"What do you say?" bellowed Kirk, striving to be heard. "Shall we take a closer look?"
"Sure," said McCoy. "Why not?"
As they got closer, he began to appreciate the juggler's skills more and more. The objects he handled didn't give him much room for error. He had to catch them just right, send them twirling along their intricate paths with only the merest flick of a wrist. And there had to be half a dozen of the little razorlike things—more than he'd ever seen anyone manage all at once.
The juggler's face was pale in the light of a three-quarters moon, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his skin. His eyes were dark, intent. And he gave no sign of being distracted by the noise all around him.
The moon was a scimitar and the stars were silver barbs.
The line took McCoy by surprise.
Where had he heard it—or read it? In some esoteric book of poetry he'd been fond of back in med school?
Or had it been read to him? By a fair-haired young woman on the banks of a tree-lined stream? In the last days of summer, with the horses grazing off in the distance?
He glanced at Jim Kirk, saw the smile on his face. It was wide and careless. As if he'd suddenly shed fifteen years, as if he were a raw cadet all over again.
And McCoy was glad for him.
For him, and for himself. He chuckled.
Kirk heard him, turned.
"Having a good time, Bones?"
"I'm starting to," said the doctor. "Though I could do with a place just a bit less crowded." He regarded Kirk. "There is such a place, isn't there?"
"There are a few," said the captain. He grinned. "That is, if they haven't changed in the last few years."
McCoy shrugged. "Let's give 'em a shot. You only live once, y'know."
Kirk turned to Scotty. "And you?"
"Fine wi' me," said the Scot. "Just so long as a' can wet m'whistle there."
"Wet it?" Kirk echoed. "Mister Scott, you can drown it." He looked about for a moment, apparently to get his bearings. Then he pointed. "I think it's down that way."
Spock found him in the recreation room, hunched over a viewer. When he entered, the P'othparan looked up.
For a moment, they considered one another. Then, as the Vulcan had expected, the youth tried to make empathic contact.
It was more of a reflex than anything else, Spock told himself. Certainly, after his experiences with humans, he could not have expected to find a consciousness capable of answering in kind.
Only a reflex. But entwined in it was emotion. Primitive raw emotion.
Loneliness.
Spock hadn't quite been prepared for such intensity. As gently as he could, he turned it away.
The P'othparan's brow furrowed a little. Despite the deflection, he seemed to know he'd found something.
Again he sought Spock, and this time the Vulcan put up his full shields. He read the disappointment in the youth's face.
It had to be something new for the P'othparan. An empathic mind, but one unlike those he had known before. One so sophisticated it could close itself off, lock itself away behind rigid barriers.
Spock sympathized. He too had come to the Enterprise as an alien, a creature apart. Though it had been easier for him—he had at least been able to speak with the rest of the crew.
The P'othparan couldn't even do that. Mister Clifford alone was capable of conversing with him—and then only in the crudest of fashions.
Now, Mister Clifford was away on shore leave. Along with Sulu and Chekov and the others who had befriended him. Not to mention the captain himself—the reason the youth was here in the first place.
Yes—Spock sympathized. He understood the P'othparan's need for contact.
But he was not willing to open himself to such an invasion. And an invasion it would be—an imposition of the youth's chaotic emotions on his meticulously ordered awareness.
Knowing the intensity of those emotions only made him that much more reluctant to endure them.
Yet the captain had made a request of him. He could not let himself forget that.
Crossing the room, he pulled out a chair. And sat. And faced the P'othparan.
"My name," he said, "is Spock."
The youth seemed to understand it for a greeting.
"K'leb," he answered. "Nee fran K'leb."
Spock was grateful that he did not extend his hand for clasping—as the humans did. But then, such physical demonstrations would be unnecessary in an empathic culture.
The Vulcan indicated the viewer.
"May I see what you were looking at?" he asked.
The P'othparan understood again—extracted meaning from either the gesture or Spock's tone of voice or both. He turned the device around so that the Vulcan could see the screen.
The human part of Spock—the part he'd inherited from his mother, the part he normally kept submerged—wanted to laugh.
The viewer displayed a diagram of a chess game. A primitive, two-dimensional chess game, but a chess game nonetheless.
"Where …" he began, stopped. "Who introduced you to this activity?"
The youth shrugged, having reached the limits of his comprehension.
Spock again indicated the viewer. "Uhura? Chekov?"
Finally, understanding dawned. The P'othparan smiled.
"M'Koy," he said, with hardly any difficulty at all.
"Ah," said Spock. "Of course. Doctor McCoy."
Unknowingly, the ship's surgeon had made Spock's assignment a good deal easier. Not that Spock would give him the satisfaction of telling him so.
"Perhaps," he said, "you will have a surprise for Doctor McCoy when he returns."
The youth just stared at him as he got up and approached the wall unit where the games were stored.
The outskirts of Tranktown were much different from the center. Here, the streets wound about one another with little rhyme or reason. And the vapor ghosts that wafted through them—a gift of the surrounding jungle—seemed to dampen all sounds. Even the rough laughter that spilled out of the alleys from time to time.
