Sarda held true. I buried my anger and remembered
Think Vulcan.
"Piper!" the faint crackle of the receiver buzzed in
my ear.
I twisted the two metallic fibers that would engage
my transmitter. "Here."
"Piper, do you copy?"
I twisted the fibers tighter and brought the mangled
unit to my lips. "Affirmative. I copy. Where are
they?"
115
"I have spotted Gruegen and his teammate. Take a
course bearing point-five degrees south. They are
roughly 200 yards from you. Be on guard."
"Moving."
He kept me apprised of their shifts in position as I
made my way through thorny, steamy jungle toward
my prey. Finally, in spite of torn clothing and leftover
needleplant spines, I spied the two blond heads, gath-
ered my legs under me on a small moss mound, and
drew my mock phaser.
In my ear came the faint sizzle of warning. "Piper,
they're turning toward you."
I nodded to myself, not taking time to engage the
transmitter. The fronds in front of me started rustling.
They were coming.
I raised my weapon.
"Piper! Vesco and his Skorr are behind you!"
My skin prickled. Behind me! Damn.
"They're closing on you from both directions,"
Sarda warned, his concern coming through strained
circuits. "You must retreat---quickly! Piper--"
I could feel them now. That unmistakable, indefin-
able sensation of warning ran up my arms as I tucked
the mock phaser to my chest and hunkered down on
the moss hill, glancing behind me at the bobbing heads
of Vesco and the Skorr. Close enough to see. Not
good.
"Piper!" Sarda hissed, his desperation breaking
through that fragile Vulcan shell.
I tore the receiver from my ear and stuffed it into a
pocket, then lay the mock phaser down on the moss
beside me. Folding my legs, I sat down and arranged
my hands in the most unthreatening position possi-
ble-hanging over my knees.
Vesco and his teammate broke through the ferns
first. They stopped short when they saw me, frozen in
astonishment for an instant. I made good use of that
116
instant; I shrugged despondently at them, then put one
elbow on my knee and rested my chin in my hand.
Vesco's brow knitted. He glanced at the bird face of
his companion, then grinned in a sort of deflected
victory. As I hoped, he didn't bother to check me for
dye-dart stains.
The jungle rustled like stiff taffeta. Vesco dropped
his grin and stared. He drew his weapon. The Skorr
took his cue and sank into a shadow, careful of huge
golden wings.
Dark green jungle ptterns gave birth to the muscle-
man shape of Gruegen, soon followed by his shapely
scientist. The Norwegian spied Vesco and drew his
weapon with a shout just as a dye dart flashed between
him and the woman. Everyone ducked for cover,
except me. I sat quietly on my moss hill, head in hand,
as dye darts whined in from four directions. It took
every ounce of control I had in me to keep from
reacting. I sat still, tense as drawn string, ignoring the
whistles of darts ringing around me and splattering on
the foliage and rocks. In my pocket, the muffled buzz
of Sarda's frantic calls vibrated faintly.
A howl from my left accompanied the thud of a dye
dart against a human form. Gruegen rose from the
ferns, his shoulder and the right side of his face bathed
in purple dye. His teammate came out from her own
hiding place, staring at him. In a silent chorus, their
expressions sank.
Misery crumpling his face, Gruegen wordlessly
drew his locator and signaled to be beamed up. Vesco
emerged from the bushes near me, followed soon by
his scientist, and beamed his unabashed victory as
Gruegen and the woman dissolved into bands of light
and disappeared.
In his rush of triumph, Vesco never bothered to
wonder why I too hadn't been beamed up yet. His
shoulders straightened and he puffed up, believing
117
himself the ultimate winner of the Outlast. He rubbed
his hands around his mock phaser, rather lovingly, I
thought, and grinned at his teammate. Striding fully
into the clearing, he looked at me and opened his
mouth to say something.
That's how he got ultramarine dye all over his teeth.
He blinked, and his eyes widened. Then widened
some more. Arms spread, he dropped his gaze to the
splotch of blue on his uniform. He stared at it. The
Skorr stared at it. They both stared at my mock
phaser, now firmly back in my hand.
I continued to sit rather sheepishly on my moss hill,
my lips pressed tight. Ali's fair in the Outlast, after all.
Vesco started to shake. Pure rage rumbled up
through his body. His fists balled up tight. Only the
stern rules of the Outlast kept him from tearing into
me.
Great golden wings drooped in despair as the Skorr
scientist drew its locator and went to stand beside the
rosy and rabid Vesco. Their last sight of the Outlast as
they were beamed up was little old me sitting on my
moss lump, quietly being the commander of the cham-
pion team.
