by 11(lit)
Suddenly, De Salle shouted: "Look!"
At the end of the room was an inset, a hollow gouged prominently out of its wall. As the other niches held statuary, this one held the stiffened forms of Kirk and Sulu, their attitudes caught and hardened as they had last moved at the instant before their disappearance. Their figures were bathed in a violet light. De Salle rushed to them, call-ing, "Dr. McCoy-quick! Dr. McCoy!"
But McCoy's health monitor was grimly factual. He looked up from it, his face tired-looking. "Nothing," he said. "Kirk and Sulu... like waxwork shapes..."
The drawing room's door slammed shut. A moment later, a tinkling Mozart-like arpeggio came from the harpsichord. And seated on the bench before it was the player -a man, a man clad in the silver-buckled elegance of a military man of the mid-1800's-a delighted if slightly sly smile on his rosy face.
As the Enterprise trio stared at him, he completed the musical passage with a flourish of well-groomed hands. Then he spun around to face them. He was Byronically handsome, from his pouting mouth and neckcloth-length hair to his disdainful air of superiority, of being set apart as an object of special and peculiar value and privilege. The gesture he made toward the hollow holding the forms of Kirk and Sulu was either genuinely bored-or the blossom of a painstaking cultivation of boredom.
"I must say," the musician said amiably, "that they make an exquisite display pair." Then a note of regret drooped the voice. "But I suppose you'll want them back now."
A lace-cuffed hand was lifted. Instantly, Kirk started forward, completing his interrupted move to the helm of the Enterprise. Sulu stirred, his face confused, his eyes be-wildered. They sought Kirk's face. "Captain, where are we?"
The man on the harpsichord bench rose. "Welcome to my island of peace on this stormy little planet of Gothos."
Kirk ignored him to speak to his men. "What's hap-pened? Fill me in."
McCoy said, "Jim, you disappeared from the bridge after Sulu went. We've been hunting you for hours-"
Their host cut across him. "You must excuse my whimsical way of fetching you here. But when I saw you passing by, I simply could not resist entertaining you."
Kirk, exchanging a glance with McCoy, stepped for-ward. "I am Captain James Kirk of the United Starship Enterprise..."
The creature swept him a bow. "So you are the cap-tain of these brave men! My greetings and felicitations, Captain. It's so good of you and your officers to drop in. Absolutely smashing of you!"
The theatricality of the voice and gesture was as tur-gid as old greasepaint. Kirk had to make an effort to keep his voice level. "Who are you?" he said. "Where do you come from?"
An arm swept wide in a grandly embracing move-meat. "Have no fear, lads," said the too-rich voice. "I have made myself as one of you..."
De Salle's temper, compounded of fear mingled with rage, exploded. He advanced, his phaser on aim. "Who are you? That is the question that was asked you! Answer it! And make the answer fast!"
The being appreciated De Salle. "Ah, such spirited ferocity!" it crowed happily. Then, not unlike a child remembering lessons in manners, it said, "Oh, forgive me. General Trelane, retired. At your service, gentlemen. My home is your home."
It failed to soothe De Salle's temper. Low-voiced, he spoke to Kirk. "Captain, we've lost contact with the ship. We're trapped here."
Overhearing, General Trelane rubbed his hands in ex-uberant pleasure. " 'Trapped here,'" he echoed. "I can-not tell you how it delights me-having visitors to this very planet I have made my hobby. From my observations I did not think you capable of such voyages."
Jaeger, whispering to Kirk, gestured around them. "Captain, note the period-nine hundred light-years from Earth. This place and time fit what might have been seen if there were telescopes powerful enough to-"
He was stopped by the smile on Trelane's full red lips. "Yes. I have been an interested witness of your lively little doings on your lively little Earth, sir..."
"Then you've been witnessing its doings of nine hundred years past," Kirk said. "That's a long time."
