Chapter 31

Sola straightened in the young man’s arms. Argunov had held her, and now she felt punishment about to fall on him.

“No,” she said, almost without voice. “Whatever you do is to be done to me, alone.”

“It is not,” Z’Ehlah said. “Your two are with you.”

Sola lifted her head. “I know it. Let the trial stop with me.”

Z’Ehlah shook her head. “That is not my choice, it is yours. And you have made it.”

“No,” Sola said, “I have not chosen.”

Z’Ehlah looked at her almost with astonishment. “Is it possible you do not know? You are attempting to choose both.”

“That is biologically impossible,” Sola said. “I am Zaran.”

“It is impossible, and it may take all three of you to destruction, but that is your attempt.”

Sola focused on being able to stand away from Argunov and move.

“Thank you,” she said to him, and for a moment focused on his face, perhaps as a reminder of other faces. Here was one which might have commanded a starship, one day, and never would, unless she could show him how to free himself now. She moved toward Z’Ehlah.

Z’Ehlah moved back slightly, not yielding, merely giving ground. “You must know,” she said, “that the direct pain is merely pain. Rebels have defied pain, even to the death, before. It is the pleasure which is unendurable, and unbeatable. It will make you want it beyond any other pleasure. You cannot get past it.”

Sola lifted her head. “I can. I-have known the real thing.” She knew then that only the events of this day would let her say that, and that those memories alone would get her through this.

For a moment Sola saw something in Z’Ehlah’s eyes which might have been regret, remembrance. Was there a time when the reality of her mate had been beyond anything which the Totality could offer?

Sola took a step forward and the Zaran Center gathered all the forces of the Focal Point for the last defense.

Then the power burned through her mind in one searing sheet of flame, an ecstasy so intense that it resembled pain. Tendrils reached down deep, even into the bonding center. And against the false pleasure she could summon only the reality. Spock! she said to herself, and then for the first time permitted herself the name, Jim!

But she seemed to have lost the thread of mental contact. She could summon only the memories. And even those seemed to fade against the overwhelming neurological assault of direct pleasure. She had only to allow it, and that peak state which an intelligent being is fortunate to reach for moments out of a lifetime could be hers whenever she summoned or earned it. She could understand the rat who kept pressing the pleasure lever.

She felt her body shake as with some dreadful neurological disease, a palsied, paralyzed state which could only stand-stopped and defeated.

She felt Argunov hold her shoulders, sensed his young despair. For a moment he had believed in her.

She summoned his face before her blinded eyes, and then another face, Vulcan-Vulcan eyes, Vulcan arms…

Sola opened her eyes and took a step forward. She moved like a stroke victim learning how to walk, moving over and beyond the messages scrambled by a ravaged brain. But she moved.

Jim! Human eyes. Human lips, and the taste of his fight with fire-dragons and his own demons of jealousy-and sacrifice.

She moved.

Now she saw Z’Ehlah, all but paralyzed with the effort to stop her, and by an almost metaphysical dread which said that Sola could not do this. For if she could, then Z’Ehlah could perhaps have broken the control, long ago. Her mate could have been free-Sola moved past the shaken Z’Ehlah suddenly, in one lunge, and reached the control panel. She slashed her hand down across switches to cut out safety overrides, then shorted out the panel.

She heard a Zaran transporter hum behind her.

She was just touching the large purple lever which was the main power overload, when a hand fell on her and flung her away from the panel.

It was Soljenov.

“You were faster than I thought, my dear,” he said tightly. He started to reach for the panel to undo the worst damage. Young Argunov dived past him and pulled down the purple lever.

Flames shot up, and something rumbled suddenly, ominously, within the crater. Half the lights flared high and then blacked out. The floor shook.

Soljenov turned on the young Watcher in astonishment. Then he himself focused a burn-out intensity of the direct pleasure on Argunov. The youngster stiffened and started to crumple, but Sola was suddenly there, catching his shoulders and looking into his eyes.

