by 12(lit)
"There you will disembark and be interned. Your ship will be destroyed, of course."
To nobody in particular, Kirk muttered, "Of course," though at bridge stations around him, lights were blinking on. And from across the room, Spock called, "Engine systems coming on, Captain."
But Balok's sense of comedy was as grotesque as the snouted face. Filtered, the thick voice said, "Do not be deceived by the size of this pilot vessel. It has an equal potential to destroy your ship." And as if to give proof of the claimed power, the Enterprise was subjected to a jolt that sent several people sprawling.
Spock said, "Tractor beam again, sir."
Kirk went very still as the voice, going on, pushed home the point.
"Escape is impossible. It is only that you may sus-tain your gravity and atmosphere that your systems are now open. Our power will lead you to your des-tination. Any move to elude me or destroy my ship will result in the instant destruction of the Enterprise and of every life aboard her."
For some reason he preferred not to examine, Kirk wanted to smile. There, on the viewing screen, was Balok's tiny ship towing the huge Enterprise behind it across the dark fields of star-sown space. It was absurd, and the portentous pomposity of Balok him-self, his literary style, gigantically threatening, made it still more absurd.
But to his not-amused people, he said, "Our plan: A show of resignation. His tractor beam is a heavy drain on his small ship. Question: Will he grow care-less?"
Bailey, gesturing toward his console, said, "Cap-tain, he's pulling out a little ahead of us."
Spock, to check the report, emerged from his hooded viewer to announce, "He's sneaked power down a bit."
Kirk, turning, confronted a white-faced, tense Bailey who spoke hastily, "I'm all right, sir."
Nodding, Kirk said, "We'll need a right-angle course to maintain our sheer away from him no matter how he turns."
"Yes, sir."
"Maximum acceleration when I give the word."
Sulu, his eyes on the screen, said, "Yes, sir."
Minutes which everyone endured according to his duties and temperament crawled sluggishly by. Bailey constantly ran his tongue over dry lips. Sulu kept his eyes on his Captain. As to Spock, expressionless, he waited, alert as a drawn trigger.
Kirk, without turning, spoke to Sulu. "Engage!"
Under the prearranged pressures of switches and con-trols, the bridge lights dimmed to a massive power drain as the Enterprise lurched, shuddering. And on the screen, Balok's dwarf ship lurched too, its light be-ginning to pulsate. And started to flicker in power surges as it tried to compensate for the withdrawal of the Enterprise.
It wasn't so simple as it should have been. The Starship's engines rose to a higher and higher whine until Sulu unnecessarily reported, "It's a strain, Captain. Engines are overloading."
"More power," Kirk said.
He caught a glint of awed respect in Sulu's eyes. And wondered what the response would be if he said, "Cut it, kid." If I've taken a risk, it's because I'm alive. Living itself is a risk. If you don't want to risk, phaser yourself and die. And thought, I am as bored by ex-cessive dependency as I am by excessive awe.
Spock, bless him, was neither dependent nor awed. Now without intonation, he said, "We're overheating, Captain. Intermix temperature seven thousand four hundred degrees... seven-five... seven-six..."
When the alarm bell rang, he shut it off. "Eight thousand degrees, sir."
On the screen, Balok's ship was glowing like a nova as it tried to fend off the pull of the Enterprise in their titanic tug-of-war.
The bridge teetered, rocking, as the Enterprise tried to pull free of Balok's ship, the whine of its engines growing to a scream.
Kirk, hard-jawed, said, "Sheer away, Mr. Bailey!"
His brow sweating, Bailey battled the power con-flict. And from his station, Spock said, "We're two thousand above maximum. Eight thousand four... five... six... she'll blow soon."
Even as he was speaking, the light pulsations from Balok's ship lessened. Then one of the lights flickered into dimness.
"We're breaking free, sir," Bailey reported.