Trelane chuckled. "Good heavens, have I made a time error? How fallible of me!" Eyeing the stately room around him, he added, "I did so want to make you feel at home. In fact, I am quite proud of the detail."
"General Trelane-" Kirk began; and stopped at the coyly cautionary finger that had been held up. "Tut-tut, a retired general, sir. Just Squire Trelane, now. You may call me 'Squire'-indeed, I rather fancy the title."
In his career as a Starship captain, Kirk had encoun-tered many oddments of galactic creation-oddments ranging from the ultimately hideous and alien, to a beauty that spoke with the final familiarity of wonder to the soul. At this moment, face to face with this self-styled squire of a self-chosen time of a Victorian England, chosen out of all the times offered by nine hundred years, he seemed to be face to face with the last anomaly-an X of mystery com-pounded simultaneously of innocence and guile. He looked at Squire Trelane. "For what purpose have you imprisoned us here?" he asked.
Even as he spoke, he had the sense of spider-strands, sticky, well-woven, encompassing him. It was as though he had already heard what the too-rich voice was saying. "Im-prisoned? Nonsense! You are my guests." His host's lower lip actually trembled with what suggested itself as the touch-ing eagerness of hospitality. "You see, I was just complet-ing my studies of your curious and fascinating society. You happened by at a most propitious moment." There was a low, carved, armless chair beside him and he flung himself into it. "Captain Kirk, you must tell me all about your campaigns-your battles-your missions of conquest..."
For the first time, Kirk seemed to know where he was. For the first time since Sulu's disappearance from the Enterprise, he felt a sense of firm identity, of some unnam-able stability back under his feet. "Our missions are peaceful," he said. "They are not for conquest. We battle only when we have no choice."
Trelane winked ,at him. His left eyelid dropped and rose in inescapable suggestion of mutual, known, if unacknowledged awareness of perfidious doings in high places. "So that's the official story, eh, Captain?"
Unobtrusively, McCoy had directed his tricorder at Trelane. Just as unobtrusively, Kirk had registered this fact. Now he stepped toward the low, armless chair. "Squire Trelane," he said, "I must ask you to let us return to our ship."
What he got was a languid wave of a languid hand. "Wouldn't hear of it!" Trelane protested. "You will all join me in a repast. There is so much I must learn from you: your feelings about war... about killing... about conquest-that sort of thing." A finger of the languid hand became unlanguid. It stiffened, pointed, aiming at Kirk. "You are, you know," said Trelane, "one of the new preda-tor species-species that preys even on itself."
De Salle, beside Kirk, seemed to go suddenly thick in fhe neck. His hand darted to his phaser. "Sir?" he said, half in question, half in appeal.
"On 'stun,' De Salle," Kirk said. "Don't kill him."
What was it about this being that both repelled and at the same time broke your heart? A capacity for communi-cating loneliness, that burden of the solitary self borne ei-ther in a conscious fortitude or in a necessity of unaware re-sentment and complaint? It was speaking, the strange being. "De Salle-is that his name, Captain Kirk?" In its eagerness it didn't wait for an answer but rushed on, crying to the navigator, "Vous ˆtes un vrai fran‡ais?"
"My ancestry is French... Yes..."
"Ah, monsieur! Vive la gloire! Vive Napoleon! I ad-mire your Napoleon very much, y'know."
"Mr. De Salle is our navigator," Kirk said evenly. "This gentleman is our medical officer, Dr. McCoy-our helmsman, Sulu, and our meteorologist, Carl Jaeger..."
Trelane acknowledged each introduction. "Welcome, good physicianer. All reverence to your ancestors, Honorable Sir..."
Sulu flushed. "What's he doing-kidding?"
But Trelane's interest had fixed on Jaeger. Clicking his heels, he cried, "Und Offizier Jaeger, die deutsche Sol-dat, nein?" Then stamping his feet in cadence to his words, he de
claimed, "Eins, zwei, drei, vier! Gehen wir mit dem Schiessgewehr!"
