by 03(lit)
Kirk motioned to Spock, who set upon the table several pieces of raw stone and the many-paged, pre-prepared formal agreement. They all sat down on cushions, except the woman, who retired to a curtained-off area, and Raal, who quietly left through the front entrance. It was getting dark outside.
"A geological survey," Kirk said, "has revealed that your world has valuable deposits of a mineral called topaline. I have been authorized to negotiate for Federation mining rights for this mineral."
"My people are herders and tradesmen, Captain," Akaar said. "We do not understand how a rock may be of value."
"You make your weapons of iron. You often trade in gold and silver."
"Iron has long been known to our weapons makers. Gold and silver came with Federation trade ships-they have little meaning to us. But they are metal, not rock such as this." He nudged the chunk of topaline ore.
"Chief Akaar, I trust you will bear with me for a long explanation. The Federation has hundreds of colonies which are mining operations, and research projects, on planets and asteroids that normally could not maintain our life forms. As your own legends hint, you yourselves are descendants of an Earth colony. Those colonists named your planet after an asteroid in Earth's own solar system, a five-hundred-mile ball of rock that was the first asteroid to be colonized-though it hasn't even an atmosphere."
"Then how is this done?" Akaar said.
"We create artificial domes under which we maintain air we can breathe," Spock said. "Topaline contains minute quantities of a metal which is essential to such life-support systems. Not only is it rare, but it must be constantly replaced."
"Why?" Maab said. "Does it rust, or wear out?"
Spock was obviously starting to explain, but Kirk held up his hand. These people had utterly forgotten the technology which had brought them to this planet, centuries ago. Nothing short of a cram course in physics would make clear to them the concept of radioactive half-life.
"Something like that," Kirk said. "And the fact that there is so little of it even in topaline means that the ore has to be transported in bulk to special refining plants."
"Then clearly it is of enormous value," Maab said. "What then do you offer for it?"
"An honest price," Kirk said, "in whatever medium of exchange you favor."
Maab leaned forward. Suddenly, he looked angry. "You Earthmen," he said harshly, "come hiding your lies behind papers of promise. Then you steal..."
Akaar slammed a hand flat on the table top. "Maab!"
"They have cheated others," Maab said, staring hard at his brother. "We have heard. They have no honor..."
"You will be silent!"
"Nay, I will not. We are not of one mind on this. There are many who do not wish this treaty."
"Leave us. You cannot speak for the tribes."
Maab arose. "I will leave. But many are not as gullible as our High Chief. We will be heard."
He turned and strode out furiously, leaving behind a thick, heavy silence. Finally, Akaar stirred uncomfortably and said, "My brother dishonors me. Yet it may be said that your history gives him some reason to distrust you."
"Our ancient history, perhaps," Kirk said. "And per-haps dimly and inaccurately recalled."
"Certainly you have done us no wrong. But Maab has heard of other places and other peoples. He uses these to speak against you."
"How has he heard such stories?"
"By truth, I do not know," Akaar said. "Earth traders, perhaps. A few come for the wool of our zakdirs."
"Then these are mere rumors, at best," Kirk said. "Our treaties are faithfully upheld."
"I take your word, Captain. I understand the things in this paper, and I will give it to the council of tribes this night. In the meantime, I bid you hang your weapons in my tent while you eat, and then rejoin us."
Kirk had known this was coming, for Spock had earlier made a most thorough study of the culture. But there was nothing that could be done about it. At a clap of Akaar's hands, a tribesman appeared, and the three men from the Enterprise handed over their phasers to him, and also their communicators, for to these herdsmen any machine seemed likely to be a weapon-especially if its custody was refused.
"I accept the guardianship of these weapons," Akaar said with singsong formality, "as an earnest of long peace between us. Keel, you will show these visitors to their tent, and have food brought them."
The meal was strange, but sumptuous, and served by a most scantily-clad Cerean girl of whom it was impossible not to be aware. Trying not to look pointedly the other way, McCoy said, "But I thought topaline deposits on Altimara would be sufficient for another two years."
"Altimara was a disappointment," Kirk said. "The two most promising veins petered out. They'll be able to maintain full supply for all colonies for six months. By then, the mining project here has to be in full operation."
"No reserves?"
Spock said, "There is a convoy of freighters on its way now from refineries on Lorigan to the colonies in this quadrant. But it will be the last; Lorigan has been shut down. Exhausted."
"Umph," McCoy said. "These endless mineralogical assignments are dull work. And Jim, this argument between Akaar and Maab-I don't like the feel of it."
"Nor I. But it's not our quarrel. We have to abide by the Council's ruling. Clearly Maab will have a strong voice in it. If he wins, well, maybe he has a price of his own."
"You'd deal with him?" McCoy said.
"I'm authorized to deal with whoever can give this planet's mining rights to the Federation," Kirk said quiet-ly. "I am not authorized to take sides in any local struggle for power, Bones."
