A scare-thing, all crooked teeth and bulging eyes, grew out of the floor in front of Lucien. It blended back into the cloud as Uhura screamed.
"SO THE PEOPLE OF EARTH WOULD SPREAD THEIR EVILS EVEN UNTO OUR HOME? WE ARE READY THIS TIME FOR HUMAN PERFIDY. THIS TIME IT IS THE HUMANS WHO SHALL SUFFER . . . FOR HERE OUR POWER IS ABSOLUTE."
"THE HUMANS . . . AND YOU, LUCIEN," and the voice mocked the goat-man, "SHALL BE THE ONES TO PAY." It rose to a bansheelike wail on the last syllable, and stopped.
There was a powerful wrench, a jerk, and everyone had to grab quickly at something fixed to keep from being thrown to the deck. Kirk's gaze went immediately to the viewscreen.
The glowing gray cloud that had blocked them off from the planet had vanished. The Enterprise was dropping like a rock toward the angry surface below. It seemed certain they were going to smash to splinters on the packed sands, but the starship suddenly slowed, touched the ground awkwardly. A howling storm of rainbow-colored rain began to pour into the ship.
It was followed by fiery hailstones that rained down upon them as though the hull didn't exist. Everyone was knocked to the floor, including Lucien.
"Keep calm!" Kirk yelled dazedly, above the rattle of strangely soft hailstones.
An ominous rumbling sounded, and the Enterprise started to shake . . . slowly at first, then rapidly, until Kirk felt like an ingredient in a cake mix.
A shattering crack sounded, and the Enterprise split neatly down the middle, like a grape. Then the two halves of the starship started to change shape, to break up as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had broken up at their first touch-down on Megas-tu. Smaller and smaller pieces detached and broke away, floating off into the screaming winds.
But this time the reforming was different. The floating bits of Enterprise regrouped to form, not the starship, but buildings—buildings lining a street that looked much like an old terran village. Very old.
"Seventeenth century," mumbled Kirk as he rematerialized. He felt himself caught in an awkward bent-over position, his hands fixed up by his ears. He was fixed, he saw, in an ancient wooden device. Looking to his left, right, and across the street, he saw the entire crew of the Enterprise, set into similar stocks.
Row on row of the T-post structures faded into distant haze. Scott was trapped close by, as were Spock, McCoy, and Lucien. Kirk seemed to be at one end of the long line of imprisoned crew.
He turned his head to the right. There was a crudely engraved sign set in the ground beside a gnarled old oak.
SALEM, MASS., the sign said. It keyed no response in Kirk.
The world shimmered and dissolved again. Once more Kirk felt himself pulled lazily apart, reformed. Town and crew vanished. Dust walls formed around him, mortared with flickering bursts of energy.
Higher and higher the walls rose, solidifying into a huge, aged meeting hall, obviously terran in origin. But the scale was wrong. The room was big . . . much too big.
He was still bound in the wooden stocks, but a bench had been produced to sit on. He looked around once more and found Spock staring back at him.
"I know, Mr. Spock. Sixteenth-or-seventeenth-century terran architecture, I'd guess—with the size all out of proportion."
Spock tried to turn his head toward the Captain. "I saw the sign, also. If I recall your history correctly, Salem was a small town on the east coast of the North American continent. As for the date, I should guess approximately 1691."
" 'Approximately'?" echoed Kirk. "Why 1691?"
The first officer didn't reply. Instead, he concentrated on the seemingly endless tiers of seats facing them, seats that extended back and up to absurd distances. Perspective as well as proportion seemed distorted here.
The seats were beginning to fill with men and women, all clad in costumes of the same period as the hall.
Since everyone in the stocks was a member of the ship's crew, excepting Lucien, both Kirk and Spock concluded quickly that those filling the endless balcony were the Megans themselves. The reason for taking on human shape seemed obvious. The reason for the particular period costumes did not.