Jaeger's voice was dry as dead bone. "I am a scientist -not a military man."
Trelane beamed at him. "Come now, we are all mili-tary men under the skin. And how we do love our uniforms!" He clearly loved his-and the sight of himself in it, epauletted, be-braided as the gilt-framed mirror that re-flected it back to him flushed his face with self-admiring pride. He turned, preening to get a three-quarter view of his cuirass of shining buttons; and Kirk, under his breath, spoke to De Salle. "Now!" But as the phaser lifted to aim, Trelane wheeled, lifting his hand. At once, De Salle stiff-ened into immobility.
"What is that interesting weapon you have there?" in-quired the Squire of Gothos. He removed the phaser-and thaw replaced the frozen stillness of De Salle's figure. "Ah, yes, I see! That won't kill-but this will! The mechanism is now clear to me." Making an adjustment, he fired the phaser at the niche containing the lizard-like sculpture. It dematerialized. Trelane laughed with delight. "Oh, how marvelous!" Swinging the weapon around, he shot at all the statues set in their niches around the room, yelling as each disintegrated and vanished. "Devastating!" howled Trelane. "Why this could kill millions."
Striding up to him, Kirk tore the phaser from his hand. "Beginning with whom, Trelane? My crew? Are we your next targets?"
The full red lips pouted. "But how absolutely typical of your species, Captain! You don't understand, so you're angry." He pointed a gleeful finger at Kirk. "But do not be impatient. I have anticipated your next wish. You wish to know how I've managed all this, don't you?"
He nodded in answer to his own question. Then, weaving his fingers together like a prissy English schoolmaster about to dissertate on Virgil's prosody, he said, "We -meaning others and myself-have, to state the matter briefly, perfected a system by which matter can be changed to energy... and then back to matter..."
"Like the Transporter system aboard the Enterprise," Kirk said.
"Oh, that's a crude example! Ours is an infinitely more sophisticated process. You see, we not only transport matter from place to place but we can alter its shape, too, at will."
"This drawing room then," Kirk said. "You created it? By rearranging the existing matter of the planet?"
"Quite," Trelane said.
"But how-"
The creature drew a soothing finger across a furrow of irritation that had appeared on its brow. "Dear Captain, your inquiries are becoming tiresome. Why? I want you to be happy-to free your mind of care. Let us enjoy ourselves in the spirit of martial good fellowship!"
Kirk turned quietly to his men. "Let's go. We're get-ting out of here."
"Naughty captain!" Trelane said. "Fie, you are quite rude. But you cannot leave here. What an admirably fiery look of protest! Upon my soul, I admire you, sir, though in mercy you seem to need another demonstration of my authority-"
His right hand made a swift gesture; and where Kirk had stood was emptiness. Then he was back-but on his knees, racked by choking paroxysms of agony. Dismissed from the shelter of Trelane's domain, he had been exposed to the blasting effects of the planet's lethal atmosphere. In a moment its toxic gases had licked into his lungs. He coughed, doubled over, still tortured by their strangulating vapors-and the Squire of Gothos patted his bent head.
"That was an example," he said, "of what can occur away from my kindly influence. I do hope that you will now behave yourself, Captain, not only for your own sake, but because, if you don't, I shall be very angry."
Power. It had nothing to do with morality, with re-sponsibility. Like Trelane's, it simply existed-a fact to which the body was obliged to bow but which the heart could continue to reject, to despise.
"Let me hold on," Kirk thought.
The sensors of the Enterprise had finally located Tre-lane's cool green oasis. Scott, staring at its tranquil trees on the bridge viewing screen, said, "An area as peaceful as Earth. But how do you explain it, Mr. Spock?"
"I don't, Mr. Scott. It just is. Artificial, perhaps-a freak of nature. But the fact remains that life could exist in that space. See if you can tune the sensors down finer. See if you can pick up any sentient life forms in that area of Gothos."