All the lights on the alien ship became faint. As one blinked off and then on again, there came a sudden flare-up of brilliant light from the balled ves-sel to be replaced by an utter darkness. And the En-terprise, freed, sped away into the distance.
A relaxed Kirk, leaning back in his chair, said, "All engines stop."
"All stopped, sir," Sulu said.
Turning, Kirk studied the young face of Bailey. Its blue eyes met his straightforwardly. Nodding? he said, "Good. All hands, good."
Behind him, the elevator doors opened, and Scott, his face anxious, almost ran to the command chair. "Engines need some work, Captain! They've been badly overstrained. Bad. Can we hold it here a few hours?"
Spock left his station to take his own place beside the command chair. "If Balok got a signal through to that mother ship of his, sir..."
Kirk, nodding, said, "Right, Mr. Spock. We're not home yet."
Uhura, swinging her chair around, bent her head to a turned switch on her console. "A signal, Cap-tain... very weak." For several seconds, she just listened. Then she said, "It's Balok, sir, a distress signal to the Fesarius. His engines are out... his life-sustain-ing system isn't operating. He's repeating the message to the Fesarius."
"Any reply, Lieutenant?"
"Negative, sir. His signal is fading. It is so faint, I doubt if the mother ship could hear it."
On the screen before Kirk, there hung Balok's little ball, once so charged with belligerent vitality but now helpless, dull-a black nothing against the star-strewn immensities of space. And about it was something of pathos, of miniseule tragedy like the disappearance down a whale's throat of the microscopic, one-celled lives inhabiting the seas.
"Plot a course for it, Mr. Bailey," he said.
Only Spock among his officers showed no surprise, not even the lift of a astonished eyebrow. Kirk, push-ing his intercom button, reached for his mike to say, "This is the Captain speaking. The First Federation vessel is in distress. We're preparing to board."
His crew had been persecuted by Balok, overworked, threatened, panicked. So the right words had to be found to explain the suggestion of mercy in his an-nouncement; and choosing them, he went on: "There are lives at stake. By our standards 'alien lives'-but still lives. Captain out."
Navigator Bailey, doing his best to keep the respect-ful awe out of his eyes said, "Course plotted and laid in, sir."
"Ready the Transporter Room, Mr. Scott."
After a moment's hesitation, Scott said, "Aye, sir," and walked toward the elevator as Kirk, turning to Sulu, said, "Bring us to within one hundred meters, Mr. Sulu. Ahead slow."
Sighing, Sulu repeated the order and Kirk, glancing around him, saw that the still lingering dissatisfaction on the faces of his people was telling him that more right words were needed. He rose from his chair and, grasp-ing its back, said, "Gentlemen, what is the mission of this vessel of ours? It is to seek out and make con-tact with life forms wherever we find them." He stopped, and, wheeling, pointed to the dark round lit-tle ship on the screen. "Life," he said, and after a long pause, hammered home his point. "An opportunity to demonstrate what our high-sounding words mean. Any questions?"
As nobody spoke, he went on.
"I'll take two men with me. Dr. McCoy to examine and treat the aliens if possible." He was at the elevator doors when he turned. "And you, Mr. Bailey."
Astounded, Bailey managed a "Sir?"
"The face of the unknown, Mr. Bailey. I think I owe you a look at it."
Rising slowly from his seat, Bailey said, "Yes, sir."
Spock had left his place too. "Request permission, sir, to-"
"Denied, Mr. Spock. If I'm mistaken, if Balok's set a trap for us, I want you here."
With Bailey, McCoy joined Kirk in the elevator, his medical bag in his hand. And to Kirk's "Transporter Room," the familiar relays clicked, light
s flashing. Af-ter a moment, Kirk addressed McCoy, ignoring Bailey's fear-paled face. "You don't approve either, I suppose."
McCoy shrugged. "I never ask your approval of my diagnoses."
"Frightened, Mr. Bailey?" Kirk said.
"Yes, sir."