There were hundreds, then thousands of them, and still they poured in, becoming tiny with increasing distance. Even so, Kirk found he could distinguish those in the furthest rows with perfect clarity. It made no sense—but he was beginning to accept such things as normal for Megas-tu.
The arrivals were talking solemnly among themselves. But when the last, uppermost seat had been filled, the buzz of low conversation died as if on signal.
A pause, and then a brilliant flare of light in the center of the room, before the first stocks. A last Megan appeared there, in human form. A tall, glowering man, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat.
The man surveyed the crew of the Enterprise, pinioned tightly in their wooden restraints, then turned to the watching Megans. His voice was deep, powerful . . . and familiar.
It was the voice that had erupted on the bridge only moments . . . days, years . . . before.
"WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY, GOOD CITIZENS, TO SEE JUSTICE DONE. YOU MUST BE THE JUDGES. THESE . . ." and he indicated those in the stocks, "ARE THE DEFENDANTS.
"AS REPRESENTATIVES OF THE VILEST SPECIES IN THE UNIVERSE . . . TRECHEROUS HUMANITY . . . THEY ARE TO BE JUDGED." He moved forward and stopped to stare grimly down at Lucien. ". . . AND THOSE WHO WOULD AID THEM." He turned away.
"AS SPECIALIST IN THE ETHICS OF MAGIC, I HAVE BEEN APPOINTED PROSECUTOR HERE." He started a complicated gesture, but Kirk, fighting with the unyielding wood, interrupted.
"If this is a trial, I think we've got the right to know what you're already so convinced we've done."
The tall prosecutor, who could have obliterated Kirk in a burst of yellow flame, nodded in agreement. He pointed toward Lucien.
"HAS THIS ONE NOT TOLD YOU HOW WE VISITED EARTH, AND WHAT WAS DONE TO US THERE?"
"Lucien said only that you came as wise men, wizards who . . ."
The Prosecutor leaned forward, shaking an angry fist.
"THEN HEAR THIS. ONCE, UPON YOUR WORLD, I WAS KNOWN AS ASMODEUS, WHO SEES ALL. GAZE UPON MY COUNTENANCE, SO THAT YOU, TOO, MAY KNOW THE TRUTH."
And the Prosecutor's face started to come apart. It expanded, flattened, became a swirling rectangular screen. A picture formed in it, the picture of the insane galaxy that roiled around Megas-tu.
Colors died to black, changed, and the view turned to one of breathtakingly normal space—space-black flecked with the brilliant points of distant stars.
Changed again, to a picture of Earth. Moved in close, closer. The Prosecutor spoke as various sequences appeared and played themselves out on the facial screen.
The first scenes depicted Megans in human guise engaged in numerous daily activities—as witches, sorcerers, and warlocks.
"WE CAME TO YOUR WORLD AS FRIENDS," the Prosecutor's voice boomed, "BUT WHEREVER WE WENT, THE STORY INVARIABLY HAD THE SAME ENDING. SOME HUMANS WOULD ATTEMPT TO USE US TO GAIN POWER, TO SERVE THEIR OWN GREED AND LUST. AND IN OUR IGNORANCE OF HUMAN WAYS, WE SOMETIMES FELL PARTY TO THESE SUBTLE INIQUITIES.
"WHEN WE DISCOVERED SUCH VENALITY AND REFUSED TO SERVE SUCH MEN, THEY TURNED THE PEOPLE AGAINST US, TAUGHT THE COMMON FOLK TO FEAR AND HATE US.
"SINCE OUR POWER IN YOUR UNIVERSE IS LIMITED, WE WERE VULNERABLE." The view changed to show Megans being driven from towns by the fearful populace, spat upon and reviled.
"THEY CALLED US DEVILS, DEMONS, CONJURERS!" the voice declaimed, rising to a shout. As it did so, the facial screen shattered into a thousand flickering particles, which faded back to nothingness.
The face of the Prosecutor reappeared.