“Argunov!” she said. “Come. Break it.”

Slowly the blue-gray eyes focused on her. Argunov fought to move and the palsy caught him. He shook under her hands. Then his eyes flamed up in one savage blast of fury at a long captivity which he knew suddenly held him only by his compliance.

He took a step forward, almost into her arms, and she held him for one instant and then turned with him to face Soljenov.

She could feel the shock spreading in ripples through the Totality Focal Center. For the first time the units had seen someone defy the unity. There was a young Zaran woman bent over a communications panel nearby. Suddenly she stood up and moved toward Argunov and Sola.

Z’Ehlah rallied to turn the pleasure signal on the young communications technician. She looked straight at Sola as the shaking nearly pulled her down-but she kept moving.

Sola turned back to Soljenov. But he did not look as worried as he should have. Indeed, he looked as if he held his quarry in his hand.

Suddenly the ground shifted and a crack opened in the floor. It belched sudden heat and an ominous steam.

Soljenov looked almost pleased. “I am finished with this installation, my dear-and with all who do not stand with me. I am taking the starship. You have now set yourself a time-limit for solving a certain problem.”

He stepped to the communications panel and threw switches.

The holo-spaces above the console filled with life-size figures. Then backed up to show that each of them was stranded on two separate ledges divided by a chasm too wide to jump-and by a slowly rising flow of lava which eroded their ledges.

The Human figure was only partly conscious. But the Vulcan was fully conscious-of his own helplessness. He could not reach the Human. And if he had wanted to escape alone, his way back out was blocked by the psionic field of the Totality Focal Center. Not even Spock, much less Kirk, could have moved through it unaided.

And in minutes their ledges would collapse into the lava flow-if another quake did not get them first.

“So there it is, my dear,” Soljenov said. “You may save one of them, but only one, for it can only be done by bonding with one of them. Bonded, you might bring him through the Focal Field, alive. No other way.”

She did not pause to listen. She ran. The Totality Field could not stop her now, and she had the thread of direction, two threads.

It was not far to go, but it was the longest trip she had made. She dodged through breathless, airless corridors, reeking with steam and sulfur like the pits of the Human’s Hell-or of parts of the Vulcan’s home planet.

But it was Hell, here. She knew there was no salvation, for any of them. In moments she arrived on a third tongue of ledge, almost directly between them, the lava flow dividing around her ledge, almost at her feet.

Kirk was conscious now, and she was the first thing he saw. “Sola, get out of here!” He was all but naked and looked as if he had been dragged through jungle.

Then he caught the direction of her other look and looked over his shoulder to see Spock. He swore, once, short and sharp.

“Take him out,” Spock said. “He can reach you along that ledge when you have bonded with him.” Spock pointed out a toehold ledge of collapsed corridor, with a few handholds above, which an extremely active man might have made with no interference and every assistance. It might as well have been sealed off from Kirk by a wall. In fact, it was. The moment he moved toward it he would hit the Totality Focal Field.

If he were bonded with her, she might conceivably shield him enough for him to make it. She could not shield both of them. Spock did not point it out, but she saw a slender conduit which sagged out from Spock’s ledge to within fifteen feet of her own. If it would hold his weight and he made no false move, there was some possibility that he could tightrope-walk it and jump far enough. But the Focal Field would get him, too, before he had gone two steps.

Kirk saw it, too. “Spock can make it along that conduit. Get him first.” He crawled closer to the edge of his ledge-and hit the field. Then he understood. He flung himself back out of it and looked at her. “So-that’s it.” His eyes narrowed. “What Spock said-does that mean you could get him out by bonding with him?”

She looked at him bleakly. “I could bring one of you out, or try to. Only one. By bonding.”

“Then it must be Spock,” Kirk said immediately.

“It cannot be,” Spock interposed. “We established that, long ago.” To Sola he said, “You must take him and go. While you occupy the attention of the Focal Field, I will be able to move by my own Vulcan powers. Go.”

