Star Trek 12 Page 4

  Kirk looked at his one-time teacher. "They've kept what's left of him as a figurehead."

  "Exactly, Captain. The real power, for these last years, has been Melakon."

  "Turn that monitor speaker down," Kirk told Daras. As quiet filled the room, he went to Gill, bending over the table. "Gill, why did you abandon your mission? Why did you interfere in this culture?"

  The face was expressionless and the voice barely audible. "Planet . . . fragmented . . . divided. Took lesson . . . from Earth history . . ."

  "Why Nazi Germany?" Kirk said. "I took that history course from you. You knew what the Nazis were like!"

  "Most . . . efficient state . . . Earth . . . ever knew . . ."

  Spock spoke. "True, Captain. That tiny country, divided, beaten, bankrupt, rose in a few years to stand only one step from global domination."

  "It was brutal, perverted! It had to be destroyed at a terrible cost! Why pick that example?"

  "Perhaps Gill felt that such a state, run benignly, could accomplish efficiency without sadism."

  "Worked," Gill said. "At first . . . it worked. Then Melakon began . . . takeover, used the . . . gave me the drug . . ."

  He fell silent.

  "Gill! Gill, can you hear me? You'll have to tell these people what happened. You're the only one who can stop the slaughter!"

  Gill slumped. McCoy, running his scanner over him, shook his head. "He's still alive, but the drug they use is too strong."

  "Give him another shot," Kirk said.

  Daras turned from the door, crying, "Guards!"

  "Bones, we're out of time—"

  SS men were running to the broadcast booth, Eneg behind them. Kirk issued orders hard and fast. "Spock, take off that helmet! Daras, draw your gun! You, too, McCoy and Isak! Draw your guns! Point them at Spock!"

  The guards rushed in. Behind them Eneg took in the spectacle of the three guns trained at Spock's head. Kirk indicated Daras. "She's just captured a Zeon spy who was attempting to assassinate the Führer. We'll make a present of him to Melakon."

  The guards grabbed Spock, and Isak spoke quickly to Eneg. "Chairman, we must take this spy to Melakon!"

  Eneg was looking at their faces, one by one. Finally, he turned to the guards. "Pass them on my responsibility." He left, and Isak, whispering to Daras, said, "I wasn't allowed to tell you. Eneg is with us." He spoke to a guard. "You heard the Chairman. Bring the spy along." The two guards stood aside while he, Daras and McCoy took Spock outside the broadcast booth and into the corridor. Kirk hung back, his eyes on the hypo that still lay on the table.

  Melakon was surrounded by congratulating admirers. The guards moved in to push Spock through the throng.

  "What's this?" Melakon demanded.

  Isak answered. "A spy, Excellency."

  "A rare prize." Daras had stepped forward. "The Deputy Führer can see this is no ordinary Zeon."

  In the broadcast booth, Kirk finished injecting more hypo stimulant into Gill's arm. "Professor Gill, can you hear me now? You've got to speak. This is our last chance. Please come out of it!"

  Melakon was interested in the spy. He had seized Spock's chin, turning it to examine his profile. "Not a Zeon. Definitely not."

  "The Deputy Führer," Daras said, "is an authority on the genetics of racial purity. How would he classify this specimen?"

  "Difficult. A very difficult question from such a charming questioner." He returned to his study of Spock, pleased to parade his knowledge. "Note those sinister eyes, the malformed ears. Definitely an inferior race."

  Kirk was struggling to get Gill on his feet "You're the only one who can stop them! You've got to speak!"

  Under his glazed eyes, Gill opened his mouth. Then he slumped again.

  Melakon meanwhile was discovering other stigmata of racial inferiority in Spock. "Note the low forehead, denoting stupidity. The dull look of a trapped animal . . ."

  Spock's right eyebrow lifted; and Melakon spoke to the guard. "You may take him now for interrogation. But I want the body saved for the cultural museum. He'll make an interesting display."

  There was a stir in the crowd. A startled murmur grew. Melakon turned toward the podium. Gill had appeared on the screen. He was swaying, staring dazedly at nothing. After one horrified look, Melakon spoke to one of Spock's guards.

  "Go to the booth. See to the Führer at once. He is ill. Turn off that camera in there!"

  Gill opened his mouth. "People . . . of Ekos. Hear me . . ."