Kirk thought he remembered these streets pretty well. But after an hour or so of meandering, with no familiar landmarks to show for it, he was about to call it quits.
And then he spotted it—the big, old-fashioned neon sign drifting in and out of the mist.
The Shooting Star.
"Well," he said, "here we are, gentlemen."
"About time," said McCoy.
"Aye," Scotty chipped in. "A' was beginnin' t' believe th' place didna exist."
The lurid light of the sign reflected in their faces as they approached the building beneath it.
McCoy screwed up his face.
"What kind of music is that?"
"The kind you've never heard before," said Kirk, "and you're not likely to hear again."
Scotty grunted. "Ye know, it's bonnie in a way. Like th' pipes wailin' in th' highlands."
Kirk nodded. "Something like that."
Leaving the night and the mists behind, they walked in through the swinging doors. And once inside, they saw where the sounds were coming from.
There were stages situated throughout the place, each occupied by a single, whirling female form. The dancers were tawny, sensuous, evocative. But it wasn't their muscular grace alone that made their performances so intriguing.
Attached to their wrists and ankles were intricate-looking wooden instruments, painted in all sorts of too-bright colors. And as they spun, and the air rushed through the instruments, it produced the most haunting of songs.
Scotty had likened it to the music of the bagpipes. Kirk, however, was reminded of the birds of Fythrian'n Four, those impossibly frail creatures that hatched and died in the space of a single Terran month—and sang as if they had an eternity's sadness to fit into that tiny lifetime.
But what had he compared them to the last time he heard them—long before he'd been to Fythrian'n Four and heard the birds? He tried to remember and couldn't.
"Damn,"
said McCoy. "What are those things?"
"The dancers?" asked Kirk. "Or the instruments?"
Scotty laughed his rich, hearty laugh.
"The instruments," said the doctor, trying to scowl with little success. "Of course."
"Kora," Kirk told him. "And the dancers are called koratti. They're brought in from Leandros, in the Laurential system."
Scotty looked at him askance. "Ye seem t' know a lot about them, sir."
"Well, Mister Scott, I took the time to study them."
McCoy smirked. "Not a bad idea at that." He looked about, found an empty table. "And that seems like as good a vantage point as any."
No sooner had they pulled up chairs than a waiter descended on them.
"What'll it be, gents?"
"Have ye got any Scotch?" asked the engineering officer.
"Only the best," said the man.
"Is that so? Make it a double then."
"A double it is," said the waiter. He looked at McCoy next. "And you?"
The doctor poked a thumb in Kirk's direction. "I'll have what he's having. So far, he's batting a thousand."
The man looked at Kirk. "Okay then. It's up to you."
"You still have that Denebian irata?"
"Yup."
"Two of those, then."
The waiter took down the order and started to make his way back toward the bar. Considering how close together the tables were, he moved pretty quickly.
Kirk's eye was drawn to the nearest dancer. For a moment, he lost himself in the sensuality of her movements, the eerie music of her kora. Then he pulled himself away long enough to see to his friends.
Scotty glanced at him, grinning sheepishly.
"Why, Mister Scott," said the captain. "I do believe you're blushing."
Scotty shrugged. "A' canna help it, sir." He shrugged again. "Th' ladies dinna dance this way where a' come from—a' can assure ye of that."
McCoy nodded appreciatively, his eyes riveted on one of the koratti. "I've got to hand it to you," he said. "I've never seen—or heard—anything quite like this before."
"Worth the walk?" asked Kirk.
"Aye," said Scotty.
"Damned right," said the doctor. He sighed, settling back into his chair. "In fact, I think I'll stay here all night. Maybe you can show me that other place in the morning."
Kirk looked at him. "What other place?"
"The place where you got into that brawl."
The captain leaned forward. "Bones, this is the place where I got into that brawl."
McCoy returned the look. "You're kidding," he said. He lanced around. "Doesn't look like such a rough place to me."
Kirk looked around too. "Actually," he said, "it doesn't seem nearly as rough as it used to be. Maybe it's calmed down since then."
Or maybe it had never been that rough, he admitted privately. After all, memory did have a way of embellishing things.
It was then that the drinks arrived.
McCoy peered at the irata, held it up to the light.
"I never drank anything this color before," he said.
"Trust me," Kirk told him.
The doctor harumphed. "Where have I heard that before?"
But if his expression was any indication, he was hardly disappointed.
Nor was Kirk himself, for that matter. The irata was every bit as smooth and bittersweet as he remembered.
"Really goes to your head," said McCoy. "Doesn't it? Why, even Maratakken brandy doesn't massacre brain cells with such enthusiasm." He turned to Scotty. "You really ought to try it." He cleared his throat. "Strictly for medicinal purposes, of course. And that's a professional opinion."
Scotty shook his head. "No thank ye, sir. This old dog does nae learn too many new tricks."
"Suit yourself," said McCoy, taking another sip.
For a while after that, they just watched the koratti, marveling at their dexterity, losing themselves in the sound of the kora. And as they watched, they drank, the liquor only serving to heighten their appreciation.