It was a good try, and a refutation in itself of the legend that Vulcans cannot lie. She did not immediately dispute the point. If she chose Kirk, his belief in that lie was the only possible chance that she could get Kirk to move.

“Mr. Spock,” Kirk said, “is lying in his Vulcan teeth. It won’t work. I won’t budge. But if you two will get the hell out in time, I may stand a good chance.” He turned to the Vulcan. “Mr. Spock, you are to proceed out of here immediately by the means available, without argument. That is an order.”

Spock looked at him for what seemed a long time. “I am unable to comply, Captain,” he said. “Some things transcend the discipline of the service.”

Sola looked from one to the other. It was in her hands now. Her choice-with finality.

She knew then that she could not choose. She would have traded places with either of them, not to have to choose. And if she did not choose, both would die. And she with them, for she would not leave.

Yet there was no way to choose. Stray bits of memory kept coming back to her: her first sight of Kirk in the clearing, his white face and look of keeping on keeping on-and the sudden look of that strain lifting as he learned what, and who, she was…Kirk, coming back essentially from death in the scoutship, because she would not let him go…Kirk sending her back to unlock the chains and scatter the vultures until Spock was truly free…Kirk in the tree-cave of the fire-dragon…Kirk jumping down beside them into the midst of the ten-foot manlings, with his puny club-going to fight the leopard. And Kirk-coming here, to offer himself to the Totality, for the freedom and happiness of his friend, with the woman he loved….

But there was Spock. She also had seen him dragging chains, rock, vultures, and all, and she had seen him break free, if only for a moment. In that moment he had been open and vulnerable, and in her hands. And he had not taken refuge behind the great wall of Vulcan and gone quietly off to die in the face of his contradiction. He had faced it, and her, head-on. And he had never for a moment forgotten Kirk or what price Kirk had been willing to pay for Spock’s freedom.

It came to her suddenly that there was no way to choose between two such men. Any choice was treason to the value of the other one. Worse, the one she did not choose would know that she had not chosen him. And the one she chose would hate her for the death of the other half of himself.

Yet to refuse to choose was treason to both.

She would have to choose-now. And do it quickly before the one she chose could stop her….

Then a voice spoke in her mind. ‘So. You perceive the difficulty of the problem.’ It was Soljenov.

‘Yes,’ she said silently. Then his image formed in a one-way hologram in front of her. Kirk and Spock would not see or hear him.

Soljenov laughed silently. ‘This is the true Devil’s dilemma, my dear. You had thought Gailbraith was your personal Devil. You were wrong. I am. What would you pay never to have them know your choice-because you would not have to make it?’

She felt her throat tighten. ‘What are you asking?’

‘More than your soul.’

McCoy struggled with a nightmare sense of Oneness. He had gotten what he had bargained for, in spades.

They had reached the point where McCoy and Dobius could no longer proceed. There was some kind of psionic field which did not register on McCoy’s scanners, but gave him the personal collywobbles. Whatever that was. In this case, his legs wouldn’t track.

Neither would the long legs of Mr. Dobius. They were caught somewhere between right brain and left brain. The big Tanian stalled out and stood numbly.

Gailbraith possibly could have moved into the field, but he stopped for them. “You were to experience Oneness,” he said to McCoy. “It is time.”

He reached out to touch McCoy’s face and McCoy clamped his jaw and didn’t fight it. “Get them out,” he said.

“We must first get in-through Mr. Dobius,” Gailbraith said.

Then his mind reached out and dissolved McCoy’s consciousness into the edges of Oneness. It was terrifying, but not unpleasant. He found he could look through Gailbraith’s eyes, sense the big man’s body, sense his intentness on a purpose. Then he gathered McCoy up with him and both of them looked out of one of Mr. Dobius’ eyes. They must be in his brain-half which was controlled by Gailbraith’s Oneness.

Then they shifted across into the other half of the brain, and McCoy knew suddenly that they were within the Totality. He felt the enormous flowing of mental force-and then he sensed sudden eddies, torrents, confusion, even rebellion.

