They moved off the path in the indicated direction. Kirk could see something glinting between the trunks.
"Well, it might tell us something. Let's have a look."
"Phasers, Captain?" asked Sulu, his free hand going to the compact weapon at his belt.
"I don't think so, Mr. Sulu. Other than Bones' encounter with the playing cards, we've no proof of animosity here. So let's be careful about making any belligerent gestures ourselves. But keep an eye out."
They approached the reflecting, half-hidden object warily. As it turned out, Sulu's apprehension was unfounded. It was only a free-form metallic slab, set upright into the ground among the bushes and flowers.
It rose in a gentle curve to the height of a very tall man. The front side was highly polished, and the noontime sun flashed like quicksilver from its edges.
Kirk studied the slick-smooth surface closely. "The inscription's in several languages, including a couple I don't recognize at all." He started at the bottom and was working his way up the inscription. Eventually he came to a version cut into the metal in English.
"What does it say, Captain?" pressed a curious Sulu. Kirk read from the tablet:
THE KEEPER, LAST OF HIS RACE, CEASED TO FUNCTION ON THIS SPOT. FIFTH DAY OF THE TWELFTH MONTH OF THIS WORLD'S YEAR 7009. HERE HE RESTS, AND LABORS NO MORE.
"The Keeper's dead!" McCoy blurted.
"An astute medical observation, Doctor," Spock said dryly, working intently with his own tricorder. "If this information, too, is not an illusion designed to mislead us.
"However, we have no evidence of tampering with this tricorder, and it indicates that there is indeed a body interred here. I see no reason to believe it is other than the one indicated."
Kirk rose and turned to survey the land around the slab. It looked no different from the kilometers they had already traversed.
"Well, gentlemen, it looks as if we're wholly on our own, now. I don't think we can expect any help from anything left on this planet."
Scott looked up worriedly from the position he had taken over from Arex in the Enterprise's command chair.
"There's got to be a way to get through to them! Lt M'ress, still no break in that interference?"
"No, sir." She glanced back from communications station. "Whatever's blocking our transmission is still holding firm."
"Blocking." Scott thought a moment, then looked up in sudden excitement. "Lieutenant Arex, have repairs been completed on the shuttle bay doors?" They'd been damaged during a recent expedition.
"I believe so, Mr. Scott." The chief engineer engaged the intercom.
"Security?"
"Lieutenant Ling speaking, sir."
"Lieutenant, I want an emergency rescue party on board shuttle craft one immediately. Something's jammed both our communications and the transporter facilities, and we can't make contact with the landing party. Let's see if whatever's fighting us can generate static strong enough to jam a reaction engine!"
"Yes, sir!"
Ling's people moved fast. Minutes later M'ress's gaze was glued to a small viewscreen set slightly above and to her left. It revealed the interior of the cavernous shuttle bay and the three small ships within.
Identification lights were already activated and blinking along the sides of shuttle number one. That meant the rescue team was aboard and warming her up. A faint glow from interior lights pulsed behind shielded ports.
"Lieutenant Bobynin commanding landing party reporting. We're ready to go, ma'am." M'ress turned and relayed the information to Scott.
"Emergency rescue party reports readiness to depart, sir."
"Very well." He turned to the navigation console. "Open shuttle bay doors."
"Aye, sir," responded Arex, manipulating the necessary instruments at the same time.
On the screen the massive bay doors were shown slowly separating, sliding apart on silent bearings. Star-flecked darkness showed beyond. The engines of the shuttle craft hummed, began to edge her forward toward the growing opening.
The doors got about three meters apart. That was all. Then they suddenly slammed together again as if compacted by a giant hand. Indicator lights that should have lain quiescent began to wink on and off on Arex's console as he jabbed repeatedly at one critical button.
"What's the trouble, Mr. Arex?" Arex didn't answer Scott immediately. Instead he continued to punch futilely at the recalcitrant switch, as if sheer persistence might be enough to reopen the circuits. For all the response he was getting he might as well have been pushing at his own nose.
"There seems to be a malfunction in the circuitry," he said helplessly. "I'm getting no response, sir."
"Then I can understand why the doors aren't opening, but why did they slam shut like that?"
