Chapter 17

As if on cue the turbolift doors opened on the heels of Gailbraith’s words, and Kirk looked up to find an alien presence on his Bridge.

The lone man who stood there might have commanded a galaxy-and it was quite possible now that he would.

He had been designed for command by some genius genetic sculptor of long ago who had managed to be both selective and lucky. The tall, massive, broad-shouldered body was a portrait in power. The coppery, gold-flecked eyes were hypnotic. The man’s face and body were the essence of maleness, of maleness raised to the point of superdominance, as if that sculptor had carved a face and a stance to represent the essence of the conqueror-or of the unconquerable.

The man looked as if he had been cast in bronze, with gold highlights in the eyes and a copper-bronze mass of untamed hair.

There was some disturbing familiarity about the man’s face, as if Kirk should have recognized it for more reasons than he did. The face itself was seldom photographed. But Kirk knew it to be the face of a man who had once been presumed dead for more than two hundred years. The man was legend. And he was the enemy.

“Soljenov of the Totality, I presume,” Kirk said.

The big man bowed fractionally. He looked not much older than Kirk, but even counting only time outside the long-sleep of the long-jump ship, he was decades older. The youthfulness must be the gift of an undying vitality, and of the combined life-force of the Totality. Kirk had felt the power of such force through Gailbraith, and he did not want to have to fight it in this man.

“Captain Kirk,” Soljenov said in a voice which was deep and resonant with authority-a single voice which spoke for many.

“You have come aboard my ship without notice or permission,” Kirk said. “State your purpose.”

Soljenov nodded. “You note that I have been able to do so without alerting any of your alarm systems. Those who should have responded to warning lights have not. Those who could have responded were prevented from seeing them. For many purposes, Captain, I control your ship now.”

“No one controls my ship but me,” Kirk said. “At need she will be destroyed.”

“Even that may already be beyond your power, Captain. But if it were not, would you prefer to destroy your crew, rather than have them live happily in the new world of Totality? Are you so prejudiced-when your primary mission is to seek out the new? Or do you perhaps fondly hope that you could transport your crew to the planet below-and that they, or you, could survive there? I assure you, it is not an alternative.”

“There is always an alternative to surrender,” Kirk said. “And history has shown that surrender or appeasement of any totality is not an alternative to destruction-merely a preliminary.”

“My predecessors were crude, Captain. I am not. I knew centuries ago that what they proclaimed as oneness was not factually a Oneness at all, but the worst of all possible systems for brutalizing the many for the benefit of the few. I swore to find the reality of Oneness, and with their psychic research which I was able to expand, I found the beginnings. It took the destruction of my immediate world to drive me out to the stars, where I would find the second interlocking piece of the puzzle. Zaran.”

“Is there a third piece?” Kirk asked.

Soljenov laughed. “How perceptive of you, Captain. The third piece is itself an interlocking of the forces met here today. The Ambassador is quite right. I have called you to a challenge.”

“And if I do not accept?”

“I’m afraid I said nothing about offering you a choice.”

Kirk pressed the intercom button. “Security to Bridge.” He had not much faith now in the useful arrival of Security, but he saw Spock move in behind the Master of the Totality.

“What is the nature of the challenge?” Kirk asked, stalling.

“But you are not to know that, in detail, either.” Soljenov smiled. “I am afraid I am not nearly so civilized as your personal Devil.” He bowed faintly to Gailbraith. “However, you may assume that it is a trial of the central issue-of the question of Oneness, as such. Sola’s species, and her line of female inheritance, have a remarkable capacity for Oneness. She has undiscovered powers which I know can unite a world, finally even a galaxy…”

“One moment,” Sola cut in, stepping to confront Soljenov. “I will not be a party to this. There is no one here for whom I will accept the mating challenge. Nor will I, under any circumstance, serve the Totality. Go now with those who will serve you willingly, and let my people go.”

“My dear,” Soljenov said, “I have so arranged things that you also will have no choice.”

“I will never bond,” she said. “I will not undertake matehunt. I will not deliver my people, nor the galaxy, into your power.”

Soljenov merely smiled. “The art of arranging the inevitable merely requires a knowledge of the unendurable. You will hunt your mate in the ancient way. And when your powers are roused, you will serve.”

Soljenov bowed fractionally, touched a medallion he wore on a chain, and disappeared from the Bridge in a variation of a transporter shimmer.

“What did you mean, ‘matehunt’?” Kirk asked quickly.

Sola turned to face him. “It is the custom which provokes the hormonal and psionic responses which lead to lifebonding. The male who believes that a female has begun to desire him for bonding takes himself-or is taken by someone who has a stake in the bonding-such as those who wish to bond a recalcitrant pride-queen- into the most dangerous area of the jungle. If the female is sufficiently called, she hunts him there. It is a life-or-death choice. The hunt raises the intensity of the psionic attraction to the point needed for bonding. The two become one, not in Gailbraith’s way or the Totality’s, but in love. The longer the male remains free, the stronger the ultimate bond. But the female seeks to find him quickly, for it is the only solitary hunt which is permitted-and required. It is dangerous for both, and he is prey also to other predators.”

“And there is no one here for whom you would accept matehunt?” Kirk asked.

She said nothing-perhaps because it was plain enough that Soljenov heard anything they said, through some means-perhaps some member of the Bridge crew who was already part of the Totality. Kirt tried to read her eyes.

Her tawny eyes were the last thing he saw on the Bridge. He sensed the aura of an alien transporter effect beginning-and in a moment it had taken him.

Suddenly Kirk was picking himself up off the floor of a jungle clearing and he heard the sounds of the ominous biological overload which was the planet below. Then he knew that Soljenov’s trap had closed.

He was alone, unarmed, still in the light slacks, slippers, and Sickbay robe in which he had gone to meet Gailbraith. He did not have a communicator, and in that thick biological soup a single Human life-form reading would be impossible for the ship to trace.

He was quite alone and lost on one of the most dangerous planets in the galaxy. Sola and Spock would have to look for him there-although that was now the last thing she should do. He did not believe that she would turn her back on him-although he would have ordered it if he could.

But even if Sola broke her vow and came to hunt him, there was no way that she, or Spock, could find where to begin.

He heard the coughing of a large cat-type predator, close, and he moved off quietly in the other direction.

Doubtless in the direction of more werewolves…