The Totality was in an uproar. And it knew in every individual cell that the volcano was giving way. But the individual cells were held to their posts by Soljenov.

Then abruptly, they were in Soljenov’s perspective. He seemed to be hanging in space over a torrent of fire-facing Sola Thane, who was standing on a ledge above molten lava.

Then Soljenov became aware of Gailbraith and company. Soljenov turned around and his holographic perspective turned with him until McCoy could see through his eyes. The two men trapped on separate ledges: Kirk and Spock. Soljenov seemed to speak aloud for their benefit. And McCoy caught the flash of a thought which ordered a hologram of Gailbraith, McCoy, and Dobius to be found through the monitors and projected to face his own. In moments, as he spoke, it was done, and McCoy saw Kirk, Sola, and Spock see himself and Gailbraith in the new hologram. McCoy could still sense dimly the thoughts of Gailbraith and his One, and of Soljenov, but now he also seemed to see with his own eyes.

“You will note, Gailbraith, Doctor, and associate,” Soljenov said to them, “that a trial has been set. The only means of saving either man is for Sola to bond with one of them, and in either case, I will then have my bonded-female as weapon-the culmination of the Z line of descent of Zaran females, bonded strongly to a male in a life-or-death choice. With Sola Thane, Ambassador Gailbraith, Oneness comes to the galaxy in both our lifetimes. War ends. All of the concerns of singletons become old and void. The galaxy becomes new-the playground of the new multicellular life.”

“If I also join you,” Gailbraith said. “Otherwise it becomes a contest for the survival of the fittest multicellular life. That would push evolution still further, perhaps. Or it would create a struggle of Titans to make all of the singleton struggles of all time look puny and bloodless.”

Soljenov smiled grimly. “Precisely. That war of Titans would make Armageddon look like a preliminary event. There is no compromise, Gailbraith. Your fine vision of a plurality of Onenesses will not work. There must be one Total entity. Ultimately it must be galaxywide, or there will be a war of all against all. And only the Totality, with the final power which Sola Thane will bring it, can become that entity.”

“Why?” Kirk asked suddenly from his ledge. He had a bone-white look which McCoy didn’t like, but Kirk found strength somewhere for that flare of passionate thought which had turned tides for them before. “Why should plurality and diversity mean enmity? Even we singletons have learned friendship, love-a oneness which does not have to mean Oneness. For us, at least, Oneness means the end of the unique entity-dehumanizing, depersonalizing loss of identity. But our kind of oneness”- he gestured toward Sola and Spock-“is a celebration of individual identity, of difference. There is no love, no passion, no friendship, no ultimate personal choice which does not depend on the unique, irreplaceable one. It is what we would miss in Oneness, and why we have fought against you with our lives. But why shouldn’t two diverse Onenesses also begin to find that in each other? What would prevent friendship between the unique entities of Oneness-friendship, perhaps even love?”

“Power prevents,” Soljenov said. “An entity grows. Or dies.”

“Infants and children grow,” Kirk said. “Adults-love.”

Soljenov shrugged. “You may have the good fortune to be an adult of your species, Captain. I am an infant of mine. The adult form of my species is not yet known. Does the caterpillar envision the butterfly? Yet the caterpillar must spin its cocoon. And I must spin mine.” He looked at Sola. “We digress. You have not much time, and they”- he indicated Kirk and Spock-“have less. Your decision?”

“Sola,” Kirk said urgently, “make no bargains. Take Spock. I will be all right.”

She turned to him. “What bargain would you then make, and with whom? No. If I refuse Soljenov, he will let you die. And do you suppose there would be anything left for the other two of us then?”

“That is right,” Spock said. “Get the Captain out. I shall make it under my own power.”

” ‘And shall I live knowing that you lied,’ Spock?” Sola said, as if it were a quotation between them.

Spock’s eyes went bleak. “If necessary. But live. Get him out.”

She turned to Soljenov. “I will not choose between them,” she said.

