by 10(lit)
"So that's it," Kirk said slowly. "At least we can hope it was painless."
The computer beeped. Activating a switch, Spock pointed to the main viewing screen. "The name of the Exeter's surgeon, sir, was Carter," he said.
The face of a man appeared on the screen-the face of a man in torture. So much for the hope that the deaths had been painless, Kirk thought. That agonized face had possessed a body. He visualized the body dragging itself to the recorder to speak its last words into the Captain's log.
They began in mid-sentence. "... if you've come aboard this ship, you are dead men." The voice broke in a spasm of pain. "Don't return to your own ship. A mu-tated di-bacto-viro complex of some sort... deadly... don't know what it is. If you're aboard you're infected- you're already dying."
Young Lieutenant Raintree whispered, "My God-let me out of here!"
"Pull yourself together, Lieutenant!" Kirk snapped. "This is heroism you're listening to!"
"Repeat, repeat," said the face on the screen. "Our land-ing party brought... contamination up from the planet." The face convulsed with agony. "You have one chance... some kind of immunity for those living on the planet's surface. Your sole chance, get down there. Get down there fast. The Captain is...."
A scream broke from the viewer. It went dark.
After a moment Kirk walked over to the vacant command chair. Carter had sat in it to use the Captain's log recorder. Now all it held was the bodiless clothing that had been his medical officer's uniform. As to the heap of white dust dropped from the clothing-that was Carter.
"Bones," he said quietly, "warn the Enterprise. Mr. Spock, the Exeter's Transporter Room. Prepare to beam us all down to the planet."
They were in an alley of what might have been an old-time American frontier settlement, set on the edge of a desertlike terrain. But the buildings that formed the alley's walls were Asian, their roofs concave, flaring at the eaves. They moved cautiously to the alley's entrance. In the street people had gathered about some object of intense interest. They looked Asian, too. Dark-haired, yellow-skinned, their eyes were slanted by the epicanthic fold characteristic of Oriental races. One of the villagers saw them as they emerged from the alley. He gave a terri-fied shout. The others turned-and the crowd broke up into a frightened flight.
The object of their interest was an execution. A heads-man's block had been set up in the middle of the street. Kneeling at it, his hands thonged behind his back, was a savage-looking white man, his strongly-muscled body clad in skins. Near him stood a young white woman, also wearing savage skins. Horrified, Kirk realized she was awaiting her turn at the block. Instinctively, he and his men rushed forward. The villagers who were holding the white male savage were surprised into loosening him. He rolled aside as the ax flashed down. He tried to sink his teeth into the nearest villager. The ax was lifting again when it was halted by a sharp command.
"Put your ax away, Liyang!"
The voice was familiar. Kirk whirled.
Incredibly, Captain Ronald Tracy of the USS Exeter was striding toward him in the well-known uniform of a starship Captain. His pistol-phaser hung at his belt. Nor had he lost the commanding charisma of the personality Kirk remembered. He was followed by a military guard of young village men armed with javelins and swords.
"Ron!" Kirk shouted.
"Jim Kirk, by all that's holy!" Tracy said.
There was an odd little pause in which Kirk was con-scious that Tracy was taking stock of the unexpected situation. Then he seemed to have straightened out the inventory. "I knew someone would come looking for us," Tracy said. "I'm sorry it had to be you, Jim." He shook hands grimly. "But I'm glad your arrival stopped this. I didn't know they had an execution going on."
Kirk said, "Captain Tracy. My First Officer, Mr. Spock; ship's surgeon Leonard McCoy; Lieutenant Phil Raintree."
McCoy said, "Captain Tracy, the last log records aboard your vessel warned of a mutated disease."
"You're all safe," Tracy said. "Some form of immunity exists on the surface here." He turned to a robust guard behind him. "No more of this, Wu. Lock up the savage."
Wu pointed to Kirk's phaser. "They carry fireboxes-"
"Lock up the savage!" Tracy said.