  Melakon whirled to the audience. "The Führer is ill. The strain of the day has been too much!"

  Gill, Kirk in the shadows behind him, fought to go on. Melakon's voice came over the speaker in the broadcast booth. "I suggest we all leave the hall. Let our Führer rest!"

  Kirk saw the handle of the booth door turn. The door was locked, but the guard outside began to pound on it. Gill's voice was stronger. "People of Ekos. We've been betrayed by a self-seeking adventurer who has led us all to the brink of disaster. To Zeon, I swear this was not aggression by the Ekosian people . . ."

  The guard ran back to whisper in Melakon's ear; and Gill said, ". . . only of one evil man. Melakon is a traitor to his own people and to all that we stand for . . ."

  Melakon grabbed the guard's machine gun and, swinging around, leveled it at the booth curtain.

  "To the Zeon people," Gill was saying, "I pledge reparation and goodwill."

  Melakon sprayed a lethal hail of lead into the curtain. The crowd was silent, stunned. The booth window shattered as Kirk dived forward, dragging Gill to the floor.

  Melakon continued to fire into the booth. Isak drew his pistol and pulled the trigger. Melakon jerked forward under the shot's impact, tried to train his gun on Isak—and collapsed. An SS Colonel snatched the weapon from his hands and pointed it at Isak.

  "Hold it, Colonel!"

  It was Eneg. "There has been enough killing." The Colonel hesitated and Eneg said, "Now we'll start to live the way the Führer intended us to live!"

  The Colonel dropped the gun.

  Gill's eyes were clear, but the breast of his uniform was crimson. As Kirk cradled his head in his arms, a tiny trickle of blood flowed from his mouth. He looked up at Kirk, recognizing him. "I was wrong," he whispered. "The noninterference directive is the only way. We must stop the slaughter . . ."

  "You did that, Professor. You told them in time."

  "Even historians fail to learn from history—repeat the same mistakes. Let the killing end, Kirk. Let—"

  He choked on a bloody sob and crumpled in Kirk's arms.

  "Professor . . .?"

  He looked up at the sound of Spock's voice. "Captain, are you all right?"

  "Yes, Mr. Spock."

  He lowered Gill to the floor, got up and unlocked the door.

  Eneg was standing beside Spock. Behind them, McCoy, Daras and Isak waited, their faces solemn as though they knew what he had to tell them.

  "He's dead."

  There was a long stillness before Isak said, "For so long I've prayed to hear that. Now I'm sorry."

  "So was he," Kirk said.

  Isak moved to him. "You have given the rest of us a new chance."

  "I thank you too," Eneg said. "But go now. We must do the rest."

  "Eneg and I," Daras said, "will go on the air now . . . offer a plan to our people . . . for all our people—Ekosians and Zeons alike."

  As Eneg followed her into the broadcast booth, he turned to say, "It is time to stop the bloodshed—to bury our dead."

  "Mr. Spock," Kirk said, "I think the planet is in good hands."

  "Indeed, Captain. With a union of two cultures, this system would make a fine addition to the Federation."

  Kirk opened his communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise."

  "Enterprise here, Captain."

  "Beam us aboard, Lieutenant Uhura."

  Their Ekosian experience still mystified Spock. He left his bridge station to go to Kirk. "I will never understand humans, Captain. How could a man as bril
liant, a mind as logical as John Gill's have made such a fatal mistake?"

  "He drew a wrong conclusion from history. The trouble with the Nazis wasn't simply that their leaders were evil and psychotic men. They were. But the real trouble was the leader principle."

  McCoy had joined them. "A man who holds that much power, Spock, even with the best intentions, can't resist the urge to play God."

  "I was able to gather the meaning, Doctor," Spock said.

  "There's an old Earth saying," Kirk said, "that everything happens for the best. John Gill found Ekos divided. He leaves it unified."

  "That also proves another Earth saying, Spock. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Damn clever, these Earthmen, wouldn't you say?"

  Spock turned to McCoy. "Earthmen such as Rameses, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Lee Kuan. Your whole history is Man seeking absolute power."

  "Now just a minute, Spock—"

  Kirk looked at them. "Gentlemen," he said, "we've just been through one civil war. Let's not start another."