“Then you choose the death of both,” Soljenov said. “Or you accept my terms.”

“I-” Sola began.

“No!” Kirk thundered. “Soljenov, you wanted a soul. All right. You have found my price. I won’t promise not to fight you from within. But you will have me where you wanted me. I will become part of the Totality, or of Gailbraith’s One-or perhaps the bridge to join both. I suspect that might influence Gailbraith to join you. My ship, Sola, and Spock are to go free-whether they like it or not.”

Soljenov smiled. “Interesting, Captain. Do you believe that your soul is so valuable to me?”

“Yes,” Kirk said.

“Gailbraith,” Soljenov asked, “is it true that you would welcome the Captain as a bridge between us?”

“Possibly,” Gailbraith said, “if he becomes part of my Oneness first.”

“And if you then fail to join me?” Soljenov asked.

“I am weighing a question,” Gailbraith said. “When it is answered, I will tell you what it was-and name my decision.”

Soljenov laughed. “When I have answered a question of my own, and if I accept the Captain’s as the best offer-I might let you have him.”

Spock turned to Kirk across the gulf and the Vulcan’s eyes were hard. “I do not require or accept sacrifice.”

Kirk met his eyes across the gulf. “I do not make one. I have-acquired a taste for oneness. Or Oneness. It is an elegant solution to an otherwise insoluble problem, Spock. The three of us have struggled with that problem, to no solution. There is no solution within our normal parameters. I cannot take her from you-or see her with you. I can’t leave. You can’t. She can’t. Impasse. But nothing is won without cost. I will free the ship and settle with the question of Oneness. I do not think the Totality can continue its present course if I am in it. And this way-I will not be alone. Nor will you.”

Spock stepped to the edge of his ledge. “At the first attempt to implement such a decision, Jim,” he said levelly, “I will make it a null solution.” He looked down into the flowing lava below.

“Spock!” Kirk yelled.

“That option is closed,” Sola said quickly, stepping to the edge of her own ledge. “Soljenov, neither one of them can be yours.” She lifted her head, and McCoy knew that he would remember that look forever. “Nor-mine,” she said.

“Sola-” Spock said. It was the first time McCoy remembered hearing Spock speak that name. He wondered if it would be the last…?

“They both have their mission and life-path,” Sola said. “And I have mine. Our paths have intersected-and now must diverge again. I could not stay-with one of them. Nor-leave with one of them. Nor present one with the other’s dead body. I have known from the beginning that there could be no life for any two of us-over the other’s pain. I will remain with you, Soljenov, not as your bonded-weapon, but with that bonding capacity now aroused. That will be my problem. And perhaps-yours. You will let the Enterprise go-and you will allow the Argunovs and Z’Ehlahs to go. Then you and I will argue out the shape of our adult, until the butterfly is ready to emerge from the chrysalis.”

“No!” Kirk said, but McCoy wondered whether they all had not heard the sound of the handwriting on the wall. Was this Sola’s form of the lie that she would be all right? Or had she seen, in fact, that McCoy’s two friends were not to be hers? Not one of them, not either of them-and, God help them all, certainly not both of them.

“Sola,” Kirk said, “you are not to go- ‘off into the night.’ You, above all, have earned better than that.”

Sola smiled. “I have had better than that, this day, from both of you. It will last me. It will have to.” She turned to look for a moment at Spock. “There was one premise we did not check, Mr. Spock. And if I were of the Captain’s species, and we were not on trial here, perhaps I would even check it. But in my species the answer is biological.”

“What premise is that?” Spock asked.

For one moment Sola Thane’s eyes lit with a kind of triumph. “The premise of monogamy, Mr. Spock.”

McCoy saw Kirk and Spock trade a stunned look which he could not entirely read.

Then in the thickening silence Sola turned to Soljenov. “Now get them out of here.”

Soljenov’s eyes had hardened. “Those were not my terms,” he said. “And that will not answer Gailbraith’s question-will it, Gailbraith?”

