She moved quickly as the others helped the dazed scientists out of the cavern. Kirk tucked a flashlight under his arm, gathered up several weapons, and continued the deadly rain of pulses on the sphere. “Mister, run for it!”
“Sir, let me stay,” the Vulcan female pleaded. “It’s not logical, an admiral staying behind—!”
“Mister Larek, you tell Spock I’m proud of you, but get the blazes out of here!” One phaser blinked into the red and he started firing with another before he dropped the depleted one. “Move!”
“Sir!” she answered, and ran. She paused at the passage’s entrance and looked back, seeing Kirk back slowly away, keeping a steady blast onto the Guardian’s sphere. She turned and began running after the others.
She did not see Kirk stagger and fall to his knees as his beam wavered for a fraction of a second. The second blow from the Guardian slammed Kirk back against the worn stones, and the phasers were knocked from his grasp. He cried out as the Guardian struck again.
Go to page 118.
Page 102
From page 89.
Commander Scott ran his eyes expertly over the complex of machinery, tracing power lines and the path of raw material. Small, mindless robots dumped rocks, earth, and vegetable matter from the outside into a hopper. A fusion torch stripped the molecules to atoms, and the atoms were sent along a mass accelerator to be magnetically dropped off, atomically pure, in collection bins.
Then the material was re-formed into something at the other end of the big room. Scott, accompanied by two security men, went down that way, hardly noticing Kirk, Larek, and the others leave to explore further.
At the end of the assembly line he stared at the end product, then flipped open his communicator. “Commander Scott to Captain Kirk! Wait’ll you see what the Klingons are up to!”
Proceed to page 111.
Page 103
From page 89.
They left Scotty examining the machinery. Uhura reported that there were no Klingon or other starships in the vicinity. They proceeded along the dark corridors, past pits of silvery disks, past rooms containing pillowlike bundles of shimmering pink, past niches filled with dusty golden rods, and through another room with worn walls and a great silver star imbedded in the floor.
Without warning, metal grates slid from the ceiling in front of them and behind, trapping them. At once Kirk whirled and triggered a phaser blast at the metal bars. But the thick metal only glowed warmly and did not disintegrate.
A voice echoed down the hall. “Surrender, humans! You are trapped!”
If you want instant action, go to page 109.
If you want to look things over first, proceed to page 110.
Page 104
From page 90.
Kirk and Larek proceeded carefully down the stone corridor, the security detail behind them. Commander Scott remained with a two-man guard team investigating the machinery.
Kirk stole a look at the young ensign, approving of her alert attitude and quick decision making. Swift decision making was often the reason some survived when others didn’t. That made him remember the Klingon salute: “Survive and succeed.”
Klingons were tenacious, crafty, and intelligent, Kirk knew from bitter experience. But they were also prey to egotistical emotional responses, even more so than human beings, and were fanatic duelists.
His thoughts were interrupted as six Klingons stepped out of a side passage. Both groups were surprised, but it was the Klingons who began firing at once.
Kirk ordered his men back into a room they had just passed, a dark chamber filled with soft cubes of beige plastic. Two of the security men kept up a returning fire as Admiral Kirk motioned Larek to him.
“Go that way,” he ordered. “Take two men. Flank them and attack, but put your phasers on ‘stun.’”
“But, sir, they are shooting to kill—!”
“That’s an order, Mister Larek!”
She nodded, motioned to two of the men, and ran out.
Proceed to page 112.
Page 105
From page 99.
“I’m Galen Tripp,” the man said, getting up on one elbow and looking around.
“Doctor Tripp?” Kirk asked. “The head of the archaeological team?”
Tripp nodded, smiling as he saw the other wet figures of his party stir and awaken. “We triggered some kind of terrible disease here,” he said. He gestured at the tank of gelatin substance. “This…this cured us and kept us alive until help came.”
“Then you don’t know where Chekov and my missing people are?” Kirk responded. He snapped orders for half of his crew to get the scientists outside so that they might be transported up to the orbiting Enterprise. And the rest were to continue searching for Chekov and his team.
“Don’t bother, Keptin,” Chekov said, stepping into the light. He was dusty, his uniform torn. He gestured apologetically at his ragged team. “We discovered just how fragile some parts of this place are,” he explained. Then he held up a strange golden object, a star-shaped sculpture with jewels on the edges.
Dr. Tripp reached for it with a hoarse cry. “The Star of Vardan!” He took it into his trembling hands. “This will unlock the vaults we found below! The knowledge of a race will be ours!”
“Not before you return to the Enterprise and clean up,” Kirk said. Then he smiled, already mentally preparing his Captain’s Log, Supplemental.
END
Page 106
From page 85.
“Ensign, put your phaser on ‘stun’ and spray that first tank,” Kirk ordered. The young officer shot him a quick look, but did as she was ordered.
The gel that filled the tank flowed back, then surged up over the edge, leaving Chekov untouched at the bottom. He blinked his eyes and sat up.
