Chapter 1

The solar system lay before them like a star traveler’s dream: beautiful, untouched, a present from the universe, waiting to be unwrapped. Or a trap waiting to be sprung…

“The Cephalus system,” First Officer Spock said from the Enterprise science station, “is the mathematical center of the Marie Celeste Sector. We must consider that it is a starship trap.”

“Agreed, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “Habitable planets?”

Captain James T. Kirk saw the Vulcan’s dark head and pointed ears bend over the scanners, and he took advantage of Spock’s concentration to move, too carefully, from near the turbolift doors to the command seat.

Not that there was much the Vulcan was going to miss about his Captain, or ever had, but the last thing Kirk wanted just now was for Spock to read whatever the hell was going on with his Captain. Fatigue, that was all. And a few half-healed injuries-ribs cracked and the like. He’d been banged up a little too much lately. And not getting much sleep, with those peculiar nightmares. Once, one of the nightmares had started to come by day…Suddenly, now, it came again…

He was in some place where he was not alone, would never be alone again. Someone was with him who knew everything he was or wanted to be, and who was One with him, known to him, too-to the last secret. There was nothing more to be hidden or resisted. There were others, too, each one unique, but all now a part of him. And he knew now that they were a new life-form, struggling to be born. And, like any life-form, would have to grow, or die…

Kirk snapped himself out of it, realizing only then that he had slipped into that peculiar state again. It was a momentary feeling-state for which there were really no words. He was not certain why he felt such a depth of longing-so urgent, as if it had touched some inner, unknown core of loneliness. He was certain only that he had never felt anything like it, and never wanted to again.

And now he realized that he had had a moment’s lapse on the Bridge.

That, he knew, could not properly be hidden from the Vulcan, who was his Second-in-Command.

Still he felt a curious reluctance to confess it.

Then Spock turned and Kirk saw that he had been read like Braille. The dark Vulcan eyes commented silently that the Human had unwrapped a few surprise packages too many lately, and sprung too many traps.

“The fourth planet,” Spock said aloud, “is marginally Class-M, but extremely hazardous. There is a large satellite. And a very small one. Or a one-being ship in orbit.”

“A one-man ship here?” Kirk said. “That would take more guts than brains.”

“An excess which Humans have been known to demonstrate,” Spock said pointedly.

“Whereas Vulcans, of course, only stick their stubborn necks out for perfectly logical reasons.”

“Of course, Captain,” Spock agreed blandly.

Kirk suppressed a grin and felt most of the fatigue drop away, which was doubtless what Spock had intended.

“Captain,” Uhura said before Kirk could pursue a further Vulcan-routine, and Kirk heard a stress in her voice which made him turn to look at his Communications Officer. Her Bantu face was set in its usual beautiful discipline, but now with an anger which he could read.

“Ambassador Gailbraith is requesting a priority channel to the Federation Council to protest this delay and your behavior.”

Kirk found himself trying to brace the cracked ribs, and stopped it. “Inform the Ambassador that he may have a channel to the Council when we are not under subspace silence. We are in the zone of ship disappearances which blocks travel to Zaran, as he knows.”

“Yes, sir.” Uhura started to turn back to her board. “Sir, may I make a personal observation?”

“Go ahead.”

“Sir, the crew doesn’t understand Ambassador Gailbraith and his party. Some of them have been pressuring our people to join their ‘Oneness’- they don’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer. The crew’s starting to say: ‘Are these the New Humans? Are they what we’re supposed to be out here for-or what we are supposed to become?”

Kirk smiled ruefully. “I don’t ‘reach’ the Ambassador and company too well myself. I’m not sure whether his party would call themselves New Humans. But they do seem to be part of a growing trend toward submerging the individual in a larger consciousness. If they’re the future, I suppose we are the past. But I wouldn’t bet that it isn’t the other way around.”

“But they’re going to Zaran, sir-and they act as if they are going home.”

Kirk did not smile now. He had made some efforts to consider the point of view by which he and his kind-Spock, McCoy, Uhura, the Enterprise crew and all of Starfleet-were more or less prehistoric throwbacks to an outdated age of individualism. But he did not, finally, believe it.

And that New Human view had nearly cost him the stars. The New Humans had little real use for Starfleet, and to overcome their growing influence, Commanding Admiral Heihachiro Nogura had wanted to keep Kirk on Earth as a live hero and a living argument for Starfleet. He had caught Kirk at a vulnerable moment at the end of the first five-year mission, and the result was the three years Kirk had spent at the Admiralty-learning that he could not live there.