“No,” Gailbraith said. “It will not.”

“What in God’s name is your question?” McCoy exploded, hearing the sound of exasperation in his own voice-and the sound of terror. None of them had very long.

“I do not ask it in God’s name, Doctor,” Gailbraith said, “but in my own. My question has always been-oneness versus Oneness. If, as the Captain contends, there is a power of individual love which cannot be touched or equaled by Oneness-then I must at least maintain a separate Oneness and we must even learn to love. But if love does not have the power he claims for it, then we had better have Soljenov’s single Totality-for nothing less will prevent chaos.” He shook his head. “But mere offers to sacrifice are not sufficient. The question of love is not to be answered here.”

“Yes, it is,” Soljenov said flatly. He turned to Sola. “I will accept your counteroffer, on one condition. If that love which you profess is strong enough-and if it is really not between any two of you but among the three-if your oneness is stronger than my Oneness, there is one way to prove it. Bring both of them to you, alive, without bonding finally with either one. If you can do that, I will let them go, with their ship and their souls-and the stranger within their gates. Yes, even with your Argunovs-if they choose to go. You and I will then argue the adult.”

Sola looked at the chasm yawning over the abyss. McCoy saw the slender conduit pipe by which the Vulcan might attempt a crossing to her, if there were no debilitating psionic field-and if Spock were half-ape, half-acrobat, and wholly mad. The finger-and toehold ledges which Kirk might attempt from his side looked even more dangerous. McCoy could sense the psionic field of the Totality, thick as glue, and moving now to focus on the two men on the ledges with-what was it? A kind of direct pleasure? He saw the effect strike the Vulcan, almost like pain-somehow McCoy could even sense the nature of the effect in the eddying fields of Oneness: a fiery tendril which probed at the brain centers of pleasure and then reached fiercely into the neurological centers reserved for lifelong bonds. Those bonding centers of course were strong in the Vulcan. But McCoy could also sense them surprisingly strong in Kirk. Time after time Kirk had lost someone, been held by duty to his starship, his friends, his choices in the stars. But for this love of the woman who matched him, matched them both, even the old antidote of ship and stars was not enough. Both men were open and vulnerable now, and McCoy felt Spock stiffen with resistance as the tendril probed down deeply into the brain centers which longed for pleasure and permanence. The Vulcan began to shake uncontrollably, teetering on the edge of his ledge.

Then Sola reached out to him with whatever it was she would have used for bonding. We are one, Spock.

But McCoy sensed that she did not cut off the thread of connection which also bound her to Kirk. Kirk also shook with the same effect. He sagged to his knees, but he spoke urgently to Spock, finding breath for it.

“Spock, go to her. Now. We are one. They won’t break us, Spock. Not any of us. You will move, and I will. You were right. It is-we, three.”

Somehow Spock lifted his head and looked across to Kirk.

“That’s an order, Mr. Spock,” Kirk whispered. “I’ll need-your help.”

Spock moved. McCoy hoped never to see a man move in that way again-and never to forget seeing this one move now. The Vulcan shook as with some aggravated neurological disorder, but he fixed his eyes on Sola and stepped out on the slender, slippery conduit. Spock moved as if summoning the power of mind over brain, bridging the neurological chaos within him by sheer will, like a cerebral-palsy victim learning to walk. But now he moved also by the pull of Sola’s will, and perhaps even of Kirk’s added to Spock’s own.

McCoy was not altogether sure that Spock could have walked that wire by himself, on a good day. Although you never could tell what the Vulcan could do in a pinch, especially when the pinch was closing on Kirk, among others.

Now there was certainly no way, under the assault of the mind-probe, that Spock could walk that swaying, sagging pipe. But he was doing it. From somewhere a blond young man emerged on Sola’s ledge and reached out to anchor her on the edge of the ledge while she reached out to Spock. Kirk looked as if he were fused into a three-way circuit. At best there was a gap between the end of the conduit and Sola which looked as if it needed a running jump.

