Instantly the rain stopped, a glaringly hot sun came out, and the water sank without a trace into the sands of an endless white desert. Spock One was unharmed, but Kirk realized at once, from years of experience at playing chess with the original, that the replicate had lost ground; he had made a move which was purely defensive, and did not at the same time threaten his opponent.
Spock One must have realized it at the same time, for immediately an immense cyclone dropped its funnel out of the sky and came twisting and roaring across the sands, not at Spock Two, but at Kirk. It was a shrewd stroke, for Spock Two could not defend the Captain without dangerously exposing himself.
By now, Kirk thought he understood at least some of the rules of the game. Everything the two combatants had done thus far had been, essentially, to change the environment. Evidently their abilities to make changes in their own physical structures, or to provide themselves with defensive equipment, were relatively limited. But Kirk’s mind, though entirely without the telepathic/hypnotic skills of the Vulcan hybrids, was also being acted upon by the screen; it was at least possible that he could produce a reaction, though certainly not an equal and opposite one; this was not a Newtonian situation.
He concentrated on pushing back the cyclone. Slowly, slowly it came to a halt, spinning and howling exactly between the two Spocks, who had not narrowed the distance between them which had widened during the flood. Then, gradually still, it squatted down like a great beast and began to broaden, and in a few moments had engulfed them both.
Kirk had a brief glimpse of Spock One soaring aloft in a widening circle, seemingly borne upon bats’ wings, before the rim of the funnel reached him too; and then everything was obliterated by the maelstrom. For what seemed like years, he was aware of nothing but the roar, the scorch, the sting of the madly driven sand.
Gradually, however, the sound began to fade, not as though it were actually becoming less noisy, but as though it were instead retreating into the distance. After a long while, nothing was left of it but a reminiscent ringing in Kirk’s ears, the air had cleared, and he was standing in the rock-tumble — with Spock and Scott beside him.
Scott looked dazed; Spock, tranquil. Kirk shot a quick glance at the first officer’s fingers. No ring. That was almost certainly diagnostic; since Spock One had not thought to remove it when he had had the upper hand, he surely hadn’t had time to think of it during the subsequent wild scramble of combat and of pseudo events.
“Mr. Spock! What happened? Where is he?”
“Dead,” Spock said. “I used his own tornado illusion to drive him into the thought-shield. He was a creation of the screen to begin with, and knew he could not survive a second exposure. I was seriously affected myself, but as you see, I escaped. I could not have prevailed, though, Captain, had you not intervened just when you did.”
“Well, that’s good — but I still don’t understand how you did it. Surely no tornado could reach as far as the screen. The atmosphere itself doesn’t.”
“No, Captain, but you must understand that nothing you have seen in the past hour or so actually happened. In fact, probably many of the events you witnessed looked quite different to me. It was a combat of illusions — and in the end, the replicate believed he had been driven into the screen. That was sufficient.”
Kirk frowned. “Can a man be destroyed by nothing but a belief?”
“It has happened before, many times, Captain,” Spock said gravely, “and doubtless will again.”
“That’s true,” Kirk said thoughtfully. “Well, finis opus coronat, as my Latin professor used to say when he handed out the final exams. Mr. Scott?”
“Eh?” the engineering officer said, starting. “Oh. Here. Och, Captain, ye wouldna credit…”
“Yes I would, I assure you, but I don’t want to hear your story just yet. We’ve got to get moving. The question still is — where?”
“To the Hall of the Council of Elders,” Spock said. “And, if I am not mistaken, there it is.”
Chapter Thirteen — THE STEEL CAVE
From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4201.6:
My suspicions, unfortunately, were correct; we are being herded into a trap. The sensors indicate a mass of heavy ships ahead of us, dispersed hemispherically with the open end of the cup toward us, and our pursuers are now deploying to form the other half of the sphere. We shall eventually be at its center, where conditions are obviously going to be a little uncomfortable at best.
We are on full battle alert. By the time the Klingons manage to destroy the Enterprise, they are going to wish that they had decided to let us quietly through, instead. It will leave a proud record for Captain Kirk, if he is still alive, to bring to his next command. I shall drop the Log by buoy just before the engagement.
It was true; the village was around them, not ruined now, but just as Kirk had remembered it, even to the people — and even to their complete lack of curiosity about the three uniformed starship officers, which had once been so puzzling. Kirk knew now that all this too was an illusion, for the Organians actually had no bodies at all, and no need of dwelling; but since it was — in contrast to the hallucinations that had preceded it — one generated by the Organians themselves, it was decidedly reassuring.
“They’re still alive, and still here, Mr. Spock.”
“So it would appear, Captain. Shall we proceed?”
“By all means.”
They entered the building which had once been designated to them as the meeting hall of the temporary Council of Elders — just how temporary (for the Organians had no rulers and no need of any) they had then had no idea. It, too, was as it had been before. The Council room proper had whitewashed stone wall, decorated with only a single tapestry and that not of the best, and was furnished with a single long, rude wooden table and even cruder chairs.
The putative Elders were there, an even dozen of them. They were modestly robed, white-bearded, benign, almost caricatures of paternal god-figures, smiling their eternal smiles — but were their smiles a little dimmed this time? Among them were three whom Kirk recognized at once.
“Councilor Ayelborne,” he said formally. “And Councilors Claymare and Trefayne. We are pleased to see you again, both personally and on behalf of our Federation. Do you remember me, by any chance?”
“Of course, Captain Kirk,” Ayelborne said, extending his hand. “And your non-terrestrial friend Mr. Spock as well. But we have not previously had the pleasure of meeting your second companion.”
“This is Mr. Scott, my engineering officer, who is really the main reason we are here, both for our sakes and yours. But first, if you please, sir, will you tell me just how much you know about the present situation, both on Organia and elsewhere?”
Claymare’s smile was now definitely shadowed.
“Surprisingly little,” he admitted. “Without warning, we found our world surrounded by a force-field of novel properties which not only prevented us from leaving, but which had most distressing effects upon our very thought processes. Until very recently, we also did not know by whose agency this had been done, or for what purpose, though of course we had several plausible hypotheses.
“Then an equally mysterious living entity somehow penetrated the screen and landed on our planet in a small spacecraft. We at first took him to be your Mr. Spock here, but we quickly discovered that he was instead an order of organic being quite unknown to us previously. Even his neural currents flowed backward; we could neither understand their import, nor decide what steps we ought to take about his presence.
“Finally, you three appeared, and we were able to determine from your thoughts that you knew what had happened, and that you had come to be of help. But the malignant creature who had arrived in the spacecraft had a mind as powerful as Mr. Spock’s — truly remarkable for an entity dependent upon a substrate of matter — and one which, furthermore, seemed to work well with the effects of the thought-shield, whereas ours were much impeded by them. We sent out impulses which we hoped would guide you to us, but until that creature was eliminated — which you have now managed to do, and for which we congratulate you — your course was necessarily somewhat erratic.”