I don't know. Three words a Vulcan hates. And I
hated them too when they referred to Sarda's life. That
friendship had been won on the Outlast, lost when I
found out about Sarda's talent for weaponry and un-
knowingly humiliated him by making it known to Star
Fleet, then finally won back when we had stood to-
gether against Admiral Rittenhouse's power-seeking
campaign. I fought to absorb the idea that our relation-
ship might have been cut off before its chance to grow.
I fought not to be jealous of Spock as I stood near him
on Rex's bridge. Spock had had years with Kirk to
cultivate their unique mutual understanding. It seemed
unfair that Sarda and I might be denied the same
chance.
118
For all the pain it brought me when I recalled the
Outlast, the privileges and honors and parties and
advantages it gave Sarda and me at Star Fleet Aca-
demy, the vividness of that episode brought with it a
glimmer of hope, a faint star of chance to brighten
Rex's dim bridge and sweeten my determination. If
Sarda was dead, I would make sure he hadn't died for
nothing.
If he was alive, I now knew how we could find him.
I moved a few steps forward, to where Mr. Spock
was tensely scanning the energy readouts of the fast-
fading transwarp flux. "Sir," I began.
He turned his head. "Commander?"
"About locating Mornay and the others..."
Sensing something even I, in my numbness, didn't
feel yet, Spock stood up and faced me. When he
spoke, I knew he understood.
"You have a plan?"
; 119
Chapter Seven'
"How fallible of me."
--The Squire of Gothos
"RAmo? You MEAN like... radio?"
"That's right, Scanner. Old CalTier waves. Go
ahead. Do it."
He gawked at me a moment longer, waiting for the
punch line no doubt, then faced his sensor equipment,
altogether dubious. He touched the console plain-
tively, and gave up before even beginning. Twisting
around, he accused, "You say 'do it' as though all it
takes is spittin' on a twig. I'm not even sure this kind
of equipment can be tuned down that far. You're
talking about a frequency that's lower than a hog in a
waller, you know that?"
I pointed at the console's transmitting panel and
said, "Try to aim them in the general vicinity of the
transwarp flux, and when we beam down, we can
continue to track them with tricorders." "But I'm tryin' to tell yawl--"
"Lieutenant Sandage," Spock interrupted fluidly,
gradually adjust the energy level according to the
correct bands, you may find carrier waves accessi-
ble."
"It'll all have to be manual, sir." Scanner sounded
apologetic. "Otherwise the computer'11 tell us it can't
be done."
"That's all right," I told him. "Just don't listen to it.
120
It's like flying an atmosphere craft and keeping altitude
with throttle instead of wing angle."
Spock nodded. "Correct. If those frequencies are
accessible with these sensors, it will be through energy
power rather than actual adjustment of the wave
bands."
Scanner threw up his hands. "Okay, okay. S'worth
a shot." He settled down to the tricky adjustments,
which had to be recalibrated every few seconds. "Do I
have any idea what I'm waiting for?"
"Response," I told him. "If Sarda's alive and in a
laboratory of some kind and picks up those waves,
he'll know who's sending them."
"That's a 1otta if's." Scanner sighed and wiggled his
fingers before hunching over the sensor console and
searching for the delicate balance of energy and wave
output. So low they were affected even by our move-
ments in the ship's orbit, those waves had to be chased
by hand and eye. A starship's sophisticated computer
sensors could have kept up with them, but Rex's
ragtag system could not do anything so refined. Scan-
ner sat the re for an exhausting two hours, painstak-
ingly sending low-gain waves toward the location of
the transwarp flux. As the time passed, I grew more
respectful of Scanner's talents with the sensor equip-
ment as he made adjustments with his fingers that were
even too tiny to show up on the screen. I soon gave up
trying to follow what he was doing and simply sat back
in amazement.
Below us turned the outskirts of Yelgor City. I was
dying to get there, to get things going, to find Sarda
and rescue him, or, if he was dead, to begin dealing
with his death. Kirk would be along soon, ready to
deal with Dr. Mornay, yet Spock and I hadn't even
been able to begin our mission of separating her from
Perren and Sarda. Time began to sit on me, smothering
and prickly with responsibility. I'd expected the ap-
pearance of Spock to siphon the weight of that respon-
121
sibility, but it hadn't. Less and less was I able to shift
away the pacts I made with myself when I accepted
the stone of command.