Then as Spock almost reached the end, his foot slipped on the slippery conduit. He fell.

McCoy’s eyes wanted to lock shut, but he saw-Spock plunged toward the lava. Then somehow the Vulcan’s hand caught the conduit. The pipe bent down under his weight, then sprang back up. At the top of its spring, Spock swung himself up and flung himself toward Sola-then turned loose to hurtle across fifteen feet of empty space over the abyss.

Sola’s hand caught Spock’s by the fingertips. He was slipping, on his way again. Then somehow they held to each other, by sheer necessity, and Spock caught the edge of the ledge and pulled himself up and in.

McCoy breathed.

For a moment the two merely held to each other at the edge of the ledge. Then they pulled apart and turned to Kirk.

Kirk’s ledge was already badly eroded, and he himself looked somewhere far beyond the end of his rope. McCoy didn’t even want to think about the medical toll of this day on Kirk. He would have been going on plain, raw nerve for most of it. And there was no way he was now going to traverse a narrow finger-and toehold ledge, in heat which should have been enough to make a Vulcan drop, and against the terrible effect of the direct pleasure. McCoy could sense that effect’s power even from the periphery of the effect, and he knew the old animal research. That unremitting, unendurable pleasure would have made an animal curl up and stay with the pleasure until it died.

McCoy saw the terrible fatigue in Kirk’s eyes, and the knowledge that Spock was now safely out of danger. If Kirk let himself go, Sola and Spock would be together. The Totality would have no hold on them. And he might hope that eventually they would recover and go on.

“Jim!” McCoy called. “Don’t believe it. They wouldn’t make it. It is-three.”

McCoy saw Kirk lift his head and look at him. Then Kirk crawled to the edge and somehow slid out onto the finger-and toeholds.

It was a mistake. Sola’s control had been strained to the snapping point in helping Spock. McCoy could sense that she had almost slipped into the irrevocable two-way bonding with Spock, excluding Kirk. McCoy didn’t see how she could have helped it, but it was Kirk’s death warrant. He would never make it without her help against the psionic field and the lure of direct pleasure. He remained lodged on the first fingerholds, swaying out over the fire.

“Sola,” McCoy said, “Spock! You both have to fight it, reach him.” They didn’t seem able to pull out of the effect which drew them compellingly to each other. “It’s unstable,” McCoy said suddenly, in the tone of swearing. “Inherently unstable, the three.”

Slowly Sola turned to look at McCoy. Her tawny eyes were abstracted, as if some plan or desperation was forming in them. “No!” she countered, but her tone was desperate. She tried to reach her mind out toward Kirk and it remained with Spock.

McCoy cursed himself for a fool. How could she have been expected to know Spock as she had known him, body and stubborn Vulcan soul, and now to have brought him across that abyss-and not to cleave to him as one flesh, one soul? And how could Spock not reach back? And they twain shall be one flesh…Maybe it was always only two people who could hold each other as their highest value. And by the nature of reality if there were three, someone would always have to arrive at a point of choice, an irrevocable choice…

Spock moved suddenly, as if to break the hold of something which had captured him. Then he swung out on the toeholds toward Kirk.

Something seemed to snap then in Sola, and she tried to reach out mentally to Kirk-to both of them. Once again McCoy could sense effort to reestablish the three-way flow of force. Kirk shuddered and tried to inch along, like a palsy victim himself, with Spock working toward him from the other end.

But McCoy knew suddenly that he had been right. The three might conceivably get past this moment. But how would they get past the fact that there had been a life-or-death choice here, and there would be others? Somewhere there would be another choice which would have to be made finally, irrevocably and in an instant, with no chance to refuse choice.

And it might well be now-

*

McCoy felt a wrench of perspective and found himself being propelled down a hall by Gailbraith, who evidently wanted to reach the scene of the action himself-not by hologram.

McCoy sensed suddenly that Soljenov had had the same thought and was moving.

But McCoy had a terrible fear that by the time they got there, it would be over.