  THE GAMESTERS OF TRISKELION

  (Margaret Armen)

  * * *

  Gamma II was a planet so small it scarcely merited the name. Reportedly uninhabited, it nevertheless boasted automatic communications and astrogation installations. Making a routine check of these stations was Kirk's motive for ordering Uhura and Chekov to beam down with him to the surface.

  At Chekov's announcement that the Enterprise was now circling Gamma II in standard orbit, Kirk nodded.

  "Very good, Mr. Chekov. Lieutenant Uhura?"

  "Ready, sir."

  "Then let's go." And turning to Spock, added, "Commander, you mind the store."

  "Yes, Captain."

  His Science Officer, moving swiftly to the vacated command chair, watched them enter the bridge elevator. From here on, he thought, it would be the old story—the Transporter room, the "Energize" command and then the sparkled glitter of their dematerialization.

  But for once it was a new story. Though Kirk, Uhura and Chekov took their places on the platform, and despite Scott's push at his second switch, they did not shimmer out in the orthodox Transporter effect. One moment they were where they should be, and the next, they were simply and bafflingly gone.

  The startled Scott jerked back his first switch. Then more alarmed than he cared to admit to himself, he gave himself to a frantic spinning of dials. If he'd hoped for their reappearance on the platform, there was none. Yet more alarmed, he hit his bridge communicator to say into it, "Scott to bridge."

  "Spock here, Mr. Scott."

  "Mr. Spock—the Captain, Lieutenant Uhura and Mr. Chekov—they did not dematerialize. They just disappeared. They took their positions on the platform—and then they simply went. Where, sir?"

  "I presume you mean in a manner inconsistent with the usual workings of the Transporter."

  Under the pressure of his anxiety, Scott's blood pressure rose. "Of course I mean that! Do you think I'd call you if they had just beamed down?"

  The tranquil voice said, "Have you reversed your controls, Mr. Scott?"

  "I've made all the proper checks. There was nothing—nothing. No light flashes . . . no outlinings of shimmer-out. Nothing. They're just gone, sir, and I can't bring them back."

  "Power surges?

  "Not from here, sir. The dials are right, and the Transporter functioned perfectly."

  "Recheck your equipment, Mr. Scott. I'll scan for them on the planet's surface."

  Meanwhile, on that surface of Gamma II, the materialization of the Enterprise trio was as out of order as their departure from the Starship. Instead of duplicating the erect positions they had assumed on the Transporter platform, they fell flat on their faces until, in an uncontrollable roll, they were brought up against the foot of a jagged rock formation towering steep to a red and greenish sky. Kirk was the first to regain his feet. Dizzy, shaking his head against the vertigo, he half-realized that they had landed in a most peculiar place—a paved area marked by random lines that delineated triangles, rectangles, hexagons, rhomboids—a hodgepodge of every conceivable geometrical design.

  Chekov, stirring, struggled up, staring around him. No rhetorician, he said, "What happened, sir?"

  "Must have been a Transporter malfunction."

  "A rough trip, Captain."

  Going to the still prone Uhura, Kirk pulled her to her feet. Puzzledly.

  "This isn't Gamma II," he told them. "Look at the color of that sky."

  Clutching his arm for support, Uhura said, "This is the craziest landing pad I've ever seen."

  She spoke truth. It was a mad landing pad: an area about the size of a tennis court but otherwise bearing no resemblance to one. There was no coherent pattern whatever to the conglomeration of demented geometry around them. Helter-skelter to no obvious point, it proliferated itself meaninglessly. However, a closer scrutiny of it suggested that they were standing in what could only have been a playing board created by lunatics for some equally lunatic game.

  Kirk, careful to shade his eyes, stared up again at the sinister sky.

  "That's a trinary sun up there," he said.

  "Then you're right, sir, and we're not on Gamma II," Chekov said. "And if we're not, where are we?"

  Kirk managed a wry grin; "I'd like to know that answer too, Mr. Chekov." And unbelted his communicator, flipped it open to say, "Kirk to Enterprise."

  But intuition had already warned him that the Starship would fail to respond. Nor would the communicators of the others function.

  "Dead, sir," Chekov said unnecessarily.

  He was rebelting his device when Uhura, pointing to the cliff base, whispered an urgent, "Captain!"

  Following the line of her outstretched forefinger, Kirk said, "No, this is not Gamma II. That's an uninhabited planetoid. This one clearly is. We appear to have company, friends."