"THOSE OF US WHO SURVIVED THESE EARLY PURGES," he continued, "DECIDED TO MAKE ONE FINAL ATTEMPT TO SECURE A HELPING COLONY ON YOUR WORLD. THEY GATHERED IN THE SMALL TOWN OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS.
"THERE, THOSE OF US WHO WERE LEFT DISCOVERED THAT IN TRYING TO LEARN YOUR WAYS, TO BLEND IN WITH YOU, WE HAD FORGOTTEN MUCH KNOWLEDGE. EVEN SO, WE TRIED TO HELP YOU IN THIS NEWLY SETT
LED LAND, BUT . . ."
"You made mistakes," guessed Spock.
"IT IS TRUE THERE WERE OCCASIONS WHEN WE USED OUR POWERS AWKWARDLY, AND MANY OF US SUFFERED AS A RESULT OF IT. SOME OF US . . . BURNED FOR IT. BURNED! AS WITCHES."
Kirk nodded sadly. The significance of Salem had come back to him.
"WE GATHERED THE SURVIVORS OF OUR SETTLEMENT OUTSIDE THE TOWN, AND TRIED TO RECALL ENOUGH MEGAN KNOWLEDGE TO RETURN TO OUR OWN UNIVERSE, TO LEAVE YOUR HELLISH WORLD. TO RETURN TO SAFETY, COMFORT, REASON . . ."
"And loneliness," put in Lucien, "and fear, and . . ."
"SHOULD WE NOT FEAR THE EARTHLINGS?" the Prosecutor insisted, "SHOULD WE NOT FEAR THE CRUELTY OF SUCH MINDLESS PRIMITIVES? CONSIDER THE WEAPONS THEY HAVE MASTERED, AND MISUSED, SINCE WE LEFT. NEVER SINCE HAVE WE ATTEMPTED TO EXPLORE YOUR UNIVERSE," he informed them, directing his attention to Kirk and Spock.
"NEVER SINCE HAVE WE SOUGHT OUTSIDE COMPANIONSHIP, TO IMPOSE OUR HELP ON THOSE WHOSE CREEDS ARE SUPERSTITION, GREED, AND TERROR. YET, DESPITE OUR CAUTION, YOU HAVE COME HERE, TO OUR VERY HOME."
"If one Federation ship can find us, so can others," Lucien whispered to Kirk. "That is what they fear."
The Prosecutor appeared to lose some of his antagonism. In fact, his thunder now held a surprising note of sadness.
"WE DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS, CAPTAIN KIRK. WE DO NOT WANT TO HARM YOU. THE NATURE OF OUR UNIVERSE IS ONE OF CONSTANT CHANGE, EVERYTHING IS TRANSITORY. SO ARE OUR GRUDGES. WE HAVE NEVER HAD TO HURT ANYONE BEFORE.
"IF THERE WERE SOME TRUE REASON NOT TO . . ." He turned, gazed back at the uncounted thousands who filled the distorted tiers of the hall, "WHO WILL SPEAK IN DEFENSE OF MANKIND? WHO?"
A slight whisper of bodies shifting on wooden seats was the only reply.
A familiar voice on Kirk's left broke the silence. "I will, Asmodeus. I am only partly of Earth." The Prosecutor moved near, seemed to inspect Spock.
" 'TIS TRUE ENOUGH. YOU ARE DIFFERENT. IF NONE OBJECT . . ." He looked back at the crowd. Still-silence still.
"THE COURT WILL THEN HEAR A DEFENSE." A casual gesture and Spock's stocks became so much sawdust.
The first officer stumbled on cramped legs at the sudden disappearance of the bonds. Then he straightened, rubbing at ankles and wrists.
"I have had no time to prepare a formal defense. I therefore request the court recess until . . ."
"RECESSS DENIEDDDD . . ." came a haunting moan from the gallery.
