emotional depression, that might be a product of being under the thought-screen. If so, it was unexpectedly bearable, though decidedly unpleasant.
Kirk confirmed planetfall with Lieutenant Uhura, then turned to his companions. “It could have been worse,” he said in a low voice. “In fact, I think I feel a little more chipper down here than I did when we were aloft, though I can’t be sure. What are your reactions, gentlemen?”
“Gloom and doom,” Scott said in his most Caledonian tone. He too was unconsciously almost whispering. “But you’re right, Captain, it’s nae sa bad as I feared. But which way do we go frae here? There’s nary a landmark t’be seen from hell to breakfast — and my tricorder reports nothing at all in the way of electromagnetic activity. Stone-cold dead it all is.”
Spock Two slowly scanned the endless stretches of. worn and crushed stone with his own tricorder.
“Nothing registers,” he agreed. “But on our first visit, we found the Council chambers about two point two kilometers north-north-west of our present position. Since there is no visible reason to prefer any other heading, I suggest that we proceed in that direction, and see whether the Organians have left any marker or other clue to their whereabouts.”
“Whereabouts would a thought hide, anyhow?” Scott said. “But ‘tis doubtless as good as any other course.”
Kirk nodded, and took a step forward — and was instantly locked in the grip of nightmare.
The rocky desert rippled and flowed as though it were only a reflection on the surface of a disturbed pool, and then dissolved completely. In its place, there stood before Kirk a monstrous object, dull green in colour but with a lustrous surface, whose exact nature he found impossible to identify. It was at least as big as an Indian elephant and just as obviously alive, but he could not even be sure whether it was animal or vegetable. It had no head, and seemed to consist entirely of thick, bulbous tentacles — or shoots — which had been stuck onto each other at random, and which flexed and groped feebly. One portion of the thing’s haphazard anatomy was supported by a wooden crutch, a device Kirk had seen only once before in his life, and that in a museum.
The thing did not look dangerous — only, somehow, faintly obscene — but Kirk drew his phaser anyhow, on general principles. At the same moment, its uncertain movements dislodged the anomalous crutch, and the whole wretched construction collapsed into a slowly writhing puddle, like a potfull of broad-bean pods which had been simmered too long.
Behind it, Kirk now saw, stretched a long length of shell-littered, white-sanded beach, sweeping into the distance to a blue sea and a low line of chalk cliffs which blended into a beautifully blue sky. A sun shone brightly, and the temperature had become positively Mediterranean. There was no one else around him at all, unless he counted the fallen monster and a few far wheeling white specks in the sky which might have been gulls.
“Mr. Spock!” he shouted. “Scotty!”
Two tentacles thrust up from the dull green mass, thickened, grew two side tentacles, and then gourdlike knobs at their ends. Strange markings, almost like faces, grimaced along the surfaces of the gourds. Was the thing about to go to seed?
But simultaneously, the sunlight dimmed and went out. The landscape turned colorless. Everything but the two tentacles faded into a thick gray limbo.
The tentacles turned into Spock Two and Scott.
“Where were you?” Kirk demanded. “Did you see what I saw?”
“I doubt it,” Spock Two said. “Tell us what you saw, Captain.”
“I was on something that looked a lot like the southern seacoast of Spain. There was a huge biological sort of object in front of me, and I was just wondering whether or not to shoot it when I called your names. It turned into you two and the rest of the scene washed out.”
“Any emotional impression, Captain?”
“Yes, now that I come to think of it. There was an underlying feeling that something terrible was about to happen, though I couldn’t specify what. Nightmarish. What about you, Scotty?”
“I dinna see any monsters,” Scott said. “Everything around me suddenly turned into lines, black on white. It was a wirin’ diagram, and sair ancient, too, for there were symbols for thermionic valves — vacuum tubes — in it. An’ I was plugged into it, for I couldna move, an’ I had the feelin’ that if anybody turned up the gain I’d blow out. I just realized that all of the valve symbols were caricatures of faces I knew, when I heard you callin’ my name, Captain, and hey presto, here I was back — wherever this may be.”
“I saw no change at all, nor did either of you disappear,” Spock Two said. “You simply stopped walking, and you, Captain, drew your phaser and called out. Obviously this is an effect of the screen around the planet, and I am resisting it better than you are, thus far, as we thought might happen. Tell me, Captain, were you ever on the southern seacoast of Spain?”
“Yes, once, on holiday from the Academy.”
“And Mr. Scott was imprisoned in a student or antiquarian wiring diagram. Apparently we can expect these hallucinations to be projections of our own early experience; knowing this may be of some help to us in coping with them.”
The mist lifted abruptly, revealing the same rock-tumble into which they had first materialized.
“Have we made any progress?” Kirk asked.
Spock Two checked his tricorder. “Perhaps five or six meters, though I doubt that any of us has actually walked that far.”
“Then let’s move on. At this rate we’ve got a long trek ahead.”
But as he stepped forward again, the nightmare returned…
…with an utterly appalling clamor. He was surrounded by a jungle of primitive machinery. Trip hammers pounded away insanely at nothing; rocker arms squealed as if their fulcrums were beds of rust; plumes of steam shot up into the hot, oil-reeking air with scrannel shrieks; great gears clashed, and great wheels turned with ponderous groans; leather belts slapped and clicked; eccentrics scraped in their slots; a thousand spinning shafts whined up and down the scale, a thousand tappets raffled in as many tempos, and somewhere a piece of armor plate seemed to be being beaten out into what eventually would be thin foil. Over it all arched a leaden roof in which every sound was doubled and redoubled, like the ultimate metaphor for an apocalyptic headache.
And once more there was no other human being in sight — nor, this time, any sign of life at all.
Kirk found it impossible to imagine what part of his experience this mechanical hell could have been drawn from, and the din made coherant thought out of the question; it was not only literally, physically deafening, but very near the lethal level. All he could manage to do was take another step forward…
Splash!
He was swimming for his life in a freezing black sea, in the ghastly, flickering light of a night thunderstorm. Great combers lifted and dropped him sickeningly, and the howling air, when he could get any at all, stank peculiarly of a mixture of seaweed, formaldehyde and coffee. Yet despite the coldness of the water, he felt hot inside his uniform, almost sweaty.
The sense of unreality was very strong, and after a moment he recognized where he was: in a delirium he had had during a bout of Vegan rickettsial fever on his first training assignment. The odor was that of the medicine he had had to take, a local concoction which had been all the colonists had had to offer. Still, it had done the trick.
As the next wave heaved him up, he heard through the thunder an ominous booming sound: breakers, and not far away, either, pounding against rock. Illusion or no illusion, Kirk doubted that he could live through that. Yet clearly, no amount of physical motion was going to get him out of this one; he was already swimming as hard as he could. How…
…it had done the trick.
Holding his breath, Kirk gulped down a mouthful of the bitter waters. At once, his feet touched bottom; and a moment later, dry as a stick, he was standing in even gray light amidst the rock-tumble.
He was still alone, however; and calling produced no response. He took out his communicator. It too was quite dry, though that had not been a major worry anyhow; it was completely waterproof, and, for that matter, gas-tight.
“Mr. Spock. Mr. Scott. Come in, please.”
No answer.
“Kirk to Enterprise.”