  Close under the shadow of the escarpment, four creatures were standing, observant and intrigued by the strangers' appearance, but their postures hostile, alert. Outstanding in physique was a huge blond male, a Viking who might have been resurrected from some Norse saga's Valhalla. Beside him, squat but thickly muscled as an ape, was Neanderthal Man himself, his low brow shock-haired almost to the nose. And next to him was a female whom some unknown deity had endowed with a bush of yellowish, black-spotted hair, leopardlike. Two fangs protruding from her upper teeth hung over her lower lip. The fangs were pointed.

  But the fourth being was the true astonishment—a gorgeous Amazon of a bronze-haired girl, the sapphire of her dark-lashed eyes flashing with the general hostility. But like the rest of her companions, she wore a metallic collar around her lovely neck, inset with some glittering gem under the ear.

  Both women carried daggers in the clumsy belts that confined their smockish coarse garments at the waist. Moreover, they had additional weapons, the males equipped with staves ending in blades at one end and grapples at the other.

  Wordlessly, the alien group moved forward until they had spaced themselves evenly around the triangle enclosing Kirk, Chekov and Uhura.

  The giant Viking finally spoke.

  "I am Lars," he said. "He is Kloog. She of the beast's hair is Tamoon. The other she is Shahna."

  Fierce suspicion deepened the deep voice. Where usually Kirk would have met such an introduction with one of his own, he decided that this was no time for an exchange of courtesies. So, instead, he said quietly, "Phasers at stun." And added, "Just in case."

  The case arose.

  Lars, jaw set, stepped forward and, extending a formidable arm, attempted to wrench Chekov's phaser from him. Kirk promptly fired his. Nothing . . . nothing. And when he ordered phaser action from Chekov and Uhura, the nothing was repeated. Swiftly, the Enterprise Captain made an adjustment on his weapon and once more tried to activate it. It was as dead as the communicators. Then hurling the useless phaser at the still oncoming blond giant, he ducked sideways to get to the rear of his adversary. Behind him, he was aware that the other three ali
ens had already subdued Chekov and Uhura, and, with an heroic effort, controlled his ingrained sense of responsibility for them to leap on Lars's heavy-muscled back. He managed a neck chop. It stunned Lars. The giant didn't drop, but he stumbled, reeling, dazed, too shocked for instant reaction.

  Seizing advantage of the temporary respite, Kirk added several other telling blows to the vulnerable join of neck to backbone. The last one doubled up the redoubtable Siegfried. And straightening in satisfaction, Kirk turned to his less fortunate shipmates.

  It was the beautiful Shahna who had downed Uhura with Tamoon's assistance. But now she left the leopard-haired creature to guard Uhura in order to concentrate her own belligerent and very dangerous attention on Kirk.

  His moment of self-satisfaction had been expensive. Too slowly he realized that Shahna was hurtling toward him, and. jumping back, was barely able to dodge the vicious slash of her spear. But the cliff wall blocked all further retreat. Shahna snatched the dagger from the belt that held her shoulder harness in place and, flying at him, pushed its point painfully against the skin of his throat. He looked away from the sapphire eyes so full of triumphant hate, saying to himself, "Okay. Maybe this is it."

  To their rear, Tamoon and Kloog had jerked his two companions erect, and Lars rose slowly to his feet, still groggy from the neck chops. As to Kirk, he was now half-crouched against the cliff's rock face, immobilized lest the infuriated Shahna drive the dagger through to his backbone. He gasped, choking, and to his relieved but immense surprise, the pressure eased slightly. Instantly, he came out of his crouch, and at the same moment, a new figure abruptly appeared in the center triangle.

  "Hold!" it cried.

  At once Shahna lowered her dagger. Ignoring her, the stranger spoke directly to Kirk. "Excellent, Captain Kirk!"

  There'd been no excellence about it—just an instinctive use of Space Academy training. But there was no time for reminiscence on the stiff courses through which the Academy put its cadets, for the masterful newcomer was leaving the triangle for a closer approach to the Enterprise people. Was it his dress which conveyed the impression of undisputed authority? Perhaps. For he wore no smock but a togalike garment, its shoulder bearing a gold-embroidered emblem; nor did he carry any weapons. Yet the unarmed stranger also wore a gemmed, metallic collar under his expressionless features, a face Kirk judged to be in its middle thirties.