“Keptin Kirk! What…what heppened, sir?”
“Apparently you were in a kind of alien hospital, Mister Chekov. Mister Gottlieb, will you release the others?” He turned back to the young Russian officer. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, sir, I…” His tongue explored his mouth, then he grinned. “Except that now I have a whole tooth instead of one with a good Russian filling, sir!”
“Excellent, Mister Chekov. Assemble the teams. We’re going back to the Enterprise.”
END
Page 107
From page 67, 84, 100.
“Hurry!” Dr. McCoy urged as they ran back with the rescued scientists, leaving Kirk as rear guard. “Outside we can be beamed up!”
A security man was helping each of the dazed scientists, who looked about them as if it was all a dream. “It’s been years,” moaned the scientist in charge.
“It only seems that way,” one of the young officers, Ensign Gottlieb, said. “Actually it’s been about a day since the Enterprise received your distress call.”
“A day?” The man’s mouth gaped open.
“Keep moving!” McCoy urged. He looked at Spock, trotting along stoically next to him. “What about Jim? We can’t leave him like that, Spock!”
“We received direct orders, Doctor.”
“To blazes with direct orders! That’s Jim Kirk back there!”
“First things first, Doctor McCoy; that is only logical.”
“Blast you and your logic!” McCoy said heatedly. “Do something, you green-blooded Vulcan!”
“Really, Doctor McCoy, your persistent insults serve no purpose.”
McCoy made a nasty sound and took the arm of a faltering scientist.
Mister Spock looked tense, and as hard-looking as any of them remembered ever seeing him.
Follow one response on page 114.
Follow another response on page 115.
Page 108
From page 100.
Kirk fought the blinding pain and fired blindly in the direction of the sphere. When he felt a momentary lessening of the spikes of pain in his head, he steadied the phaser, and the pain went away as the Guardian sought to protect itself from the fiery pulses of th
e weapon.
Kirk backed away, still firing, starting another series of pulses from a newly charged weapon before he discarded the deleted older one. He reached the passage back to the surface and took two of the weapons and blasted away until they were blinking red, then he tossed them aside as he turned to sprint through the stone halls, his flashlight bobbing.
The mind whip made him weave and fall, but he clawed himself erect and struggled on, half-blind, his head ready to burst. But with every step, the influence of the Guardian grew slightly less.
Kirk lurched through the passages, uncertain of the turnings, but always taking the upward passage. He passed rooms filled with strange tentacled objects, and pits of softly glowing gel. He crossed a low room filled with pure white pyramids of some kind of crystal, then through a hall lined with pillars of golden light.
He came to a dead end, doubled back, feeling the stabs at his mind increase. His vision blurred and he ran into a wall, but he kept moving by willpower alone.
Proceed to page 115.
Page 109
From page 103.
Without hesitation, Kirk began firing at the wall. “Shoot!” he ordered the security personnel. Their phasers quickly blasted a hole in the stone, and Kirk led them through into another passage.
As they ran long, Larek said, “That was quick thinking, Admiral!”
“Never,” Kirk said, “fight by the other man’s rules!”
He rounded a corner and called a halt, setting a guard on their back trail. He flipped open his communicator, but could not get through to the Enterprise. “They’ve set up a jamming field!”
“Won’t that alert the Enterprise?” Larek said.
“Yes,” Kirk nodded, “but they won’t know what it means. It also means that we can’t beam up or bring anyone down.”
Proceed to page 95.
Page 110
From page 103.
Kirk looked around desperately for a way out, but there seemed to be none. A phaser beam struck out of the darkness, and one of his security men grunted and fell unconscious.
“Live to fight another day,” he said to Ensign Larek before calling out to the Klingons. “All right! We surrender!”
“Throw out your weapons!”
Once the phasers lay beyond the bars, six Klingons came swaggering out of the darkness. The leader sneered at Kirk. “Only six Klingons defeated an admiral and a superior force of numbers? How humiliating!” All the Klingons laughed.
“What are you doing here?” Kirk demanded. “This is Federation territory!”
“A terrible navigation error, I’m sure,” the Klingon laughed. Then he sobered. “No, human, this is the first step of the final battle! This is the outpost of the Klingon empire! It is from here we shall seed the air of Federation planets with mind spores!”
Kirk gasped. The automated factory he had seen was really an accelerated organic factory. The life of the deadly mind spores was very short. They couldn’t be refrigerated, so the manufacturing point had to be close to the target. Two spores in the air of a planet would reduce the population to approximately half its IQ within three days!
The Klingon laughed again as he saw realization devastate Kirk’s face. “And you, humans, you will be the test subjects for the first batch of mind spores!”
Go to page 96.
Page 111
From page 102.
“Can’t talk to you now, Scotty,” Kirk said into his communicator. The wall above him exploded in a shower of red-hot rock fragments as a Klingon phaser blasted it.