Spock didn't let any distress he may have felt at this unanimous rejection show. "I shall have to make do with the testimony of witnesses, then." The Prosecutor showed no inclination to offer any aid.
"I call Lucien as my first witness."
A second flare of released energy and Luden's stocks, too, vanished. Spock moved to stand in front of him. "Lucien, of all the Megans, you alone do not seem to fear or hate humans. On the contrary, you appear to like them very much. Why?"
"Because I'm a glutton for punishment," the goat-man replied, grinning. "No, this is not the time for levity, I suppose. I will try to be serious, though it's hard for me." He considered thoughtfully.
"I expect it's because they're so much like me, or I like them. Always questions to be answered! Like a child who continually questions his father, only to be asked, 'must there always be a reason for everything?' They are like that rare child who stares defiantly back up and says, 'yes!'
"I, too, am like that. And they have minds that never cease ranging outward, always seeking, striving to expand their store of knowledge . . . for knowledge's sake and not always for greed, as has been implied.
"It is these things that make them unique and endears them to me. But with us, it is different Every Megan is always alone, always existing self-confident, assured, in a singular sphere of certainty, Whereas humans, for all their vaunted individuality, are a true gregarious society. It seems to be something I need, this group association."
He started to pace back and forth before the first row of benches, glancing occasionally upward and back into the higher balconies.
"As you know, I was among the first to go among them. In Mesopotamia, Ur, Babylonia, Greece. In the river valleys of the Hwang and the Indus, I saw these bonds developing between them. An easy companionship that Megas-tu has never known and, sadly, can never know.
"I meant to help and change them, and ended by having them change me." He turned to look at Spock. "That's why I adopted you when you arrived. It was another chance to recover something I'd . . . lost."
"Thank you, Lucien," said a satisfied Spock. "One other witness, if you please. Captain James T. Kirk."
Flare-dissolve, and Kirk's stocks became a comfortable wooden chair.
"Tell the court, Captain. Would you say that humans have not changed since the time of Salem?"
Kirk was startled at how easily the words came, how relaxed he was, considering the gravity of the situation. "I think that we've been trying to, Spock. A little at a time.
"The certain virtues of humanity, which Lucien has elaborated on so flatteringly, go hand in hand with our faults—greed, envy, fear. We've learned a great deal about ourselves in the centuries since the witch trials. We try to understand and respect each other, no matter what a man's peculiarities. We try to understand and respect all life forms.
"And the human race has adopted a motto, a standard that at the time of Salem was only a dream in the minds of a few enlightened men." His own voice rose.
"KNOWLEDGE IS FREEDOM."
"Indeed, Captain," Spock agreed, speaking quietly into the resultant silence. "Could you elaborate on these new standards of man?"
Kirk stood, faced the endless gallery. "The records of the Enterprise are open for your inspection, citizens of Megas-tu. We couldn't hide them from you or alter them now even if we wished to.
"All the history of Earth and its Federation of worlds is at your disposal. Look at it . . . look at general order number one: No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life form or society, whether advanced or primitive!
"Even requests for aid by dying primitives are often frowned upon, in the belief that interference from outside often does more harm than good. Compare that with the Earth you once knew. And you may also compare—"
"ENOUGH!" The voice of the Megan Prosecutor rumbled through the pastel pit of the hall. A sparkling, whirling cloud formed in the center of the gallery, breaking up into tiny cloud-fragments. These shrank to become the entire records section of the Enterprise.
It hovered there . . . tapes, computer inserts, kilometers of microfilm. A gust of wind rose and scattered the knowledge like leaves across the thousands of benches, tumbling in and around the intent Megans.
"HERE IS YOUR HISTORY, HERE ARE YOUR RECORDS . . . EXHIBIT A FOR THE DEFENSE!" The Prosecutor gestured yet again. The blowing tapes and cassettes vanished once more.
