all dead?"
"Yes, Captain-all dead. This was what I had deduced when I suggested this course. They have annihilated each other-totally."
"My people," Bele said. "All dead."
"Yes, Commissioner," Spock said. "All of them."
"And-mine?" Lokai said.
"No one is left. No one."
The two survivors faced each other with ready rage.
"Your bands of murderers..."
"Your genocidal maniacs..."
"Gentlemen!" Kirk said in his command voice. Then, more softly, "The cause you fought for no longer exists. Give up your hate, and we welcome you to live with us."
Neither seemed to hear him; the exchange of glares went on.
"You have lost, Bele. I have won."
"You always think you win when you destroy."
"What's the matter with you two?" Kirk demanded, his own temper at last beginning to fray. "Didn't you hear my First Officer? Your planet is dead. Nobody is alive on Cheron just because of this land of hate! Give it up, in heaven's name!"
"You have lost the planet," Lokai said. "I have won. I have won because I am free."
Suddenly, he made a tremendous leap for the elevator. The doors opened for him, and then, with a wild laugh, he was gone. Bele made as if to rush after him; Kirk stopped him.
"Bele-listen! The chase is finished."
"No, no! He must not escape me!"
"Where can he go?" Spock said.
"I think I know the answer to that," Uhura said. "Someone has just activated the Transporter."
"Oh," Kirk said. "Are we in Transporter range of Cheron?"
"Just coming into it," Spock said. "And a sentient life form is beginning to come through on the planet."
"It is he!" Bele cried. "Now I'll get him!"
He sprang for the elevator in turn. The guards, now belatedly alert, moved to stop him, but Kirk held up his hands.
"Let him go. Bele, there's no one there to punish him. His judges are dead."
"I," Bele said, "am his punisher." Then he too was gone.
There was a brief silence. Then Uhura said, "Captain, the Transporter has been activated again."
"Of course," Kirk said wearily. He felt utterly washed out. "Is he showing up on Cheron on the scanners now, Mr. Spock?"
"Some second sapient life form is registering. I see no other possible conclusion."
"But," Uhura said, "it doesn't make any sense."
"To expect sense from two mentalities of such extreme viewpoints is not logical," Spock said. "They are playing out the drama of which they have become the captives, just as their compatriots did."
"But their people are dead," Sulu said slowly. "How can it matter to them now which one is right?"
"It does to them," said Spock. "And at the same time, in a sense it does not. A thousand years of hating and running have become all of life."
"Spock," said McCoy's voice behind them, "may I remind you that I'm supposed to be the psychologist aboard this ship?"
"Spock's human half," Kirk said, turning, "is perhaps better equipped to perceive half measures taking over the whole man than the rest of us, Bones. And his Vulcan side quite accurately predicted the outcome. Hate wasn't all Lokai and Bele had at first, but by allowing it to run them, that's all they ended up with. This is their last battlefield-and let us hope that we never see its like again. Mr. Sulu, Warp Two for Starbase 4."
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
(Nathan Butler and D. C. Fontana)
There was no answer from the Sandoval colony on Omicron Ceti III to the Enterprise's signals, but that was hardly surprising; the colonists, all one hundred and fifty of them, had probably been dead for the better part of three years, as two previous colonies had died, for reasons then mysterious. Elias Sandoval had known this past history and had determined to settle on the planet anyhow; it was in all other respects a tempting place.
It was not until after his group had settled in-and had stopped communicating-that the Berthold emission of the planet's sun had been discovered. Little enough was known about Berthold radiation even now, but it had been shown that direct exposure to it under laboratory conditions distintegrated living animal tissue in as little as seventy-two hours. A planet's atmosphere would cut down some of the effect, to the point where a week's exposure might be safe, but certainly not three years. And there was no preventive, and no cure.
The settlement proper, however, was still there and was easy to spot. Kirk made up a landing party of six, including himself, Spock, McCoy, Lieutenant Timothy Fletcher (a biologist), Sulu and a crewman named Dimont. The settlement proved to consist of a surprisingly small cluster of buildings, with fields beyond it. Kirk looked around.
"It took these people a year to make the trip from Earth," he said. "They came all that way-and died."
"Hardly that, sir," said a man's voice. The party snapped around toward it.
A big, bluff, genial-looking man clad in sturdy work clothes had come around a corner of a building, with two others behind him, similarly dressed and carrying tools. The first man came forward, holding out his hand.
"Welcome to Omicron Ceti III," he said. "I am Elias Sandoval."
Kirk took the hand, but could think of nothing to say but a mumble of thanks.
"We've seen no one outside our group since we left Earth four years ago," the man went on. "We've expected someone for quite some time. Our subspace radio has never worked properly and we, I'm afraid, had no one among us who could master its intricacies. But we were sure when we were not heard from, a ship would come."
"Actually, Mr. Sandoval, we didn't come because of your radio silence..."
"It makes little difference, Captain. You are here, and we are happy to have you. Come, let me show you our settlement."
He began to walk away, not bothering to look back, as if certain that they would follow. The other colonists had already left.
"On pure speculation," McCoy said drily, "just as an educated guess, I'd say that man isn't dead."
Spock checked his tricorder. "The intensity of Berthold radiation is at the predicted level. At this intensity, we will be safe for a week, if necessary. But..."
"But these people shouldn't be alive," Kirk said. "Well, there's no point in debating it in a vacuum. Let's get some answers."
He started after Sandoval. From closer range, the buildings could be seen to be not deserted, only quiet. Nearby, a woman was hanging out some wash; in another structure, a woman placed a fresh-baked pie in a window to cool. It might have been a tranquil Earthly farm community of centuries ago, except for a scattering of peculiar plants with bulbous pods, apparent-ly indigenous, which revealed that it was on another planet.
Sandoval led the landing party into his own quarters. "There are two other settlements," he said, "but we have forty-five colonists here."
"What was the reason for the dispersal?" Kirk asked.
"We felt three separate groups might have a better opportunity for growth. And, if some disease should strike one group, the
other two would be less likely to be endangered. Omicron is an ideal agricultural planet, Captain, and we determined that we would not suffer the fate of expeditions that had gone before us."
A woman came from an inner door and stopped, seeing the strangers. She looked Eurasian, and was strikingly beautiful.
"Ah, Leila," Sandoval said, turning to her. "Come and meet our guests. This is Leila Kalomi, our botanist. Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Mr. Spock..."
"Mr. Spock and I have met," she said, holding out a hand to him. "It has been a long time."