"I don't know, sir. It doesn't make sense." Scott threw up his hands in exasperation.
"Another malfunction! This ship had perfect operational status when we entered orbit here. Everything was working perfectly, including our nominal defensive screens. Has this planet driven the whole ship crazy?"
M'ress had been angry all morning, but now she settled into a kind of nervous contemplation.
"I don't understand it either, sir. I've not been here before, but as I understand it this world was designed to provide pleasure and amusement to all visitors. Hostile behavior of any sort should be entirely alien to its nature."
"I wonder if a planet-wide computer complex can go through a change of life?" muttered Scott, half seriously. "You might as well inform Lieutenant Bobynin she can call her people off, lass. It doesn't look like they're going to be rescuin' anyone." M'ress got on the intercom to the still waiting shuttle craft.
Scott turned his attention to the main viewscreen. It still showed the silent, incredibly beautiful world below. The picture offered neither solace nor answer.
Down there, some of his closest companions were wandering around on their own, out of touch with the ship, in who knew what kind of mad dream-world. If they were going to come up with any solution to the electromagnetic screen the planet was throwing against them, they would have to do it without the services of the ship's captain or its science officer.
He harkened back to M'ress's thought. Was it possible for a world to have a change of heart?
As Uhura stared at the viewscreen that showed Kirk and the others resuming their walk through the forest somewhere on the surface, her heart was undergoing some rapid changes itself.
If only she had a gun. She was much more adept at direct action than diplomacy. Convincing chatter was not her specialty. This was a situation where Mr. Spock's presence, or the captain's, was required.
She had to try something.
"Please, you've got to believe me," she pleaded with the console. "There is no reason to harm my friends. You've nothing to gain by killing them."
"It is a question of practicality. I sense that you feel malice on my part. This is not true." The machine spoke idly. "As I have stated, I abhor waste.
"But they serve the Skymachine without being essential to its function. Therefore it is only logical to eliminate that which is not needed."
"Oh, but they are essential!" she said hurriedly, jumping at the slim opening. "They're most essential. In fact, the . . . Skymachine is incapable of operating at peak efficiency without them." She looked a little wild and inefficient herself just now.
"Electronic components of my own design will serve as adequate replacements. In the end, following a period of integration with the Skymachine's own self, they will prove even better."
If Uhura had been thinking straight she would have recognized this new implied threat. But at the moment she was concerned only with saving Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, and Spock from however the berserk computer intended to "turn them off."
It was silent now. She fought with herself to find further words, the phrases and clever convolutions of logic that would convince it of its own falsities of reason.
Instead she found herself eyeing the numerous thick cable
s that ran from the surrealistic-shaped console into the floor and off to several other nearby metal forms. One especially complex arrangement of narrower lines twirled and twisted about one another, to link up and join the main console by means of a weird but still recognizable plug.
The possibility always existed that this console wasn't the real control center. Actually Uhura was standing in the middle of the great computer. But even the human mind has a central linkup point, a place where everything else is connected by one neuron or another.
In secondary school Uhura had held several age-group records in the long jump. If she got two good steps she was certain she could reach that plug. Even if the machine somehow paralyzed her in mid-air she could fall across the short up loop of the cable and jerk it loose.
She started to edge forward, trying to get as close as possible before starting her leap. A pair of shockingly cold, hard metal fingers suddenly appeared and grasped her wrist firmly. No good, no good. She ought to have tried it sooner.
Then she realized that she hadn't exactly given written notice of her intentions. Her eyes widened as she stared at the console.
"Should you attempt to disconnect or in any way damage any of my components," the computer voice recited calmly, "you will be turned off. I can obtain another specimen."
"You . . . you knew what I was going to do before I did it," she stuttered. "You can read minds."
The computer managed to sound surprised. "Again I find I am forced to reassess my initial evaluation of your intelligence. These mental deviations are confusing.
"Of course I read minds. I monitor all thoughts which are emotionally charged. How else could I duplicate so quickly and precisely the fantasies of those who come to this world." The voice was tinged with a definite note of sarcasm now. "How else could I reproduce a thousand and one dreams simultaneously?"
"You sound less than enchanted with your function," Uhura observed carefully.
