Chapter 27

By moonlight they traveled through the trees. The moon, nearly full and more than twice the apparent size of Earth’s moon, cast a respectable blue-white glow. Many of the trees and flowers also fluoresced blue-white in the moonlight, lighting their way as if they walked in a diamond night.

And ahead was the ominous, red-gold glow of the living crater.

Both were spectacularly beautiful and dangerous. In the jungle great tree-orchids opened glowing blooms the size of a man. Somewhere else they would see tiny, perfect blooms the size of a fingernail-scattered by millions.

Nor was it all innocence. Kirk saw what he was certain was the local equivalent of a Venus’s-flytrap. But this plant was of a size to trap cat-bear or man. He had almost walked into its open jaws before Sola caught him and steered him aside.

“This is like your home?” he asked.

She laughed. “Like the wild areas, yes. We have created certain parklike areas where children may learn in safety. But as on Vulcan there is no real safety except in knowledge learned very early.”

He had a picture of her as a very small girl, moving in these hazards-and he turned for a moment to see that Spock must be having much the same thought. Possibly the Vulcan, who had survived the Kaswan at age seven, would understand that girl better than he did.

But then, Kirk also understood the woman who was the Free Agent only too well.

For this moment they all moved suspended in time, the three together, with no decisions to be made and no loss to be contemplated. He caught himself in the vagrant wish that it could always be so.

But it could not.

Ahead was the lowering, malevolent pit of the great crater. It might as well have been the pits of Hell.

In some dim way-perhaps through his earlier experience with Gailbraith’s Oneness-Kirk could sense the Totality, waiting for him.

This was only the advance post of a mental entity which stretched through space to Zaran, and spanned millions of minds. He could sense now a kind of pyramid, held together by psionic science and the bonded females of Sola’s kind. It was a pyramid which needed her at its apex-and control of her bond-mate to control her. But if she would not bond with him-or could not, given the counterforce of Spock-then perhaps the Totality could be made to settle for a Starship Captain, which it also wanted.

“I’ll go in,” Kirk said as they came to the foot of the crater. One side of it had been sheared away into a vertical cliff-face where an engineering masterwork had been performed to tap the massive geo-thermal energies of the live volcano. Without serious effort, the Totality could now mobilize much more than the power of a starship. There would be no way to penetrate this citadel by force. “They want me,” Kirk continued. “They’ve obviously gone to some trouble to get me. They won’t harm me. I’ll talk. There are enough people in the galaxy who would willingly try a Oneness to make conquest unnecessary.”

He stopped, seeing the massive resistance of the other two.

“If anyone goes alone,” Spock said, “it must be I, Captain. You demonstrably have no defense against Oneness. And you are a primary objective of both Gailbraith’s and Soljenov’s Ones. They offer no guarantee against harm, and logic suggests that ‘talk’ is likely to prove less than effectual as a weapon. Your problem would not be to get in, but to get out. Ours is not to give you as a hostage to fortune. Do you suppose that either of us would not have to come in after you?”

Kirk sighed. “That is what has stopped me up to now. But it won’t do. The Enterprise is at stake, and with it the galaxy. The ship can be used to wipe out the incorrigibles who resist the Totality on Zaran. Millions of lives. And from there it can threaten other planets, other ships. It can become the advance base for taking over other starships. It can be used in our names, using our crew, to discredit the Federation. Wars can be provoked and the Totality can pick up the pieces. Within our lifetimes the Totality can spread through the known galaxy like a cancer. Possibly the Totality could succeed even without Sola, if it had the Enterprise. In the face of that, we have to set aside the personal. I am best able to go, and I am in command. You will both remain here.”

He turned to go, but Sola’s hand settled on his shoulder, and when he turned to look, her eyes locked with his. “No,” she said.

“Just-no?” Kirk asked, surprised.

“That’s right.”

“You and what army?” he asked, and if there was the trace of a smile on his lips, he was not amused.

She did not, quite, look at Spock. “You will recall, Captain Kirk,” she said, “that your ship and its personnel were placed at my disposal.”

It stopped him. “We agreed to attempt not to reach the point which would make you use that authority.”

She nodded. “We failed.”

“I have no ship,” he said soberly. “We must assume that the Enterprise is under enemy control. Short of a miracle, which we had better perform, all of us will almost certainly fall under alien control. We are three individuals, marooned here, possibly forever, and the rules which applied to a Free Agent and a Starship Captain can’t have any real force here. I have my reasons for going in. You will respect that.”

“No.” She turned to Spock. “Hear me. This is my mission and my duty. I know how to do it. I cannot do it if impeded by hostages I cannot lose-and who are determined to place themselves in the hands of the enemy. Now that we have all reached this place, Spock, the service you can do for me is to take him, and yourself, to a place of safety, and see me go in.”

Spock started to shake his head, but she interrupted him. “Logic, Spock,” she said. “I am the galaxy’s expert on fighting the Totality. You must let me perform my function. If I were a male, or of a quite incompatible species, you would not stop me. You cannot make what we are to each other the source of the destruction of what we are.”

The Vulcan looked at her, then at Kirk, and some thought transformed his features. “No. But possibly what we are to each other is our only weapon.”

It was their turn to stare at the Vulcan.

“The Totality counted on making her choose,” Spock continued. “If she would not, or could not, they must devise a new plan. In an improvised plan, there will always be some flaw. We must go in together.”

After a long moment Sola turned to Kirk. “Spock is right. It is my place to go to face the trial. But you-both- are the essence of the trial. I cannot exclude you, nor leave you.”

Kirk nodded, but he kept his own counsel about what he would do inside. Spock might be quite right that their threeness was their best weapon.

Or-it might be their most serious danger.

More than likely it was both…

They turned and looked for a way into the Crater of Hell.