"Of what?"
"Well, as far as knowing exactly-"
"Precisely my point, Mr. Bailey."
As the trio entered the Transporter Room, Scott, an assistant beside him, looked up from the transporter controls to warn, "It will be risky, sir. We're locked in on what appears to be a main deck."
Nodding, Kirk said, "Air sample?"
"Breathable, Captain. In fact, a slightly higher oxy-gen content than our own."
"Ready, Doctor?" Kirk asked, turning to McCoy.
"No, but you won't let that stop you."
Bailey, last to enter the transport chamber, obedient-ly stepped into the space Kirk indicated; and from the console across the Room, Scott, motioning them all to stoop, called, "On your hunkers, Captain. It reads pretty cramped over there."
Kirk, satisfied that he and his companions were safe-ly placed, said, "Energize!"
With the hum of increasing power, the three dis-solved into unidentifiable figures of light sparkles, the transporter effect subsiding, as they disappeared only to almost immediately materialize under a ceiling barely an inch above their heads. Around them was a sub-dued, soft lighting, probably indirect, but no sign what-ever of smoke or trouble.
Then still bending, the three stopped dead, dumb-struck by the luxury of the room before them. The floor was covered by a rich, deep-piled form of carpet, its gold color matched by draperies of what might have been velvet but wasn't. In the room's center, on a silver and jade-green chaise longue, a creature reclined. Was it Balok? The head was even larger than it had shown on the Enterprise screen, and its body had a curious limpness about it.
It didn't move as they approached it. The goggle eyes in the huge, bloated head had no lids to blink but simply stared glassily at the opposite wall. When McCoy tapped the thing with his knuckles, it gave out a hollow sound; and nodding, McCoy said, "Jim, this is a... a dummy, a puppet of some kind."
And the familiar harshness of Balok's voice said, "I have been waiting for you."
At the sound of it, whey all wheeled.
Kirk's first thought was, "I'm hallucinating." For the actual Balok was almost a child in size, less than four feet tall, chubby, warm and so cuddly in appear-ance that one could only marvel how his pudgy chest could accommodate the resonance of that voice. Smil-ing cherubically so that his rosy cheeks made little mounds under his twinkling eyes, he was sitting relaxed-ly in a small chair, robed in some shimmering turquoise material-anyway, some color of the blue-green family.
"I'm Balok," he said. "Welcome aboard."
Moving forward, Kirk let the phenomenon of the voice go to watch the childlike hand indicate three small armless chairs.
"I'm Captain Kirk. I-"
Interrupting, their host nodded. "-and McCoy and Bailey. Sit. Be comfortable."
As the Enterprise men lowered themselves gingerly to the edges of what by Earth standards would be children's chairs, Balok pushed a button on the wall beside him. It slid open to make way for a servo unit bearing a bowl and four cups. Lifting a ladle, Balok dipped it into the bowl to fill the cups of his hos-pitality.
"We must drink. This is tranya. I hope you relish it as much as I."
"Commander Balok-" Kirk began, and was stilled by a wave of the little hand.
"I know. I know," the voice grated. "A thousand questions. But first, the tranya."
Midget though he was, this creature had deflected the Enterprise in its course, demoralized its crew with terrorizing threats and made a general nuisance of him-self. Kirk accepted the cup he was handed but didn't drink. Nor did McCoy. Balok beamed at them. Lifting his own drink, he sipped from it. After a moment, Kirk and McCoy followed his example, Bailey, still un-easy and distrustful, preferring to merely hold bis drink.
The tranya was delicious, but as Kirk replaced his empty cup on the servo, his eyes veered to the chaise longue where the enormous, hideous head lolled idioti-cally, half-on and half-off its cushion. Noticing, Balok said, "My alter ego, so to speak,
Captain. In your culture, he would be Mr. Hyde to my Jekyll. You must admit he's effective. You would nev-er have been frightened by me. I also thought my dis-tress signal quite clever." And with another seiaphic smile, Balok added, "It was a pleasure testing you." Eyeing the manikin, Kirk said, "I see." Balok spoke earnestly. "I had to discover your real intentions, you see."