As Scott moved to obey, he said, "Even if we find any, it doesn't follow that it would be our people, sir."
"No. But if the captain is alive and down there, he has to be there in that place. I shall try to transport up any thinking beings our sensors detect."
"Shootin' in the dark, Mr. Spock."
The retort was unanswerable. "Would you rather stand by and do nothing?"
At the same moment, in the drawing room of Trelane Hall, Kirk and his men were being herded past a cabinet. "And in here," its owner was boasting, "is an array of your battle flags and pennants, some dating back to the Crusades, to Hannibal's invaders, the hordes of Persia!"
Nobody looked at the display. Undaunted, the enthu-siastic Trelane addressed Kirk. "Can you imagine it, Captain? The thousands-no, the millions-who have marched off to death singing beneath these banners! Doesn't it make your blood run swiftly to think of it?" In his exuber-ance, he rushed to the harpsichord to bang out some martial music. Under the cover of its noise, Sulu whispered, "Captain, where could he possibly come from? Who is this maniac?"
McCoy, his voice lowered, said, "Better ask 'what' is he. I monitored him. What I found was unbelievable."
Kirk was staring intently at the musician. Now he spoke, anticipating McCoy's news. "He's not alive."
"No, Jim. Not as we define life. No trace. Zero."
"You mean, your readings show he's dead?" Sulu asked.
"They don't even show that he exists, either alive or dead."
Jaeger pointed to the fireplace. "Notice that wood fire, Captain. Burning steadily-ember-bed red and glowing- yet it gives off no heat at all."
Kirk, moving quietly the length of the room, opened his communicator. Briefly, his voice toneless, he brought Spock up-to-date on the current situation.
"Fire without heat," Spock echoed reflectively. "It would seem, Captain, that the being mistakes all these things it has created for manifestations of present-day Earth. Apparently, it is oblivious of the time differential."
"Yes, Mr. Spock. Whatever it is we are dealing with, it is certainly not all-knowledgeable. He makes mistakes."
"And strangely simple ones. He has a flaw, sir."
"We'll work on it, Mr. Spock. Kirk out." As he snapped off his communicator, he realized that the music had stopped; and that Trelane, turning, was smiling at him. It was a sly smile, its slyness at variance with the joviality of his tone. "Discussing deep-laid plans, I'll wager. Cap-tain, I can't wait to see them unfold."
Kirk took a firm step forward. "Trelane, I haven't planned any-"
A reproving finger was coyly waggled at him. "Ah, you mustn't believe that I deplore your martial virtues of deception and stratagem! Quite the contrary-I have noth-ing but esteem for your whole species!"
"If your esteem is genuine"-Kirk paused to draw a deep breath-"then you must respect our sense of duty, too. Our ship is in need of us-we have tasks to perform-- schedules to honor..."
"Oh, but I can't bear to let you go. I was getting a bit bored until you came." He whirled on his bench to run off a bragging cadenza on the harpsichord. "You'll have to stay. I insist."
"For how long?"
"Until it's over, of course," Trelane said.
"Until what's over?"
Trelane shrugged. "Dear Captain, so many questions... Why worry about an inevitably uncertain future? Enjoy yourself today, my good sir. Tomorrow-why, it may never come at all. Indeed, when it arrives, it has already become today."
The phrase "slippery as an eel" suddenly occurred to Kirk. He made another try. "Trelane, even if we wanted to stay, our companions are missing us. They need us."
"I must try to experience your sense of concern with you, your grief at the separation." The harpsichord wailed a mournful minor passage, sentimental, drippy.
Kirk gritted his teeth. "There are four hundred men and women on board our ship waiting for-"
"Women!" A discordant chord crashed from the in-strument. "You don't actually mean members of the fair sex are among your crew! How charming! No doubt they are very beautiful!" Trelane, leaping to his feet, clapped his hands. "And I shall be so very gallant to them! Here, let me fetch them down to us at once!"