his officers. A sensation of anticipatory dismay began to build in him.
And for good reason. The voice, he saw now, was that of the Organian Elder, Ayelborne, who had been temporary Council head when Kor had attempted to occupy the planet.
“So,” the Klingon said stolidly, controlling his expression with the training of a lifetime. “I was told Organia was no more. It appears that my information was inaccurate.”
“At best, incomplete,” Ayelborne agreed, with his well-remembered perpetual, maddening smile. “And the war is over, Admiral Kor. Your ships still have power, but you will find that your weapons do not. I would advise you to make planetfall, with your entire fleet, as soon as possible.”
“My orders,” Kor said, “are to destroy the Enterprise. If my weapons are inoperative, I can nevertheless still ram — which will cause an even greater loss of life.”
“I know your orders,” Ayelborne said. “And I observe that your courage has a match in your stubbornness. But my advice is sound, for within three Standard Days your ships, too, will become inoperative, and if you are not grounded by then, the loss of life will be greater still — and all on your side. In view of the Klingon breach of the treaty, I am not obligated to give you this information, but I do so in the interests of minimizing subsequent violence. In fact, I would not be here at all, Admiral, did I not need from you the exact coordinates of your home system.”
“I will never — ” Kor began.
But Ayelborne had already vanished — and Kor knew with gray despair that, regardless of his will, his mind had already given the Organian the information he had wanted — and that Kor the ruthless, Kor the efficient, Kor the brave, Kor the loyal, was a traitor to his Empire.
The Grand Senate of the Klingon Empire, alarmed by the fragmentary reports of unprecedented disasters coming in from the field, was in session when the Organians arrived. There were three of them, but they appeared in the barbaric, gorgeously caparisoned Senate hall, a relic of a recorded ten thousand years of internecine warfare before the Klingons had achieved space flight and planetary unity, in their perhaps natural forms — balls of energy some six feet in diameter, like miniature suns — so that it was not possible to tell them apart or distinguish which ones they were (if indeed their identities had not been from the beginning as much of a convenient fiction as their assumed humanoid appearance). That they were Ayelberne, Claymare and Trefayne is only an assumption, based en merely human logic.
The swarthy faces of the Grand Senate were pale in the actinic glare emitted by the thought-creatures. When one of the Organians spoke, his voice echoed through the great chamber like the sound of many trumpets.
“You have broken the treaty, and been the direct cause of much death, misery and destruction,” he said. “In addition, you have committed violence against ourselves, which only the action of your adversaries stopped short of genocide.”
“Untrue,” the Senator in Chief said coldly. His voice was shaky, but he seemed otherwise to be in command of himself — no mean feat under these circumstances. “Our planetary thought-shield was no more than a method of confinement, to prevent you from meddling further in our Imperial affairs.”
“Your intentions do not alter the facts,” the Organian said. “You understood only ill the nature of your own weapon, and its effects upon us hardly at all. Five years under that screen — and we see in your minds that you never intended to let us out, and indeed dared not — would have destroyed us utterly. Putting such a screen around the Earth, as we see you also planned to do, would have destroyed humanity as well, and far more quickly. Such carelessness compounds your crime, rather than mitigating it.”
“We defy you,” the Senator in Chief said.
“That will avail you nothing. However, we are not vindictive; our justice is not based on vengeance. We simply observe that you cannot be trusted to keep treaties, even those backed by humane coercion. We therefore interdict your planets, and all your colony worlds, from space flight for a thousand years.”
The hall burst into a rear of pretest and rage, but the Organian’s voice soared above it easily.
“After a millennium back in your playpen,” he said, “you may emerge as fit to share a civilized galaxy. I say may. It is entirely up to you. And so, farewell, Klingons — and the Klingon Empire.”
Chapter Fifteen — “YOU MAY BE RIGHT”
From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4205.5:
It has taken a good many hours, and the participation of all department heads, to prepare a comprehensive — and what is more important, comprehensible — report of this entire imbroglio. And even after the report was filed, there were a number of additional questions from Earth, which is hardly surprising. However, we were able to answer them, and our role in freeing Organia has won us official commendations from Starfleet Command, which I have passed on to all hands.
There remain some additional questions which Command has not asked us, which is probably just as well, for I am far from certain that we know the answers — or ever will know them.
Kirk paused in his dictation and Spock, who had been monitoring the recording of the Log entry into the computer, turned from his station toward the command chair.
“May I ask, Captain, what these questions are? It is possible that I could be of assistance.”
“I think perhaps you could, Mr. Spock.” Kirk put the hand microphone back into its clip on the control board. “Some of them, in fact, concern you — which is why I was hesitating about logging them.”
“Why should you, Captain?”
“Because they are more or less personal, and in addition, not essential for Starfleet Command’s understanding of the affair. You needn’t answer them yet if you’d prefer not to.”
“I could make no judgment of that,” the first officer said, “without knowing what the questions are.”
“Obviously. Well, then…While we still had the replicate Spock on board, you were absolutely adamant about refusing to cooperate with him, and upon the need for his destruction. Yet at the same time you refused to explain the source of your adamancy. This was a considerable danger to you personally, because both attitudes were so unlike you that — as I told Dr. McCoy at the time — they caused me to wonder if you were the replicate. In fact, for a while I was nearly convinced that you were.”
“I see,” Spock said. “I have no objection to explaining that, Captain — not now. You are aware, of course, that because of my Vulcan inheritance, I have certain modest telepathic gifts.”
“Aware? Great heavens, man, they’ve saved our lives more than once; how could I forget that?”
“My question was rhetorical,” Spock said. “You are doubtless aware also that true telepaths are exceedingly rare in the universe, which is most fortunate for us, for as adversaries they can be exceedingly formidable.”
While he spoke, McCoy and Scott came onto the bridge; Sulu and Uhura were of course already there. Kirk looked inquiringly at Spock, but the first officer showed no sign that he found the addition to the audience at all objectionable.
“They can indeed,” Kirk said, “if our experience with the Melkotians was a fair sample.”
“Yes, or the Klingons’ with the Organians. But for the purposes of the present discussion, it is the rarity of the ability that is of interest. It has never been adequately explained. One hypothesis is that many humans may be telepathic at birth, but that the ability burns out almost immediately under the influx of new experience, particularly the burden of pain of other creatures around them.”
“It blows its fuse,” Scott suggested.
“Something like that,” Spock agreed. “Another hypothesis is that for any type of mind which depends upon an actual, physical brain for its functioning — as opposed, say, to energy creatures like the Organians, or mixed types like the Melkotians — the forces involved are too weak to make transmission possible, though extreme stress may sometimes help — except, perhaps, between two brains whose makeup is nearly identical as in the case of twins. There are many instances recorded in Earth history of apparent telepathic links between monozygotic twins, but fewer of such links between heterozygotic twins, who are born together but are genetically different.”
“I begin to see,” McCoy said. “The replicate’s brain was even more like your own than an identical twin’s could be — and you had a telepathic rapport with him?”
“Yes and no,” Spock said. “Bear in mind that although his brain was essentially mine, its biases were