"In that connection," Spock said, picking up a slice of some pink fruit and eyeing it as it it were an unusually uninteresting insect, "I found it odd to see that two guards were placed in front of the High Chief's tent as soon as Keel led us away from it. In addition to the usual swords and knives, these carried the boomerang-like instrument these people call the klugat. Such an arsenal makes me wonder whether the guards were posted to defend Teer Akaar from attack-or from escaping."
Outside the tent there was a sudden shout, then anoth-er, and then the unmistakable clash of metal on metal.
"I think we're about to find out," Kirk said, springing up. All three dashed for the entrance.
They were met outside by three tribesmen, whose swords were instantly at their throats. The encampment was a bedlam. Akaar was in the center of a swirl of combat, defending himself like a hawk at bay. He was not alone, but his party was clearly outnumbered. His son was already dead. In the light of the campfire, Kirk could see that Maab was directing the attackers, and also prominent among them was Keel.
A klugat struck Akaar. He staggered, wounded in the side, blood flooding the side of his tunic. He had only two defenders left.
"Jim! We can't just..."
"Stand fast, Bones," Kirk said in an iron voice.
Akaar tried for his brother with one last thrust of his sword. Maab sidestepped it easily, and Akaar fell. His two last defenders, though apparently not seriously hurt, fell with him, kneeling before Maab in servile supplication.
The guards around Kirk's party prodded them forward. Maab waved Keel and another tribesman into what had been Akaar's pavilion. Then he smiled slightly at Kirk.
"You were wise not to try to interfere, Captain. This is none of your concern."
"We would have interfered if we could. We don't ap-prove of murder."
"There has been no murder," Maab said stiffly. "We gave my brother an honorable death. This is revolution."
"I'm not interested in what you call it. However, you are not the man into whose custody we gave our equipment. I want it returned."
Maab's answer was predictable, but he did not have to give it, for at this moment Eleen stumbled out of the tent, herded at sword point by Keel and his fellow assassin. She was already frightened, but her fright became terror as she saw Akaar's body. Maab tripped her and simul-taneously shoved her with the flat of his
sword, so that she fell partly into the still red ashes of the campfire.
She screamed, half with pain and half with the doom of Maab's sword raised above her. Moving like lightning, Kirk slammed Maab aside, at the same time twisting his wrist in one of the very few directions the human wrist is not built to go; the sword fell. McCoy, only half a step behind, knelt beside Eleen; and with a smooth gesture, Spock scooped up the fallen sword.
Vulcans are tightly rational creatures, but in back-ground they are a warrior race. Spock with a sword in his hand was a sight to give even a Cerean pause. They closed in with exaggerated caution.
And then, as McCoy lifted Eleen gently to examine her burned arm, all the Cereans gasped-and the woman herself, with an expression of loathing impossible to misin-terpret, jerked herself free of the doctor's support.
"What's the matter with you, woman?" McCoy said sharply. "None of that, now. I'm only trying to help."
"And you have brought death upon yourself," Maab said slowly. "I would have let you go. But now..."
"You talk nonsense," Kirk said. "Killing an armed man who has a chance to defend himself is one thing. Murdering a defenseless woman is something else. She can't hurt you. You have the Chieftanship-you don't need her life."
"It is you who talk nonsense. Raal is dead, but this child that is to come is also of Akaar and still lives. It too must die before I may become chief-cleanly, by the sword. Moreover, Captain, by our law, only a husband may lay hands on his wife; for any other man, the penalty is death. I have not touched Eleen, nor would I have; but this your officer..."
"We're not governed by your law. Any charges against us will have to be brought before Starfleet Command, which will weigh them on their merits, one set of laws against the other."
"We know who would lose that judgment," Maab said. "On our world, our laws, and only our laws, prevail."
"Our ship will send a landing party to investigate our silence," Spock said, leveling the captured sword at the bridge of Maab's nose.
Maab did not flinch. "I think not," he said, with an odd, lopsided smile. "I think they will be too busy."
Kirk and Spock shot a swift glance at each other. Each knew precisely what the other was thinking. With that single, irresistible, and absolutely unnecessary brag, Maab had let slip the fact that there was more to this situation than simple tribal politics-a lot more.
Now had to come the hardest game of all: waiting in patience, even to the verge of death, to find out what it was.
In the guest tent, which was now their jail, Kirk, Spock and McCoy sat around the table where once they had been fed so sumptuously. Now two assassins were on guard inside the tent entrance. Eleen sat as far away from them all as she could, a light cloak over her tunic, but even more markedly huddled behind a wall of self-imposed isolation. Her arm had still not been tended; she had refused, and now she was refusing also to show any pain.
McCoy leaned his elbows on the table and looked unhappily at his colleagues. In a deliberate hash of En-glish, Vulcan, Old High Martian, medical Latin and Greek, and Fortran-the language used to program very simple-minded computers-he said, "Maab still claims he would have let us go if it hadn't been for my laying hands on that poor girl. But now, apparently, we're sunk. Why do you suppose Scotty hasn't sent down a landing party?"