If he had not seized on the Vejur crisis as an opportunity to regain command of the Enterprise, he would have been there still-or at least until Earth was destroyed by Vejur. Spock, theoretically, would have embraced the total non-emotion of Kolinahr in the mountains of Gol.

Somehow Kirk had never expected the philosophy of One to follow him into the spaces between the stars, at least not in this form.

The Ambassador and his party looked like normal Humans with a sprinkling of other species, but shared some form of Oneness he did not understand. He had learned to live with and appreciate many diversities. This one made him acutely uncomfortable, and he was realizing now that perhaps that discomfort was part of his own curious fatigue. He snapped himself back to the immediate problem.

“The Ambassador’s philosophy is not our concern,” he said. “We are merely ordered to get him to Zaran.”

“Eventually,” Uhura said under her breath, and Kirk saw Weapons Officer Pavel Chekov give her a long look.

“Uhura,” Kirk said, “we have received no political orders.”

“No, sir,” Uhura said stoutly. “Of course not.” She did not add that they had been ordered to investigate two unknown solar systems and a years-old unsolved mystery of disappearing ships en route. There was a policy there somewhere.

“You will relay my message to the Ambassador,” Kirk said. “I will see him when convenient.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kirk turned back to Spock.

“The scoutship,” Spock said, “is in landing approach to the fourth planet.”

“Uhura,” Kirk said, “raise that scout. Warn it of extremely hazardous planet conditions. What’s it like down there, Mr. Spock?”

“Think of it as an Earth of a million years ago. There are wild extremes-heat, cold, rain, drought, jungle, volcanoes, predators. And it is in a stage of gigantism such as Earth had. The life-form readings are much larger than one would expect.”

“How much larger?” Kirk asked, suspecting that he did not want to know.

Spock shrugged. “Remember the Oiduvai Gorge findings? Africa, mid-twentieth century. A Dr. Leaky found bones of sheep which stood twelve feet high at the shoulder-with six-foot spans of horses. There were predators to match. Also one primitive humanoid, about our size-who died at an early age.”

Kirk grinned, finding that kind of problem really much more to his taste. “Mr. Spock, you are a tower of strength and encouragement.”

“Captain,” Uhura said, “I can’t raise the scout, but it sent off a micro-burst of high-speed code as it went down. We can’t read it, but I recognize the type. It’s an idiosyncratic memory code of the kind used only by a Free Agent of the Federation.”

“A Free Agent!” Kirk found himself on his feet, the fatigue falling away at the prospect of action. “Plot the landing trajectory, Mr. Sulu, and relay the landing coordinates to the Transporter Room. Mr. Spock, come with me.”

Spock followed him into the turbolift.

“VIP Guest Quarters,” Kirk said to the voice control.

“I will call a transporter party,” Spock began.

“We are the party, Mr. Spock-as soon as I have a word with Ambassador Gailbraith.”

“Doctor McCoy specified light duty after your last injuries.”

Kirk shrugged. “A stroll on the planet, Mr. Spock. The air will do me good.” Spock started to protest, but he cut it off. “That’s a Free Agent down there, Spock, and that signal was almost certainly some call for help. A Free Agent doesn’t break idiosyncratic code silence for much less than a world coming to an end.”

Spock nodded. “The call, however, was not to us.”

“Nevertheless, we’re going in. We would offer assistance to any lone traveler on a world like that-and check out any lone figure in a suspicious sector. If we did less, it would only be because we know it is a Free Agent. If anybody is watching…”

He stopped as the turbolift deposited them near the VIP Guest Wing. “A Free Agent. You know, Spock, if I have any heroes…”

There had been only a handful of full-fledged Free Agents in Starfleet history. They answered to no one except the Old Man himself-not even to Commanding Admiral Nogura, but to the Chief of Staff of Starfleet. They could and did hold the power of peace and war, reform and revolution. Not one man in a billion had that kind of mind and nerve and terrible independence. And most who had ever held that rank had died in it. Young.

“Starship captains,” Spock said, “seldom survive a five-year mission.”

Kirk looked at him, startled, as if the Vulcan had read his thought. “That’s different,” he said.

Spock nodded dispassionately. “Yes. It is harder.”

Kirk found himself unreasonably touched. But he was in no condition to pursue it. He set himself and went through the double doors into the VIP Lounge.