“Ensign Larek,” Kirk snapped. “I want you to keep up a return fire while I outflank them. Keep their attention.” He pointed at three of the security men. “You three, with me!”
Jim Kirk ran hard back down the cold, dark hall. The Klingons had ambushed them, but for some reason had their phasers set on “stun” instead of “kill.” Kirk had dragged the unconscious crewman to safety as the others kept up a covering fire.
But now he had to outflank and destroy the ambushers. What were Klingons doing here? It was a stupid violation of treaty, for they were not here in force.
Well, he thought, I’ll figure that out later. First things first—and first was the neutralizing of six Klingons!
Continue to page 97.
Page 112
From page 104.
Ensign Larek ran down a corridor, then crossed over, as her instinct told her they had passed behind the Klingons. She had the crew extinguish their light beams, then proceeded cautiously. In moments, peering around a corner, she saw six Klingons firing down at Admiral Kirk.
And one of them saw her. A ferocious snarl on his face, he swung his weapon around. But the Vulcan was quicker. Her phaser stunned him, and he fell limply. Before the others could turn and fire, Larek and her men had brought them down.
“Admiral Kirk!” she called. Moments later, Kirk flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Scott. Report!”
“Scott here, Captain. I figured out what them scallywags were up to, sir, and why they were doing it here. You’d better come see, Captain.”
A few minutes later, Kirk was looking down at the product of the secret Klingon factory. “Mind spores,” he said grimly.
Continue on next page.
Page 113
From page 112.
“Aye,” Scott said. “Drop a pair of them in the atmosphere of a planet and within seventy-two hours the IQs of intelligent races would be halved! But they spoil quickly, which is why they had to incubate them here. I suspect a Klingon ship will be along in a few days. And this was the first crop, as it were, Captain.”
“I think we’ll have a reception ready, don’t you, Mister Scott?”
“Aye,” Scotty nodded. “The mind-destroying devils!” Then he smiled. “We found Mister Chekov and the others, all well, sir, just down the way.”
END
Page 114
From page 107.
Kirk stumbled back from the Guardian’s dull sphere, firing without letup. His head throbbed, but he kept up an accurate fire until his phaser began to blink red. He tossed it aside and brought up another, but in that fraction of a second the Guardian broke through and struck Kirk a mental blow that sent him lurching back to hit the wall.
…no…leave…stay…
“Sorry,” Kirk gasped, firing again. “I’m not going…to…stay…here…just to keep you from being…bored!” He emptied that phaser as he backed away, not making the mistake of letting up the deadly fire on the powerful Guardian.
Kirk made the passageway entrance and emptied the last power of his two remaining phasers into the hotly glowing sphere, then threw them down and ran as fast as he could, his flashbeam swaying across the cold, rough walls, back toward freedom and the Enterprise.
Go to page 125.
Page 115
From page 107, 108.
Spock heard a faint cry from a side passage and flashed his light. He saw the staggering figure of his captain, arms out, feeling along the wall.
“Spock!” Kirk yelled hoarsely. “Is that you, Spock?”
“Here, Captain!” Spock said. He motioned for the others to keep moving and ran back to grab Kirk in his powerful arms. “Are you all right, Jim?” he asked intently.
Kirk grinned through the pain. “What is that I hear in your voice, Spock?”
Spock was embarrassed at his burst of emotion, but he tried not to show it. “An unwarranted display toward a superior officer,” he apologized, but Kirk would have none of it.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” he grinned. “I’m afraid…I’m afraid I’m not too well right now, Spock.”
“I’ll help you, Captain.”
“You always have,” Kirk murmured.
Go to page 126.
Page 116
From page 71.
Spock’s hands reached out toward the scaly head of the many-toothed monster. The wet-looking eyes followed him, the creature’s tail whisked back and forth viciously, but it made no other
move.
The Vulcan’s hands touched the armored scales. “My mind to your mind,” Spock murmured. “My thoughts to your thoughts.”
Then he screamed.
The security men brought up their weapons, but Spock held up a hand. He had fallen to his knees, but his hand still was in contact with the hideous creature. “No!” he said.
The Vulcan got shakily to his feet and stood there for a long moment, then stepped back. The creature lifted a clawed arm, then vanished.
Nakashima blinked. “Sir, what—”
The nine archaeologists popped into view with a soft poof of displaced air. They groaned, and Spock ordered them beamed up at once. He turned to the still-staring young lieutenant.
“Mister Nakashima, your evaluation.”
“Sir, it…What you did…I…”
“I performed the logical action, Mister Nakashima. I contacted the opposition. What you saw was the last living Vardan—or Lassfapan, in their language. It is old and dying. The scientists were…pets. I persuaded the creature to release them. But there is a task for you, Lieutenant.” Nakashima raised his eyebrows. “You will bring down a molecular transceiver, then transfer all nonclassified material in the ship’s library.”
Star Trek II: Distress Call Page 7