Chapter 7

Kirk turned back to the woman, and now McCoy saw something new in the way he looked at her-as if all the fatigue had dropped away and something had clicked into place in the universe.

“Of course,” Kirk said, with the tone of discovering a law of nature.

“Of course?” McCoy protested. “Spock jumps at a conclusion across a few light-years- and it seems obvious to you? Vulcan ‘logic’ must be contagious these days.”

Spock looked as if he might for once have the grace to be embarrassed. “The inference was somewhat remote, but compelling, Doctor.”

The woman smiled. “Indeed. I would be interested to hear that logic, Mr. Spock.”

Spock faced her with some expression McCoy could not read. “I have made something of a study of your record.”

Kirk turned to make his own study of the Vulcan.

“Sola Thane,” Spock said, “was, among other things, the first non-Vulcan to participate with distinction in a Vulcan mental event which requires a high order of philosophical sophistication and pure logic.”

“I suppose that’s your department, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “She also served with some distinction in Starfleet-including saving a starship in the Endurance incident.” He turned to the woman almost accusingly. “If Mr. Spock is right-and I am sure that he is-you were slated to command a starship-when you resigned and disappeared.”

She met Kirk’s eyes. “I observe that you have made something of a study yourself, Captain Kirk. As I of you.”

“Why did you give up your starship?” Kirk persisted.

“There was a question I had to solve. It required going back to my own roots.”

“There was no record,” Spock said, “of your planet of origin.”

“No.”

“It was Zaran,” Spock said definitively.

It was not a question, but Sola Thane nodded. “We are both hybrids, Mr. Spock. We share your Human mother’s world, which was my father’s world.”

“That explains it,” McCoy muttered. He had been trying to place her look, her species. She was half-Human and looked almost wholly Human. But her other half was no more Human than Spock’s Vulcan heritage-and it doubtless held as many surprises and pitfalls for them as mere Humans. The native species of Zaran was little known. It was supposed to have been a hunting species and was now kept in some form of subjugation by Humans who had fled Earth in the collapse of the old totalitarian empires. McCoy seemed to remember a couple of medical notes on the Zaran aboriginal species. He had not expected to meet a specimen here. “The females of your species,” McCoy said, “didn’t they have some special role in the hunt?”

“Doctor, they were the hunt.” She looked at McCoy for a moment but did not pursue it. “Captain, we have very little time. This environment is hazardous. I have been broadcasting a signal which may discourage some predators, but its time is running out. I propose we adjourn to the Enterprise. If some mysterious effect has claimed you, it has done its job so thoroughly that I cannot detect the difference. And if it had claimed me, I believe you would be lost in any case. I require fast transport. Millions of lives and the survival of my species on Zaran depend on it.”

Kirk looked at her carefully for a long moment. “Fast transport is all you require?”

“The rest I must do myself.”

Kirk pulled out the command code message from the Chief of Staff and handed it to her without comment. A Free Agent would be able to read it. Or a Starship Captain. No one else.

But the tawny eyes read more than the message. “I see,” she said. “Your ship has been placed at my disposal. I have not been entirely out of touch. Captain Kirk, you have become something of a legend. It is a legend of a ship which runs on loyalty to one man, and of a First Officer who serves only that man. All legends have their reason. It is unwise to tamper with them. I do require your ship for my purpose, but I require it with its working legend intact.”

Kirk inclined his head fractionally. “My impulse would have been to cooperate fully with a Free Agent. The matter was not left to my impulse or judgment.”

She nodded, seemed to come to a decision. “Captain, if you were less than you are, I would not tell you why the Chief of Staff would give me this authority. Your judgment is not in question. But you cannot know my mission. And my mission involves not only the fate of my species, but the fate of Starfleet. And, incidentally, of the Old Man himself. Possibly even the fate of intelligent life in the galaxy. My authority does not extend to telling you how.”

Kirk was silent for a moment. “I thank you for telling me that much. I should warn you that I don’t work well-blind.”

She nodded. “Nor do I. But I cannot help you beyond that.” She extended the card to him. “Let us agree, however, to endeavor not to reach the point which would make me use this over your resistance.”

For the first time Kirk smiled fractionally, a little wryly. “I note you do not say that you will not.”

“No.”

His eyes took up the challenge. “All right. That’s fair warning.”

Her eyes laughed. “No. It is not. But perhaps you will not have to find out everything I should have warned you about.”

Kirk smiled dangerously. “Then I won’t warn you, either.”

McCoy sighed, and if he had set words to that music, they would have been “Here we go again.”

He turned to look for the expression of patient tolerance on Spock’s face-and did not find it. The expression which was there McCoy could not read, or did not want to believe. Nor, McCoy suspected, could the Vulcan believe it himself. It was not even the prehistoric look McCoy had seen when Spock’s reversion to the past in the ancient ice-caves of Sarpeidon had permitted Spock to want Zarabeth. It was much worse than that, and McCoy had the sudden sense that it was much more dangerous.

This was not the euphoria of the spores, nor the effect of some virus. This looked a lot like Spock, in his right mind, hit by some effect he himself had never experienced before in response to a woman.

McCoy looked back to Kirk and suddenly he knew that they were all in trouble. It was not even “Here we go again.” It was some look McCoy had not seen since Kirk had found-and lost-Edith Keeler. Perhaps not even then. Edith had reached to summon the future out of the past where she had been born but never belonged. But this woman was at home in their present and in the stars-doing the one job which matched the danger, the scope, the moral hazard of a Starship Captain. Given Kirk, how could he not respond to that? And God help them all, how had McCoy never realized that there was bound to come a time when two men who had virtually become one would be one in this, too?

He saw Kirk turn to Spock, see the Vulcan’s look, start to dismiss it as if he must have read it wrong, then look again and know that he read it exactly.

“Spock?” Kirk said almost involuntarily.

Spock visibly pulled himself together. “Nothing, Captain.”

Kirk did not believe it, but he saw that Spock wanted badly to get back into his Vulcan suit. “Very well, Mr. Spock.”

But the woman had caught it, too. “Mr. Spock,” she said, “you also have become legend-on Vulcan and between the stars. I have long known of that legend and followed it with interest, and with a wish to discuss one or two points of philosophy and logic with you. But now I would like to know what caused you to study my record.”

Spock looked at her stonily now, but did not attempt a denial. “In the legend about you-your behavior sounded…logical. That is not-common.”

“In my sex?” she asked.

“In your species. At least-not in the one we share.”

She laughed then, a low, clear chuckle. “And did you find my behavior logical, Mr. Spock? I would be most interested in your opinion.”

“Yes,” Spock said. “But you seemed to be enjoying it.”

She laughed again. “There, Spock, is the point of philosophy I wanted to discuss with you.”

“Not here,” Spock said. “I have permitted myself to become illogically distracted. We should not have remained here.”

“Now we can go,” Sola agreed. She turned toward her scoutship. “Beam up. I will need the scout.”

But then McCoy saw her whirl, crouching, even before his bio-belt gave warning-as if her senses were built into her own skin.

Some animal leaped out from the sheltering flank of the scoutship.

It resembled no Earth animal, but the jumbled impression which came through to McCoy was of something like a saber-toothed wolfhound-as tall as a man, and faster.

It leaped for Sola Thane’s throat…