When the dancer nearest them took a break, Scotty dragged out his latest batch of homespun humor. Each yarn seemed funnier than the one before it.
The evening gradually lost its firmness, sinking into a maelstrom of warm Leandrosian eyes and whirling kora.
It was only after the waiter had refilled their glasses a second time that Kirk gave a thought to the P'othparan, and what had happened in the gym. Immediately, he tried to thrust it back down into his subconscious.
But it kept popping up again.
It was too bad, really it was. And no matter how he cut it, it seemed to be his fault.
The boy had probably been so embittered by then, so disillusioned, that he'd decided to deny Kirk's existence as Kirk had denied his.
Or maybe he really was scared back there. But why? True, he hadn't exactly earned K'leb's affection—but neither had he done anything to instill fear in the boy.
Oh well. In time, things would work themselves out. They always did. As soon as he got back to the ship, he'd …
The captain had lost himself in thought so thoroughly that he never saw the big man approach. But something made him look up then, some sixth sense—to see a huge figure towering over him like a harbinger of bad times to come.
A glance around the table told him he wasn't the only one who had noticed the newcomer. The conversation had abruptly come to a standstill.
For a moment, nothing. Then the man pulled a chair over and sat. He was dark, with a scar from brow to jawline. And he peered at Kirk as if he knew him.
"Something we can do for you?" asked McCoy, smiling genially.
The man turned toward the doctor. He seemed to size him up before he spoke.
"You," he said, "no. My business is with this one here." He indicated the captain with a tilt of his head. "And if you're smart, you'll stay out of it." He sounded as if he'd been gargling with sandpaper.
Scotty chuckled. "And if we're nae so smart?"
The big man shrugged. "There's plenty of trouble to go around." He waggled an index finger, and half a dozen figures lumbered in out of the mist. One, a Tetracite by the look of him, snaked his way to the front of the group.
"Y'see?" he asked. "Here he is. Just like I told you."
The man with the scar gave out with a short, savage laugh. "So he is. And you'll get what we promised you—after we're finished with him."
Kirk exchanged looks with his officers. The smiles had faded from their faces rather quickly.
At the tables around them, however, there were only a couple of curious glances. No one seemed troubled enough to even move his chair away.
Kirk had to fight off an encroaching sense of déjà vu.
"Look," he said, making a show of choosing his words carefully, "I don't think you know what you're getting into here." He turned to McCoy. "Does he, Bones?"
The doctor shook his head, picking up on his cue. "This man," he said, lifting his glass to Kirk, "is the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, which is even now in orbit around your planet. With more than four hundred able-bodied personnel, I might add—all ready to beam down on a moment's notice." He smiled benignly—not an easy thing for him to do, but he managed. "Now if you and your friends just vamoose, I think we'd be inclined to forget all about this. Wouldn't we, Mister Scott?"
The chief engineer shrugged. "A' canna see why nae, sir."
For a moment, the big man seemed to ponder what he'd heard. Then he broke out in raucous laughter. As if it were a signal, his henchmen started laughing too.
"A starship captain," spat Scarface. "Hah! I suppose that's where he got that dilithium—right out of the ship's engine core! And he needed all that money—let me guess—to treat his crew to a round of drinks. Right?"
Kirk looked him square in the eye. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"No?" asked the big man. "You mean it wasn't you who took twenty thousand credits from the Rythrian? And then went around blowing it all ove
r town?" He leaned a little closer, until Kirk could smell the zezalia seeds on his breath. "I thought you were a lot smarter than that. I guess I was wrong."
"I think," said the captain, "you're mistaking me for someone else. I suggest you take another look. Before you do something you regret."
Scarface grunted. "First off," he said, "I never forget a face. And as for regrets … well, mister, you're going to be the all-time expert."
He stood, pushing his chair back.
"Now let's go."
Kirk chuckled. "You really are stubborn, you know that?" He casually cracked his knuckles, at the same time kicking Bones under the table. "Didn't I tell you that you were barking up—"
The big man's hand shot out before he could complete the sentence—but Kirk was ready. Grabbing his antagonist's wrist, he turned it palm-up, dropped to one knee, and heaved, using the elbow for leverage.
Scarface went hurtling headfirst into the closest occupied table, much to the dismay of those gathered around it.
A moment later, however, his henchmen were on top of them. Kirk whirled and planted his foot in one man's midsection. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scotty plow into another man as Bones upended their table. Glasses and brew alike went flying.
Suddenly, the whole bar was chaos. It was as if the clientele had only been waiting for the slightest excuse to wreck the place.
Something whizzed by Kirk's head. As he flinched, something else caught him in the jaw. He recovered just in time to see someone aiming a chair leg at him, moved to one side, and heard it hit someone else.
The lights flickered, went out, and came back only halfway. Kirk felt a body slump against his, slipped under its weight, and clutched at a railing to keep from falling.
"Bones!" he cried, keeping his back against the wall. "Scotty!" If he could only find them, they could slip away in the confusion. But neither of them could be seen among the brawlers.
Then a familiar face loomed out of the melee after all. But it wasn't one he'd been looking for. The big man's scar was livid now, and he pushed people aside to get at his target.
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