"YOU HAVE HEARD AND YOU HAVE SEEN AND YOU KNOW," the Prosecutor told the vast chamber, "CITIZENS . . . HOW DECIDE YOU?" He went silent, his attitude one of intense concentration.
Kirk and Spock and the others also strained to hear, but it was as still as the inside of a cave. Whatever discussion was taking place could not be detected by mere human senses.
Oddly, Kirk found himself musing on the fact, not that his life and the lives of his crew lay in the balance, but that he had not had anything to eat since Lucien's picnic. He was getting hungry.
The concerns of the human body are not philosophical in nature.
"A DECISION HAS BEEN MADE, CAPTAIN JAMES KIRK." He forgot about food and leaned forward.
"IT IS YOUR ASTROPHYSICS SECTION AND NOT THE HISTORICAL ONE THAT IS THE DECIDING FACTOR. ACCORDING TO THOSE RECORDS, YOUR ENTRY HERE TRULY WAS AN ACCIDENT OF EXPLORATION—AND ONE UNLIKELY TO BE SAFELY DUPLICATED.
"WITH THAT IN MIND, ADDED TO THE NEW EVIDENCE IN FAVOR OF MAN WHICH HAS BEEN PRESENTED, IT WOULD SEEM THAT WE OF MEGAS-TU ARE SAFE." He paused and his expression grew dark—literally.
"BUT LUCIEN MUST BE PUNIS
HED! FOR HIS BETRAYAL OF HIS PEOPLE AND THE DANGER HE HAS EXPOSED US TO. HE WHO WISHES COMPANIONSHIP SHALL BE CONFINED IN LIMBO FOR ALL ETERNITY!"
At those fateful final words a bubble of transparent red suddenly enveloped the goat-man. It pulsed softly with evidence of great power held under careful control. Without thinking, Kirk left his chair and rushed to the bubble's side.
"No—you can't. To isolate someone like Lucien—that's worse than sentencing him to death." The voice of the Prosecutor rose in volume and shrillness.
"DO YOU KNOW WHOM YOU DEFEND? DO YOU KNOW WHOSE COMFORT YOU SEEK? HE HAS TOLD YOU HIS NAME IS LUCIEN. WOULD YOU DEFEND HIM STILL IF YOU KNEW HIM BY ANOTHER NAME?
"INDEED IT WAS HE WHO WENT AMONG YOU AND SOUGHT YOUR FRIENDSHIP!" the voice laughed, "INDEED IT WAS HE WHO WORKED HIS MAGIC FOR YOU, IN HIS OWN WAYS. NO, IT SHALL NO LONGER BE.
"DOWN, LUCIFER!"
The goat-man leaned against the thin, impregnable walls of the bubble. Orange fire flared around his palms, terrible, all-destroying. But they could not break that shell. It started to rise.
Kirk's voice, when he had recovered from the initial shock of recognition and could speak again, was steady and determined.
"We're not interested in the remnants of legend and superstition, Prosecutor. I'd said we'd given such things up. He's a living, sentient being, an intelligent life-form, and he helped us. That's all I have to know about him. We'll not stand by and see him harmed for our past mistakes."
Tie Prosecutor gestured. A smoke-ring of blue energy appeared in the room and started to float toward Kirk. He twisted out of its way, and it changed direction like a thinking creature, pursuing him.
"SUBMIT TO THIS DECISION AND GO FREE, CAPTAIN. YOU HAVEN'T THE POWER TO FIGHT US."
"Captain!" urged Spock. "Use the magic you know." Kirk dodged around the base of the rising red bubble, the ring following. Suddenly, it looked as if he too were beginning to glow.
Little sparks and flashes of blue-green energy flickered and played around his body. Eyes a little drunk, he turned and gestured. A ball of green flame spun toward the Prosecutor.
A blading fire appeared over him, feeding on nothing. It started to descend. Kirk made another gesture, shouted, "Powers of Earth and Sky, Appear! An extreme low pressure system has been detected moving north-northeast!"