Chapter 6

The bio-belts were supposed to give you eyes in the back of your head-also neck and other anatomy. Directional sensors projected their biological readings directly on the nerves of the skin.

The party beamed down into a jungle clearing where biological warning systems were obviously the first need of survival. But the bio-belts immediately set up such a clamor that they had eyes in every inch of skin. The neuro-dermal circuits which made the skin crawl in the direction of an approaching animal went crazy.

The planet’s surface was a biological soup-thick with life, boiling with activity, and smelling of danger.

McCoy saw an animal scurry through the tall grass with the tiny timorousness of a mouse. It sat up and twitched its nose at him. It was the size of a medium dog.

“If those are the mice-we won’t have to worry about the tigers and the snarths,” McCoy groused. “The pussycats can carry us off.”

As if in answer, there was a low roar which sounded like a saber-toothed tiger made out in triplicate.

“In this form of gigantism,” Spock said dispassionately, “the predators may not be quite as oversized as the planteaters.”

“Well, that’s a comfort,” McCoy grumbled.

Enormous shadows and mysterious rumblings moved just outside the dense edge of the clearing. McCoy caught a flash of green-yellow horizontal cat-eyes. Very large. Some of the trees appeared to be interconnected, with multiple trunks and interlaced branches.

“Reduce bio-belt setting to six,” Kirk ordered.

They turned to inspect the battered interstellar scoutship which had come down in the clearing. It had seen better days, and somebody had recently shot it up. But what looked like repairs jury-rigged in space had held it together.

Spock scanned it with his tricorder. “No one aboard, Captain. The damage control measures are ingenious and effectual.”

“So where is this alleged Free Agent?” McCoy asked. “Assuming the local fauna haven’t invited him to dinner, as the main course.”

He found himself getting worried. Hell of a place to lose a Free Agent of the Federation.

“Setting up a warning perimeter, possibly,” Kirk speculated.

“No,” said a voice from above and behind them, and McCoy felt the back of his neck tingle suddenly-from the bio-belt, or maybe only from the short hairs rising.

They whirled in one motion, eyes reaching to confirm the astonishment of the voice.

The woman uncoiled from the wide branch of one of the unit-trees which stretched out almost above their heads. She stood up and moved out on a narrower branch without effort or thought, and she was holding some sort of weapon on them. It looked like a coil of light which played through her hand-as if it could be rope, sword, spear. And deadly in her hands.

Apart from that, McCoy thought, she was possibly a gorgeous female. He was not certain of what species.

She was humanoid, certainly. She even looked, for all practical purposes, Human. But there was a hint of something almost feral about the tawny eyes. The matching tawny mane seemed to grow to some natural length and shape which she merely shook back. She moved on the branch with a curious certainty, as if she were of some hunting species as at home there as McCoy was on solid ground.

But there was also some shocking contrast of utter civility and star-spanning culture. She wore soft boots and a coppery bodysuit which looked as it if were poured out of the living metal, cut in lines of elegant simplicity which suggested that she was indifferent to fashion, but not to design. But more than that, there was some aura about her which struck McCoy as being like no woman he had ever seen, of any species. Possibly some part of it was merely the knowledge that she was a Free Agent of the Federation, and of what that had to cost and imply. But also there was a power of certainty about her which he had seen in few men, few beings of any sex or species-something like the bedrock certainty of a Spock, but with a glint of humor in the tawny eyes which was rather more like the sunlit ease of a Kirk. She looked at the three of them as if seeing were an enjoyment, as if she saw them fully and fearlessly, not merely how they looked, but what they were.

And the net result of her estimate of them was a pleasure which lit the clearing like morning.

McCoy supposed that she was beautiful. He was too busy looking at her to see. It didn’t seem to be the important question.

He tried, with indifferent success, not to be surprised merely on the level that a Free Agent was a woman.

But there still was that surprise. This woman would be doing the toughest job in the known galaxy-going alone among enemies, putting herself into physical danger, and worse, into the moral danger of the kinds of decisions a Free Agent would make over the fate of worlds.

On the whole, McCoy might have picked a woman, if he had to pick anyone, for that job-but he would still have wanted to slay a few dragons for her. He saw a look on Kirk’s face which suggested that McCoy would have company.

But this Free Agent looked quite prepared to do it herself, with or without the energy coil which played through her hand like a live thing, from a wrist projector.

Her eyes were without fear, but beyond the personal enjoyment which had brightened her face for a moment-something professional weighed the three men as if some decision were required. McCoy suddenly smelled trouble.

“We came to offer assistance,” Kirk said. “I am Captain-“

“I know who you are, Captain Kirk,” she said. “Or at least who you were.”

“Were?” Kirk asked, puzzled. “Forgive me, perhaps you have been out of touch. Permit me to present my First Officer-“

“I know Mr. Spock, too. Assuming that he still is Spock. And I know Doctor McCoy, by reputation.”

McCoy bowed fractionally. He had seldom known a touch of Southern chivalry to do any harm. “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, ma’am.”

“Yes, I have.” She did not smile.

“You have the advantage of all of us,” Kirk said, “if you know of some reason why we might not be ourselves.”

She nodded soberly. “Yes. I have that advantage, too…. Captain, in this sector forty-three known ships of many species, including Federation Starfleet crews, have abandoned the pattern and purpose of a lifetime. I am not fully certain why, nor of what they became. But I know that they became someone else. Or-something else.”

“Then you know the fate of the missing ships?” Kirk asked.

“Partly.” She cut off his unasked questions. “Not here. If you know because it has happened to you, there is no point. If not, there is no time.”

She swung down from the tree, dropped lightly from half-again their height and landed without effort.

Kirk looked at her now on the level and found that she had to look up at him. Suddenly she looked to McCoy rather small and far too vulnerable to carry the job she had to carry. “How will you decide?” Kirk asked. “And by the same token, how will we? If something could change a starship crew and Captain, it could change anyone. What proof can we have that you are who, or what, we think?”

She shook her head. “None, Captain, on either side. I might point out that you have only me to thank for knowledge that the problem exists. But you already know that there is a mystery in the sector. I might have told you to disarm you.”

Kirk nodded. “Well, we have dealt with identity and authenticity problems before. There is always the Vulcan mind-meld.”

The tawny eyes approved the thought, but rejected it. “As what you believe I am, I could not consent to a mind-meld, even if I wanted to. As what I am, I would not.”

“And what are you?” Kirk asked.

“I would prefer to tell you my name. I am-“

For the first time the Vulcan spoke-as if the words were wrenched out of him. “Sola Thane.”

Kirk turned to look at the Vulcan.

“Sola Thane,” Kirk said, “disappeared years ago.”

Spock nodded. “Precisely.”