"But you probed our memory banks..."
"Your records could have been a deception on your part." As Balok spoke, he poured more tranya into his cup, offering to pour more for Kirk who declined. Mc-Coy, however, accepted more drink, asking, "And your crew, Commander?"
Balok giggled. "Crew? I have no crew, Doctor. Just Mr. Hyde and me. I run everything from this small ship." The heavy voice became unexpectedly plaintive, the chubby face wistful. "But I miss company, conver-sation. Even an alien would be a welcome companion. Perhaps one of your men... for some period of time... an exchange of information, cultures..."
The contrast between the powerful voice and its in-genuous confession of loneliness was appealing. Kirk was finding much to like in Balok and a considerable degree of sympathy for him, marooned here alone in space with the bogeyman puppet on the chaise longue.
"Yes," he said. "Do you think we can find a volunteer, Mr. Bailey?"
Bailey jumped from his child's chair with such enthusiasm that he hit his head on the ceiling.
"Me, sir!" he cried eagerly. "I'd like to volunteer!"
Kirk waited a long moment before he nodded, say-ing, "An excellent idea, Mr. Bailey."
Unbelieving, Balok stared at the Enterprise naviga-tor. "You will stay with me? Be my friend? You repre-sent Earth's best, then?"
Rubbing his head, Bailey protested. "No, sir. I'm not. I'll make plenty of mistakes."
"And you'll learn more about us this way, Commander Balok," Kirk said. "As to me, I'll get back a better officer in return."
Balok broke into open, joyous laughter so infec-tious that Kirk laughed too.
"I see, Captain," he said. "We think much alike, you and I."
Bailey, the decision made, swallowed his whole drink of tranya.
As he finished it, Balok got to his small height; and moving grandly to the door, stood at it, waiting for his guests to join him. He looked up at them, towering over him, his face that of a child on Christmas morning. The next minute, he was all business again.
"Now, before I bring back the Fesarius, let me show you my personal vessel. It is not often I have this pleasure."
McCoy, following him through the door, shook his head with the wonder of it all, but Kirk and Bailey smiled at each other before they too stooped to move through the entranceway in the trail of robed child man.
Pausing at another small door, Balok, turning, said "Yes, we're very much alike, Captain. Both proud of our ships."
SHORE LEAVE
(Theodore Sturgeon)
Captain James Kirk slumped in his chair and con-templated his viewscreen. At least this planet was not emitting torpedoes or mysterious signals, for once. He sincerely hoped it wouldn't start anything; he wasn't at all sure he could deal with another Problem. Even his mind felt sluggish.
He became vaguely aware of footsteps nearing him; he couldn't allow himself to slouch like this. He straightened up with effort and felt a stab of pain in his back.
"Anything from the landing party yet, Mr. Spock?"
"They should be sending up a report momentari-ly, Captain." Spock glanced at him. "Is something wrong?"
"Kink in my back. Yes, just about there."
A strong hand touched, assessed and began to knead the spastic muscle. He could always rely on Spock.
"Just a little higher. Ohh-yes. Just there, Spock. Harder-push hard..." But Spock was stand
ing in front of him.
"What-?" Her hands skillfully working, Yeoman Tonia Barrows smiled as he turned his head. He couldn't start using the female crew as personal mas-seuses. Damn. "Thank you, Yeoman," he said hastily. "That's sufficient." It had helped.
"You need sleep, Captain," said the girl hesitantly. "If it's not out of line to suggest-"
"I've had enough of that from Dr. McCoy. Thank you."
Spock folded his arms. "And Dr. McCoy is com-pletely correct, Captain. After what this crew has been through in the last few months, there's not a man aboard who doesn't need a rest."