It took more than Tracy's military guard group to sub-due the still-bound white man. Before he was led away, several villagers had to be told to assist them. It was a rough assistance. Tracy noted Spock's cocked eyebrow. "The white beasts are called Yangs," he said casually. "Impossible to even communicate with them. Hordes of them out there; they'll attack anything that moves."
"Interesting," Spock said. "The villagers know what phasers are."
Tracy glanced at him sharply. "You're a Vulcan?"
Spock nodded. "By one-half, Captain."
Was Tracy disturbed by the information? Kirk broke the moment of curious tension. "How were you left alone down here? What happened?"
Tracy's answer came with obvious effort. "Our medi-scanners showed the planet as perfectly safe. The villag-ers, the Kohms here, were friendly. That is, they were after they got over the shock of our white skins. We re-semble the Yangs-the savages. When my landing party transported back to the ship, I stayed behind to arrange our planet survey with the village elders." He paused, struggling back to control. "The next thing I knew, the ship was calling me. Our landing party had carried an unknown disease back."
He stopped to avoid an open break in his voice.
"My crew, Jim. My whole crew... people I knew, people who...."
He straightened his shoulders but couldn't go on. Kirk, sharing his torture, said, "We saw it, Ron."
"I... am as infected as they were... as you are. I stayed alive only because I stayed down here. There's some natural immunization that protects anyone here on the planet's surface. I don't know what it is yet."
McCoy spoke to Kirk. "Lucky we found that log re-port. If we had returned to the Enterprise..."
Tracy completed the sentence. "... you'd be dying by now along with the whole Enterprise crew. You'll stay alive only so long as you stay here. None of us can ever leave this planet."
They had half-suspected it-but hearing it finally put into words chilled them. Being marooned on Omega IV for the rest of their lives could well be a fate as empty as death. Kirk, aware of his men's somber faces, said, "Then we'll have to make the best we can of this planet. Can this place provide us with any quarters?"
"They're being prepared," Tracy said. "Wu will show Doctor McCoy and the Lieutenant to theirs. Doctor, yours can accommodate any equipment you want beamed down to you. I apologize, Jim. Your quarters and Mr. Spock's aren't ready. So if you two will follow me..."
He led them to a building that clearly served the more prosperous villagers as a kind of clubhouse. Its large central room featured a charcoal brazier. Richly dressed men sat at tables eating strips of meat broiled over the brazier. As Tracy entered with his guests, the villagers respectfully moved from their tables to clear a path for them. Two elders hurriedly relinquished the brazier table. At the sight of Kirk, one of the attractive girls who were busy setting the table with fresh dishes dropped a cup.
Tracy beckoned her back. "They were afraid of me, too, at first," he said. "It's our white skins; our likeness to the Yangs, the white savages."
He might have been a feudal thane graciously permitting his serfs to sit themselves below the salt in his superior company. No acknowledgement was made of his fellow-diners' nods or spoken greetings. His ease with their excessive deference made Kirk more uncomfortable than the deference. He accepted food from one of the girls; and deliberately ignoring Spock, said to Kirk, "Barbecued wild game. Sort of a long-necked rabbit-antelope."
A meat slice was speared and extended to Kirk. Hold-ing it, he watched another girl rush to fill their crude cups with drink.
"You are treated with a considerable honor by these villagers, Captain," Spock said.
Again, he was ignored. Pointedly, Tracy addressed him-self to Kirk. "These Kohm villagers ask
ed for help, Jim. If they ever had any spirit, it's been whipped out of them by the savages."
"Are all the Kohm villages under attack?" Kirk said.
Tracy nodded. "This is one of the last. But before the Yangs began decimating them, they appear to have had quite an advanced civilization. There are ruins of large cities out there."
