A few minutes later, Kirk, Spock, and the assorted boxes materialized on the transporter platform. Kirk stepped down to greet Hunter, who had accompanied Sulu to the transporter room.
“You’ve met Mr. Sulu, I see,” Jim said. “This is Mr. Spock, my first officer.”
“Mr. Spock,” she said, nodding to him. “It’s good to meet you after hearing about you for so many years.”
“I am honored,” Spock said.
Kirk noticed Sulu moving slowly, and, he thought, rather reluctantly, toward the door.
“Mr. Sulu,” he said on impulse, “have you had dinner?”
“Dinner?” Sulu asked, surprised by the unusual question. “Captain, I’m afraid my system lost track of time about when we went into the sixth week around the singularity. I wouldn’t know what to call the last meal I had.”
Kirk chuckled. “I know how you feel. I’m going to show Captain Hunter around the ship, and then she and I and Mr. Spock are going to dine on the observation deck. Hunter, I want you to meet my officers. Mr. Sulu, would you see who else is on board? And would you join us yourself?”
“I’d love to,” Sulu said. “Thank you, Captain.”
When Kirk and Hunter and Spock had taken the new equipment and left the transporter room, Sulu hurried to the console and opened a channel to Aleph Prime.
“Sulu to Flynn, come in, Commander.”
The pause dragged on so long he began to worry; he was about to try calling again when Mandala’s voice came through.
“Flynn here.”
“Mandala—”
“Hikaru, is anybody else with you?” she said before he could tell her about the invitation.
“No. I’m alone.”
“Good. Beam us up, I’ve got two of my people with me.”
He heard the urgency in her voice: he tracked them quickly and energized.
He watched in astonishment as three disheveled figures appeared on the platforms. Mandala was accompanied by two of the more startling members of the Enterprise’s security force. Snnanagfashtalli looked rather like a bipedal leopard with a pelt of maroon, scarlet, and cream. Everyone called her Snarl, but never to her face. She appeared, crouching down on all fours, her ruby fangs exposed, maroon eyes dilated and reflecting the light like a search beam. Her ears lay flat back against her skull and she had raised her hackles from the back of her neck to the tip of her long spotted tail, now bristling out like a brush. She growled.
“We should go back. I had my eyes on a tender throat!”
Mandala laughed. Her hair had fallen down in a tangled mane. Her red hair, her brilliant green eyes, and her light brown skin made her look as much a lithe, wild, fierce animal as Snarl.
“That tender throat had the bad manners to call for Aleph security, and that’s why we got out of there.” Mandala looked happier than Hikaru had ever seen her since she had come on board the Enterprise .
The third member of the party, Jenniver Aristeides, stood staring down at the floor, her shoulders slumped. She was two hundred fifty centimeters tall, her bones were thick and dense, and she seemed to have more layers of muscle than humans possess. That was quite possible. She was human, but she had been genetically engineered to live on a high-gravity planet.
Mandala went to her, and Snarl rubbed against her on the other side.
“Come on, Jenniver,” Mandala said gently. She reached up to take the massive woman’s hand; she led
her from the platform. Jenniver looked up, and against her steel-gray skin her silver eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“I did not want to fight,” Jenniver said.
“I know. It wasn’t your fault. They’d’ve deserved it if you’d smashed their heads or if Snnanagfashtalli had ripped away a couple of their faces.”
“I have no right to get angry if someone says I am ugly.”
“I do,” Snarl said.
“But I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I am friendly with trouble.” Snarl’s voice was a purr.
“She won’t, will she? You won’t, Commander? Will the captain be mad? It was my fault.”
“Jenniver, stop it! It’s all right. I was there, I saw what happened. Go get some sleep and don’t worry. Particularly don’t worry about Kirk.”
Snarl took Jenniver’s hand. “Come, my friend.” They left the transporter room.
Mandala stretched and shook back her hair.
“What happened?” Hikaru asked.
“Some creeps decided it would be a lot of fun to humiliate Jenniver, Snarl took exception to what they said, and about that time I came along,” Mandala said. “Thanks for beaming us up.”
“You got in a fight.”
“Hikaru,” Mandala said, laughing, “do I look like I’ve been out for a quiet stroll?”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, and we didn’t damage the other parties too much, either. That takes skill, I want you to know.”
He looked after the two security officers. “I wouldn’t want to be them when Captain Kirk hears about this, he’s going to blow his stack.”
Mandala looked at him sharply, narrowing her violent green eyes. “If Kirk has any problems with the way I act, he can take that up with me.” Fury came so close to the surface in her that Hikaru hardly recognized her. “But if there’s any discipline to be handed out in Security, that’s my job.” Abruptly, her anger vanished and she laughed again. She bunched her loose hair up at the back of her neck, and let it fall again. Hikaru shut his eyes for a moment, at the brink of calling himself a fool for refusing her, however short a time they might have had.
“Oh, gods,” Mandala said. “I did need that.” She looked after Snarl and Jenniver, with a thoughtful expression. “You know, despite what she looks like Jenniver is very sweet-tempered. I think she’s even a little timid. I wonder if she’s happy in security?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah. Why did you call me, anyway? Are you finally off duty? Do you want to go back down to Aleph?”
“Have you had dinner?”
“No, I took my people out but I was waiting for you.”
“Good,” he said. “I have an even better offer.”
Jim Kirk would have preferred to welcome Hunter on board the Enterprise with a full officers’ reception; his own sense of fairness fought with his wish to show his ship and his people off at their best. Fairness finally won; he did not have any of the other Enterprise officers called back from Aleph. But when he and Hunter walked into the wide, deserted observation deck, darkened so the brilliant star-field glowed across the entire hundred eighty degrees of the port, he could not maintain his disappointment.
He and his old friend stood together looking out into the depths of stars, not talking, not needing to talk; but again, Jim thought of the things he wanted to say to Hunter, all the things he should say. He almost turned to her and spoke her name, her dream-name that only her family and he knew, the name he had not spoken since the last time they made love.
The door opened; Jim drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, feeling mixed regret and relief, as Spock came out onto the observation deck, followed by Mr. Sulu and Lieutenant Commander Flynn. The moment vanished.
“Mandala!” Hunter said. “I didn’t know you were on the Enterprise !”
“Hi, Hunter. Being here is kind of a surprise to me, too.”
“She says she wants my job,” Jim said, without thinking.
Color rose in Flynn’s face, but Hunter laughed, delighted.
“Then you’ll have to recommend her for a better one, if you want to keep this ship yourself.”
That was the first time Jim understood what Mandala Flynn had said to him, when he asked her about her career plans at the reception when she first came on board. She really had looked him straight in the eye and said, “I want your job.” She had been telling him she expected him to take her very seriously, however doubtful he might
