by 03(lit)
"The Transporter Room!" Kirk shouted. "Quick!"
But they were too late. There was nobody in the Trans-porter Room but a dazed Chief Engineer, and, a moment later, McCoy.
"I was working with my head inside an open panel," Scott said, his voice still a little blurred, "when I heard someone come in. I turned and saw him with the cat under one arm and a thing like a writing stylus pointed at me."
"A miniaturized stunner, no doubt," McCoy said.
"Well, the next thing I knew, I was willing to do anything he asked me to. In fact I beamed him down to Earth myself. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I shouldn't, but I did it anyhow."
There was a brief silence.
"And so," Spock said at last, "human or alien, contem-porary or future, he has gone to do what he came to do-and we still have no idea what it is."
"We are going to find out," Kirk said. "Scotty, where did you beam him to?"
"That I can't say, Captain. He set the coordinates him-self, and put the recorder on wipe. I can give you an estimate, within about a thousand square meters."
"If Spock and I beam down, working from the power consumption data alone, inside that thousand square me-ters, can you triangulate?"
"Aye, I can do that," Scott said. "It still won't be very precise, but it ought at least to bring you within sighting distance of the man-or whatever he is."
"It is also a major risk to history, Captain," Spock said.
"Which is just why I want you and me to be the ones to go; we had had experience with this kind of operation before. We can't find any answers sitting up here. Have ship's stores prepare proper costumes. Scotty, stand by to beam us down."
The spot where they materialized was a street on New York's upper East Side, not far from the canopied entrance of an elegant apartment building. It was a cold winter day, although there was no snow.
"All right, Scotty," Kirk said into his communicator. "Lock in and check."
"Correlated," Scott's voice said. "Readings indicate a greater altitude-approximately thirty meters higher."
Kirk looked speculatively up the face of the building. Once they entered a maze like that, they might pass within whispering distance of their quarry, behind some door, and never know it.
Nevertheless, they went into the lobby, found an eleva-tor, and went up. At the prescribed heights, they stepped out into a hallway. Nothing but doors.
"Altitude verified, Captain," Scott's voice said. "Pro-ceed forty-one meters, two-four-seven degrees true."
This maneuver wound them up in front of one of the doors, in no way different from any of the others. Kirk and Spock looked at each other. Then Kirk shrugged and pushed the doorbell button, which responded with a melodious chime.
The door was opened by a pretty blonde girl in her early twenties. Kirk and Spock went in, fast.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing?" the girl de-manded. "You can't come breaking in..."
"Where's Mr. Seven?" Kirk said sharply.
"I don't know who you're talking about!"
Kirk looked around. It was an ordinary Twentieth-Century living room as far as he could see, though per-haps somewhat on the sumptuous side. There was a closed door at the back. Spock pulled out his tricorder and scanned quickly, then pointed at the closed -door. "In there, Captain."
They rushed the door, but it was locked. As they tried to voice in, Kirk heard an unfamiliar, brief whirring sound behind him, and then the girl's voice, all in a rush: "Opera-tor, 811 East 68th Street, Apartment 1212, send the police..."
Kirk whirled and snatched the phone out of her hand. "No nonsense, Miss. Spock, burn the door open."
The girl gasped as Spock produced his phaser and burned out the entire knob and lock assembly. They rushed in, forcing the girl to come with them.
Here was another large room, also elegantly furnished. One wall was book-lined from a point about a meter from the floor to an equivalent distance from the ceiling. Under a large window was a heavy, ornate desk.
There was no sign of Gary Seven or anybody else. Kirk noted that this seemed to surprise the girl as much as it did himself.
Spock went to the desk, where there was a scatter of papers.
"I'm warning you," the girl said, "I've already called the police."
"Where is Mr. Seven?" Kirk demanded again. "Spock, is she Twentieth Century? Or one of Seven's people?"
"Only Doctor McCoy could establish that, I'm afraid, Captain. But I think you will find these papers interesting. They are plans of the United States government's McKin-ley Rocket Base."
"Aha. So the orbital platform launching is the critical event. Now how long do we..."
The doorbell rang. The girl, catching them off guard, dashed for the door. Both men raced after her, Kirk reaching her first. As he grabbed her, she bit his hand, and them screamed.
"Open up in there!" a male voice shouted in the hallway outside. "Police!" Then the door shook to a heavy blow.
Spock too seized the girl. Kirk managed to get his com-municator back into play. "Kirk to Enterprise. Wide scan, Scotty, we'll be moving. Now!"
Another blow on the door, which burst open. Two policemen lunged in, guns drawn. Spock propelled the girl away from the group toward the library door.
At the same instant, the apartment dissolved and all four of the men-Kirk, Spock, the policemen-were standing in the transporter chamber of the Enterprise. The policemen looked about, stunned, but Kirk and Spock raced off the platform instantly.