"By my calculation," Spock said, "it is an hour past the longest time Mr. Scott would wait before taking action. No other conclusion is possible but that he has become engaged in some other duty which he considers more important, as Maab hinted."
Since the First Officer, picking up McCoy's clue, put out several words of this speech in the operative terms of the calculus of statement, he had to repeat it with these parts translated into Vegan before Kirk or McCoy could be sure of it; but once understood, there was no arguing
Kirk eyed everyone in the room with slow calculation.
Then he said, slowly and in Cerean, "Bones-I think you ought to do what you started out to do before. That girl's burned arm is still untended."
The guards stiffened.
"Might as well," McCoy said, also hi Cerean. "They can only kill me once for touching her, after all."
"Mr. Spock, what is your advice?"
"I believe, Captain, that the risk is defensible."
Good; they understood each other. McCoy stood up. As his shadow fell across the girl, she looked up, and then pulled herself together. McCoy kneeled beside her.
"Your arm," he said, very gently.
"You will not touch me!"
The guards took a step forward. McCoy reached out. Eleen promptly turned into a scratching, biting wildcat. Somehow or other, it had occurred to none of them, in their swift and necessarily cryptic plotting, that she would also squeal. McCoy clamped a hand down hard over her mouth.
It was this, evidently, that made up the guards' minds. They lunged away from the entrance toward the struggle. Their backs were toward Kirk and Spock for perhaps three seconds. No more than three seconds later, they were decked.
While Spock disarmed the unconscious men, Kirk leaned over the girl, whom McCoy was still holding silent with grim difficulty.
"Listen, Eleen," Kirk said. "We're leaving. We can leave you behind, if that's what you want. Or you can cooperate and come with us. Maybe, just maybe, we can get you safely to our ship. We offer you the choice. Will you come with us?"
Cautiously, McCoy removed his hand from her mouth, ready to clamp it back down at the slightest intake of breath for a scream. But the girl only glared. At last she said, "I am dishonored. But I wish to live. I will come."
McCoy helped her up by the uninjured arm. She pulled away from him and stood immobile, not deigning to speak further, and waited while Spock distributed the guards' weapons to Kirk and McCoy, retaining a klugat for him-self.
"Now," Kirk said, "let's get those phasers and commu-nicators back."
This was not as easy in the doing as in the saying. Outside, the tribesmen were seated around the rebuilt campfire in an open square, the open end of which was occupied solely by Maab, with Keel standing in the background. Kirk and Spock approached the back of Akaar's tent stealthily, slit the fabric, and slipped inside.
While they searched, they heard Maab's voice: "... Only the woman lives now. All know her. And it is not only the child that dooms her."
A general rumble of agreement.
Kirk threw back a carpet over a chest. There were the belts with the communicators still on them, but the phasers were gone. Somebody in this crowd, then, knew which was which-another oddity. He and Spock had just begun to look further when there was a mutter of move-ment and conversation outside, and a second later McCoy's head popped through the slit in the tent fabric.
"Jim," he whispered urgently. "The Council meeting's over. They're going to find out we're gone..."
As if in confirmation, there was a shout of alarm in the near distance.
The three men and Eleen stumbled through the scrub until the light from the fire and the torches was the dimmest possible glow in the distance before Kirk chanced calling a halt. Kneeling and motioning the others to cover -what there was of it in this brush-he snapped open his communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise... Kirk to Enterprise... Come in, Scotty... Kirk to Enterprise..."
There was no answer. Had the device been sabotaged? Kirk held out his hand for Spock's communicator, but that produced no better results.
"They are operative," said the First Officer. "It would appear that the Enterprise is simply out of range."
"Out of range?" McCoy said. "Where would they go?"
"The answer to that would involve a great deal of useless speculation on our part, Doctor, since we have no facts at hand. A better question is, what do we do until the ship returns?"
"No place can hide you from the makeen," the woman said abruptly.
"What are they?" Kirk said. "Or it?"
"There are legends," Spock said, "of a guild of assassins among the Cerean tribes-a secret society, outside the law."
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"They are not outside the law," Eleen said. "They are a part of our society. Certain deaths are always- necessary."
"Criminals like us?" Kirk said. "And 'traitors' like your husband? And you?"
"Not me," Eleen said. Her voice was angry, harsh, bitter. "It is because I bear Akaar's child. I did not want it. I would kill it myself, if that would save me."
McCoy took her by the wrist, and his own voice was just as angry. "You listen to me, Missy. You're not killing anything while I'm here to prevent it. We intend to keep both you and your baby alive, whether you want it or not. Hear me?"
She twisted herself free, her face contorted with anger and loathing. "You are heard. And I come with you because you will give me a few more hours to live. But in the end you will not escape the makeen."