Spock had taken all the snubs he intended to take. Just as pointedly as Tracy, he ignored the Exeter's Cap-tain to speak directly to Kirk. "Though nomad tribes have been known to destroy advanced civilizations, they rarely trouble an unarmed people-spiritless villagers."
Tracy sprang to his feet, furious. "I will not be ques-tioned by a subordinate!"
Unperturbed, Spock merely eyed him curiously. Kirk's voice had become formal. "Captain Tracy," he said, "I think you're forgetting that Mr. Spock is my First Offi-cer. He holds the rank of Commander in the service."
Spock rose to his feet. "I see no purpose in my causing anger to Captain Tracy," he said politely. "May I remove myself, Captain Kirk?"
Kirk took a sip of his drink. Then he nodded. Spock quickly left the table. As he disappeared, Kirk turned a cold face to Tracy. "Let's clear something up right now, Captain. I have never had a better 'First' than Mr. Spock-or a better personal friend."
"You're sentimental, Jim. I've yet to meet a Vulcan capable of friendship. Certainly this one is doing his best to sabotage ours."
Tracy's ruddy face had grown accusing. "And you know what's in his computer mind, too! It's added up a few scanty observations-and clicked to the conclusion I've violated the Prime Directive! He's got it into his machine head I'm interfering in this culture!"
Kirk said to himself, Take this easy. To Tracy he said, "Ron, a First Officer's job is to be suspicious." He put a smile on his face. "Saves his Captain from appearing to be the villain."
"I am a fellow starship Captain," Tracy said.
"Fair enough. So you are. Yet I myself saw the local militia recognize our phasers. They also seem to take or-ders from you." He hesitated. "I'm not making any charges, believe me. I'm merely asking what goes on."
Tracy's eyes searched Kirk's. "All right. So long as we're asking questions, I'll put one to you. Suppose you were faced with a horde of incredibly vicious savages you knew were massing for a final attack-one that would erase the last trace of a planet's civilization. And suppose there were enough phasers to repel the attack? Can you imagine the power made available to this Kohm culture by just five phasers?"
"Sure," Kirk said. "Like introduction of the atom bomb into the crossbow era."
Tracy leaned forward intensely. "Jim... within forty-eight hours the Yangs would slaughter every adult and child in this village."
Kirk found the intensity disturbing. He spoke very quietly. "Ron, every time man interferes with the natural evolvement of another world, he ultimately destroys more than he saves."
"When they attack, Jim, where do we go? There's no place left! You and I are finished, too!"
Kirk said, " 'I solemnly pledge I will abide by these regulations even in death.' " He gave the gravity of the words a long moment before he added, "That is the oath we both took."
Tracy leaned back in his seat, stretching. "So you'll try to stop me."
"I won't 'try,' Ron. I will stop you."
The sole way to enter McCoy's quarters was to sidle hi. The village room he'd been assigned was jammed with medical research instruments beamed down to him from the Enterprise. Privately, Kirk wondered if the ship's lab had left itself enough equipment to make a simple blood test. Now, as he wriggled over to the electron microscope, McCoy looked up from the slide he'd been study-ing.
"Our tissue definitely shows a massive infection, Jim. But something down here is immunizing us. Otherwise, we'd have been dead ducks hours ago." He removed the slide, frowning at it. "Problem: it could be anything. Some spore, some immunizing pollen, some chemical in the air. Just finding it could take months, even years."
"Bones, we may not have much time to isolate it."
"I've got only one lead. The infection resembles a virus used during Earth's bacteriological war of the 1990s. Hard to believe the human race was once dumb enough to play with such dangerous bugs."
Spock spoke from the door. "A Yang lance, Doctor. It got the Lieutenant under the shoulder." The Vulcan, his uniform begrimed, was supporting the wounded Raintree, pale with loss of the blood that darkened his uniform's shoulder.
"That mat over there," McCoy said, grabbing his medi-kit. Raintree was groaning with pain as they settled him on the mat. Kirk eyed Spock. "You all right?"