Frustration of this caliber, this feeling of sitting at
the core of a storm yet being completely impotent to
take action, drove me to confront Spock when other-
wise I never would have. He was still trying to pin-
point the transwarp flux origin, even though the waves
had long since dissipated, leaving only the faintest
traces of disruption in the fabric of space. Speaking in
a low voice so as not to bother Scanner, I began, "Mr.
Spock?"
"Yes, Commander?"
"Where is Captain Kirk, sir? Is he on his way? Do
we have any clues?"
Spock's honesty, both of word and expression, was
easy to appreciate. "He may be," he said, swiveling to
face me. "Even he was unsure of his moment-to-
moment plans. I know he was reticent to bring Enter-
prise to Argelius at the outset. He did obviously intend
to join us at some point, but he himself didn't know the
point. Beyond that, I cannot say."
I nodded, staring at the floor, contemplating.
"Thank you," I said slowly then. "That leaves me free
to move."
At this, McCoy elbowed his way between us. "How
does it do that?"
"It gives us two choices," I explained. "Either we
sit and wait for the captain to show up, or we take
action according to what we already know. The cap-
tain wanted us to do one of those, and it can't be the
first choice because he apparently didn't know when
he'd be able to get here. I don't think he'd expect us to
make a decision based on an unknown, so we'H act
Spock pursed his lips. "Logical."
From the passenger seat on the port side, Merete
122
said, "Then it's our move. But what move do we
make?"
She had to ask, didn't she? I licked my lips, hoping
some revelation would slide out. "Well . . . make
ourselves indigenous to the planet, I guess. Get down
there and start looking. We're not getting very far
sitting around in orbit. Sir, you said you have Argelian
costumes for us?"
"Yes, aboard my shuttle," Spock said. "Mr. San-
dage and I will remain aboard and continue broadcast-
ing the signal. In the meantime, I shall use connections
in the government of Argelius to arrange for a base
from which you'll be able to prowl the area. The
prefect is already advised of the situation. You should
have no trouble."
The Argelian prefect's idea of a base was a squalid
little alley cantina deep in Yelgor City's north quarter.
Spock had also arranged jobs for us, so no one would
wonder what three strangers were doing there. At least
we would have a central core to start from.
I led the way, feeling conspicuous, as Merete and
McCoy followed me through the streets according to
Spock's directions once we'd beamed down in an
unpopulated dock area. Through the narrow, foggy
streets we walked, flanked closely by scowling Gothic
buildings of wood and stone, passing natives and their
guests, the latter consisting of Star Fleet personnel on
shore leave, Klingons and Romulans likewise, and
even the occasional nonhumanoid, though those were
rare. Argelius simply wasn't conditioned to make itself
comfortable to a wide range of life forms. Of course,
even the serene atmosphere couldn't dissolve military
preju
dices, much less racial ones. The Fleet people
watched the Klingons and the Romulans, the Klingons
watched the Fleet people, and the Romulans watched
everybody. I felt everyone watching us. It might have
been my imagination. It might have been the veils and
123
the beaded curly-toed slippers. Or the plume pants. Or
the feathers. Purple and chartreuse just weren't my
colors. Somehow I got the feeling the clothing didn't
completely hide our foreignhess.
"I'll get Spock for this," McCoy vowed, glancing
over his shoulder at a passing group of Argelians who
had just given him the curious eye. Self-consciously he
tugged at the tight brocaded vest and cummerbund.-
Purple wasn't his color either, especially under the
bright orange fez. He looked like an animated piece of
tapestry as he adjusted the shoulder bag that carried
our tricorders.
"I hope we're not far from this cantina we're sup-
posed to go to," Merete said. "It's damp in the
streets."
"Don't complain," I told her, briefly scanning her
ankle-length blue robe. "You're the only one of us
who's not dressed up like a tropical bird." I clutched
the wad of flight suit and boots under my arm. Spock
had suggested I leave them behind, but I couldn't
reconcile the idea of staging a phaser raid on extortion-
ists while wearing feathers and veils.
"This is it," I said, turning down a loud alley and
into a low-slung doorway. Acrid and dim, the cantina
was crowded with laughing patrons. Sagging curtains
decorated each of five walls, then' colors and fringes
faded by smoke and time. The patrons squatted on
cushions or lay on long, low couches, munching con-
fections I wouldn't have touched with a field prod.
Squeaky music twanged from one corner, where a
clutch of musicians wavered to their own questionable
melody, and on a velvet podlure a young girl twisted
and spun in some kind of dance.
We were barely inside the door when a fat, surly-
looking man approached us, babbling in Argelian, and
grabbed my elbow to drag me farther into the cantina.
"What?" I blurted. "What do you want?"
He shook his head in disgruntlement and switched