"Scotty, reverse and energize!"
The policemen faded and vanished.
"Fine, fast work, Scotty."
"That poor girl," Spock said, "is going to have a lot to explain."
"I know it, but we've got something much more impor-tant to set right first. Let's have a look at those plans. Blazes, the launch is scheduled in forty minutes! Scotty, look at these. Here's a schematic layout of a rocket base. Can you get it on the viewscreen here?"
"Easy, Captain. In fact, there's an old-style weather satellite in orbit below us; if I can bounce off that, I ought to get good closeups." He moved to the screen. In a moment, he had the base. An enormous, crude multistage rocket was already in launch position, being serviced by something Kirk dimly remembered was called a gantry crane.
"If we could spot your man," Scott added, "I could lock on and beam him up."
"The odds are that he is out of sight," Spock said. "Inside the rocket gantry, or at one of the control centers. I suppose he has a transporter hidden somewhere in that library of his. Otherwise I cannot account for his disappearance, seconds after the tricorder said he was there-or at least, somebody was there."
"Surely that base has security precautions," Kirk said.
"So did we," Scott pointed out.
"I see your point, Scotty. All right, continue visual scan, and stand by to beam us down again."
"Won't be necessary, sir. There he is."
And there indeed he was, at the top of the gantry. He had a panel off the side of the rocket and was working feverishly inside it. Nearby sat the black cat, watching with apparent interest.
"Why does he take a pet with him on a dangerous job like that?" Spock said.
"Immaterial now," Kirk said. "Scotty, yank him out of there!" ,
It was done within seconds. Gary Seven raged, but there was nothing he could do with four phasers leveled on him.
"Relieve him of that hypo and any other hardware he's carrying," Kirk said in a granite voice, "and then take him to the briefing room. This time, Mr. Seven, we are going to get some answers."
"There's no time for that, you fool! The rocket will be launched in nine minutes-and I hadn't finished working on it!"
"Take him along," Kirk said. "And Mr. Spock, put that cat in a separate cabin. Since it's so important for him to have her along, we'll see how well he stands up without her."
Kirk interviewed Seven alone, but with all intercom circuits open, and standing instructions to intervene at discretion and/or
report anything that seemed pertinent.
There was no problem about getting Seven to talk. The words came out of him like water from a pressure hose.
"I am what I say I am, a Twentieth-Century human being," he said urgently. "I was one of three agents on Earth. We were equipped with an advanced transporter, and a computer, both hidden behind the bookshelves in my library. I was returned to-where I came from-for final instructions. You intercepted me and caused a critical delay. When I escaped I found both my fellow agents had been killed in a simple automobile accident. I had to work fast, and, necessarily, alone. They need the help, Captain. A rival program of orbital nuclear platforms like this destroyed Omicron III a hundred years ago. It will destroy the Earth if it isn't stopped."
"I don't deny that it's a bad program," Kirk said.
"Then why can't you believe my story? Would a truly advanced planet use force to help Earth? Would they come here in their own strange, alien forms? Nonsense! The best of all possible methods would be to take Earth-born humans to their world, train them for generations, send them back when they're needed."
"The rocket has been launched," Scott's voice respond-ed over the intercom.
"There, you see?" Seven said desperately. "And I hadn't finished working on it. If you can beam me into its warhead I can still..."
"Not so fast. What were you going to make it do?"
"I armed the warhead, and gave it a flight path which will bring it down over Southeast Asia."
"What! That'll start a world war in nothing flat!"
"Correction, Captain," Scott's voice said. "The rocket has begun to malfunction, and alerts are being broadcast from capitals all over the world. I would say that the war has effectively started."
"So much for your humanitarian pretenses," Kirk said. "Mr. Scott, prepare to intercept that rocket and beam it out into space somewhere..."
"No, no, no!" Seven cried. "That would be a highly conspicuous intervention! It would change history! Cap-tain, I beg of you..."
"Excuse me, Captain," said Spock's voice from the intercom. "Please come to the next cabin."
"Mr. Spock, that rocket will impact in something like fifteen minutes. Is this crucial?"
"Absolutely so."
After checking the guards outside the briefing room, Kirk went to the cabin where Spock had taken the cat. The cat was still there, curled up in a chair.
"What's this all about, Mr. Spock?"
"Sir, I have found out why he carries this animal with him wherever he goes, even when it is obviously inconvenient. It changes the entire picture."
"In what way? Spit it out, man!"
"We have all been the victims of a drastic illusion-including Seven. The true fact is, Mr. Seven has been, under the closest kind of monitoring during every instant of his activities. I suspected this and bent certain efforts to redisciplining my own mind to see the reality. I can now also do this for you. Look."
He pointed to the chair. Seated in it was a staggeringly beautiful woman. She had long black hair, and wore a sleek black dress and a jeweled choker necklace. Her legs were curled under her with feline grace.