"Just bruised, sir. We were approximately a hundred meters out of the village when five of the savages ambushed us." Kirk glanced quickly at the phaser hanging from his belt. Noting the look, Spock said, "I subdued them with the neck pinch, Captain. Our phasers were not used."
"Good," Kirk said. "Mr. Spock, do you see any hope that these Yangs can be reasoned with? A peace parley, a truce until..."
Raintree struggled to lift his head from the mat. "No, Captain... they're too wild, practically insane."
Nodding, Spock said, "Captain Tracy seems to have established several facts. One-the Yangs' total con-tempt for death makes for an incredible vicibusness. Two-his statement that the Yangs are massing for at-tack is valid. There are signs of thousands of them in the foothills beyond." He paused to remove two objects from under his shirt. Laying them on the lab bench, he said, "However, in one important matter, Captain Tracy is less truthful."
"Phaser power units," Kirk said slowly.
"Yes, sir. Captain Tracy's reserve belt packs. Empty. Left among the remains of several hundred Yang bodies. A smaller attack on this village occurred a week ago. It was repelled by Captain Tracy with his phaser. I've found villagers who corroborate this fact."
Kirk, his face hard, replaced the empty phaser pack on the bench. McCoy looked up from the wound he was swabbing. "Jim... he'd lost his ship, his crew. Then he finds himself the sole bulwark between savages and the massacre of an entire village of a pleasant, peaceful peo-ple...."
Spock said, "Regulations are harsh, Doctor-but they are also quite clear about any violation of the Prime Directive."
"Without a serum we're all trapped here in this village," McCoy said. "Under these circumstances the question of arresting the man is a purely academic one."
"I agree that formal charges have little meaning now," Spock said. "My suggestion is that Captain Kirk confiscate his weapon."
"Yes," Kirk said. "And file a report." He reached for his communicator. "Starfleet should be made aware that-"
"It is I who will send the messages, Jim."
Tracy stood in the doorway, his phaser leveled at them. On his mat Raintree made a move toward his belt. Tracy fired the phaser at him. Its beam struck him full in the chest, enveloping him.
Kirk lunged. The deadly phaser swung to point direct-ly at his heart. He halted. Then he just stood, frozen with shock. The Captain of a starship... a phaser... and a wounded member of the service. He didn't turn to look at the charred mat which had once held Lieutenant Raintree.
Tracy's militia was efficient. Despite the spears they used to round up the Enterprise trio, they first saw to it that phasers and communicators were removed. As Wu placed them at Tracy's feet, the Exeter Captain opened his own communicator.
"Enterprise, come in," he said. "This is Captain Tracy of the Exeter."
The satisfaction on Tracy's face told Kirk that Uhura had answered him. Sulu, taking his temporary command very seriously, would be standing beside her at her con-sole.
"I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you," Tracy was telling Uhura. "Your Captain and landing party beamed down too late for full immunization. They've been found unconscious. I'm doing everything I can for them."
Kirk waited, hot rage building up in him. Tracy, smil-ing at him over the communicator, said, "There'd be no point to risking the lives of additional medical staff, Mr. Sulu. This is a fatal disease. They are courage
ous to volunteer to beam down. However, as I have acquired some immunity, your people may pull through, too. Meanwhile-"
Kirk had torn free. "Sulu!" he shouted. "Don't let-"
The butt of Wu's sword crashed down on his head. Dark flooded in over him. Spock had pivoted fast. But Wu was just as fast. He'd placed his sword's point on the unconscious Kirk's throat.
Tracy snapped off the communicator. He pointed to Spock and McCoy. "If those two open their mouths, Wu, kill them."
Tracy's communicator beeped. He flicked it open, lis-tening. "Sorry, Mr. Sulu. All members of your landing party are running high fevers. Captain Kirk is delirious. Nobody is in any condition to speak to you. The villagers are helping me to make them as comfortable as we can."