Chapter 19

Sola set the scoutship down in the clearing where they had made their stand against the wolflings. She had no clear certainty that she could pick up a trail from there, but the tenuous sense of directional awareness which she felt at some subliminal level suggested that her quarry had been set down somewhere in that vicinity. One quarry, at least. She was not certain now which one.

The clearing was deserted. She stripped down to jungle hunt gear. In the hunt the skin became sensor and warning system, sometimes the channel of the directional sense. It must be bared to the last reasonable inch. Nor could she afford to use the sophisticated Federation protective devices which the scoutship carried. On second thought, she put one in a light pouch slung on her low belt. She took her recharged wrist coil, Spock’s communicator and phaser, and a large and very forthright knife. There were times when nothing else would do.

She opened the doors of the scout, ran a few feet, leaped up to a low-hanging branch, and swung up into the lower terrace of tree-paths.

There was a sudden rush from the clearing’s edge, and the pack of animals which must have been lying up, hoping for the return of their prey, snapped at the space she had just left.

She was pleased to see them. At least they had not picked up the track of her own quarry.

She quested for the direction now, moving through the lower terrace in a widening search-spiral. The interlocking life-tree branches were wide and easy at that level. She ran, jumped, swung by old reflex, without necessity of thought. This was virtually a sister-planet of Zaran, its evolution strikingly parallel, its hazards largely known to her-although she was aware that to push that assumption too far courted disaster. There would be differences, and they could be deadly.

Meanwhile, she could cover ground through the trees at least two or three times as fast as a man on the ground who had to cope with underbrush and all predators. Here only the great cats and one or two other rather unpleasant adversaries could come.

She hoped that Kirk would have had sense enough to follow her example and take to the trees. An active man could move here, if not with her skill, at least with somewhat better odds of survival than on the ground.

She performed the mental disciplines of the hunt, the focusing of all senses, physical and psionic. And at the end she permitted herself to acknowledge that this was matehunt. The commitment, once made, was irrevocable. It could end only with mating-or her death. But there was no choice. The directional signal would not work for anything less-might not work even so, given the briefness of contact and the division of heart she had permitted.

Still, there was no hesitation in her heart. She reached for the mate-signal; then she stopped and stood quite still. It was true, then. She was receiving two signals.

It was unknown in the history of Zaran, but there it was. When she had said there was only one option, she had assumed that she would tune only to Kirk. There had been that affinity between them from the first moments in the clearing-the beginning of an imprinting which would deepen as choice became irrevocable until it was a band of force between them.

She had fought it, but it was not to be fought. She had even set the Vulcan against it. He had not known that it was not merely his need which she answered.

But that should merely have made it impossible to bond with either. To have this awareness of both was also not dreamed of in Zaran philosophy. But then, as Kirk had said of Spock, neither was she. Nor were they all.

She lifted her head and tried to sense which direction belonged to which. She found she could not be certain. The call was virtually equal. And the pull was in opposite directions. The Master of Totality had known how to turn the screws tightly.

“Spock!” she called silently. It was doubtful that the thin thread of connection would carry a mental message across distance, yet. But it was necessary to try.

She received no answer. But from one of the directions it was as if she sensed dimly some massive resistance. She knew then. It was one of the two men-sensing her also dimly and warning her to go after the other.

With some effort she turned away from it, to the opposite direction, and moved. It had to be the Vulcan who would send that message. And she firmly turned her back on him and went for Kirk.

There had always been only one option in that sense, too. The Vulcan was far better equipped to survive here unarmed. He was vastly stronger and raised to survive on a planet which could rival this one for danger. He would have survived Vulcan in the Kaswan trial-at the age of seven.

Kirk was a Starship Captain. What training and sheer wiliness and courage could do, he would do. But he was Human, and all of Starfleet’s survival training was not equal to unaided Human survival here. Even her people would not survive long unarmed. Nor, for that matter, would the Vulcan. And only she was armed.

The only chance to save both men lay in a single direction. She moved quickly through the lower terrace….