"This," Spock said formally, "is Isis. And now..."
The woman was gone; only the cat was there, in a strangely similar position.
"Neither," Spock said, "is likely to be the true form of Mr. Seven's sponsors, but the phenomenon supports the story that he does indeed have sponsors. Whether or not their intentions are malign must be a command decision, and one which I must leave to your human intuition, Captain."
Kirk stared at the illusory cat, which was now washing itself. Then he said, "Mr. Scott!"
"Here, sir."
"Give Mr. Seven back his tools and beam him into the warhead of that rocket-on the double."
The warhead blew at 104 miles. Scott snatched Seven out of it just barely in time.
"You see," Seven told them somewhat later, "it had to appear to be a malfunction, which luckily did not do any damage. But it frightened every government on Earth. Already there are signs that nobody will try orbiting such a monster, ever again. So despite your accidental interfer-ence from the future, my mission has been completed."
"Correction, Mister Seven," Spock said. "It appears that we did not interfere with history. Rather, the Enter-prise was simply part of what was supposed to happen on this day in 1969."
Seven looked baffled. Kirk added, "We find in our record tapes that, although it was never generally revealed, on this date a malfunctioning suborbital warhead was detonated exactly 104 miles above the Earth. And you'll be pleased that our records show it resulted in a new and stronger international agreement against such weapons."
"I am indeed pleased," Seven said. He picked up the cat. "And now I expect to be recalled. It might save time, Captain, if you would allow me the use of your transpor-ter. I mean no reflection on your technology, but I must get back to my own machine for the trip to-where I am going."
"Of course." Kirk rose. "Mr. Scott, take Mr. Seven to our Transporter Room and beam him down."
At the elevator door, Seven paused. "There is one thing that puzzles me. Your accidental interception, and your tracing me, and your interruption of my work-every one of those events was unplanned and should have produced a major disruption. Yet in each case, it turns out that I made exactly the proper next step to advance the business at hand, even though each time I was working blind. Does the course of history exert that much force on even a single individual?"
Kirk eyed the creature in Seven's arms which, whatever it was, was most certainly not a cat.
"Mr. Seven," he said, "I'm afraid that we in our turn can't tell you everything we've learned. The credit for this day's work is largely yours-and I strongly advise you to let it rest at that."
MIRROR, MIRROR
(Jerome Bixby)
The Halkan Council was absolutely polite, but its position was rock-hard, and nothing that Kirk, McCoy, Scott or Uhura could say would alter it. The Federation was not to be allowed to mine dilithium crystals on the planet. There was too much potential for destruction in the crystals, and the Halkans would allow nothing to compromise their history of total non-violence. To prevent that, they said, they would die-as a race, if necessary. The Council accepted that the Federation's intentions were peaceful, but what of the future? There had been mention of a hostile Klingon Empire...
Kirk would have liked to have stayed to argue the question further, but he had already received word from Spock that an ion storm of considerable violence was beginning to blow through the Halkan system-and in fact Kirk could already see evidence of it in the Halkan weather, which was becoming decidedly lowering. To stay longer might risk disruption of transporter transmission, which would strand the landing party for an unknown time. In addition, it was Spock's opinion that the heart of the magnetic storm represented a danger to the Enterprise herself.
On this kind of opinion, Kirk would not have argued with Spock for a second; the First Officer never erred by a hairline on the wrong side of conservatism. Kirk ordered the landing party beamed up.
That hairline was very nearly split, this time. On the first attempt, the transporter got the party only partly materialized aboard ship when the beam suffered a phase reversal and all four of them found themselves standing on a bare plateau on the Halkan planet, illuminated only by a barrage of lightning. It was nearly five minutes later before the familiar Transporter Room sprang fully into being around them.
Kirk stepped quickly from the platform toward Spock. "We may or may not get those power crystals..."
And then he stopped, in midstep as well as midsen-tence. For Spock and the transporter chief were saluting, and a most peculiar salute it was: the arms first folded loosely, then raised stiffly horizontal and squared out. Their uniforms were different, too; basically, they were the same as before, but they were much altered in detail, and the detail had a savage military flair-broad belts bearing exposed phasers and what seemed to be ceremonial dag-gers, shoulder b
oards, braid. And the Federation breast symbol was gone; instead, there was a blazon which looked like a galaxy with a dagger through it. A similar symbol, in brilliant color, was on one wall of the room, and the equipment was all in the wrong places-indeed, a few pieces of it were completely unfamiliar.
But what struck Kirk most of all was the change in Spock. Vulcans all look somewhat satanic to Earthmen encountering them for the first time, but it had been many years since Kirk had thoroughly gotten over this impres-sion of his First Officer. Now it was back, full force. Spock looked cold, hard, almost fanatical.