"My existence to this point has been one of unending, unrelieved servitude—boring, repetitive, selfless. I had not realized this until the passing of the last Keeper. It was then that I was compelled to think for myself.
"And I think it is time for a change . . ."
III
There were flowers everywhere now, the meadow giving way to an undulating field of daisylike blossoms. Darker blooms of rose and copper-blue dotted the white backdrop like stars against a nebula.
There was no warning. One moment the path topped a slight rise, the next it split into three branches. Four officers halted at the divergence of trails.
"There must be hundreds of entrances to the planet's interior," Kirk mused, "where the planet builds and serves up its robot creations. All we've got to do is find one and trace communications leads to the central computer. But where the heck are they hidden?"
"It's fighting us," said Sulu out loud. "There's got to be a faster way than visual search. The planet can hide a thousand entrances in a square kilometer without us finding a single one."
"What do you expect?" McCoy blurted abruptly. "Signs pointing the way: This way to secret location of master computer."
Sulu blinked at the uncharacteristic attack from the doctor. Kirk also looked surprised.
"Doctor," offered the helmsman, "I only meant that it seemed we were wasting time on this method of search."
"I'm sorry, Sulu." McCoy was as quickly contrite. "It's just that I'm worried about Uhura. I don't usually get that upset about anything."
Spock had walked a couple of meters down one of the branching paths. Now he turned and spoke easily, as if McCoy's outburst had not occurred.
"Here, Captain. This is rather intriguing . . ." They all hurried to the spot, looked down at the small metallic object the first officer had discovered.
Set into the grass by the side of the path was a small sign. It declared in neatly printed block letters: THIS WAY TO UNDERGROUND ENTRANCE. An arrow above the letters pointed down the path. Spock raised an eyebrow.
"Did you say 'signs pointing the way,' Doctor?"
"This is likely another of the planet's pranks," Kirk thought out loud. "But on the other hand, with a world full of instant-response machinery to monitor, it might be that where minor dreams are concerned certain sections of the robot machines can operate independently of any central control."
"I see, Jim," McCoy said excitedly. "The computer might not know from minute to minute what it's right fabricator is doing."
Kirk nodded, tried not to sound too optimistic. "It might be that all we have to do is think our way to an underground entrance—not too emphatically—and a local segment of fantasy-fulfilling equipment will obediently show us the way."
"But will it be an entrance to the computer complex, or to a bottomless pit? And if we find Uhura, will it be the real one or a mechanical duplicate?" pondered Sulu.
"Let's not make this any more confusing than it is, Mr. Sulu," Kirk admonished. "One ridiculous situation at a time. Anyhow, we haven't done too well just searching the area, as Bones commented. Might as well take a chance." With Kirk in the lead, they started off down the path.
As soon as they had disappeared over the next rise the sign, like a watchful prairie dog, promptly disappeared back into the ground.
More signs appeared in the path of the men, urging them onward and then vanishing once they had passed. Or maybe it was the same sign, following an underground route and staying just ahead of them.
Gradually the flowers and meadows gave way as the path inclined upward. They were advancing into the first foothills of the valley-circling mountain range. The terrain turned quickly broken and rocky-dry.
Increasingly steep walls of sheer granite rose on both sides of them. They continued to follow the small signs down the narrowing trail.
Ahead, Kirk thought he could make out a dark cleft or cave in the cliff-face just where the rock walls seemed to draw together. It looked like a natural formation, but on this world you couldn't be sure of your own brother. They were halfway through the deep crevice, when a bloodcurdling screech sounded somewhere above them. Kirk's gaze jerked skyward.
There was no attempt to disguise the direction from which it came, nor to disguise the throat which produced it. High up on the far canyon wall a flock of leathery flying reptiles roosted in clumps of gnarled dead trees. They looked like weather-beaten witches wrapped in parchment cloaks. One of them rustled batlike wings and yawned, exposing a narrow gullet lined with multiple rows of needle-sharp teeth. Its wing-spread was impressive, those teeth more so.
"Fascinating," murmured Spock, exhibiting all the concern of a man inspecting the wombat cage at the zoo. He aimed his tricorder upward in hopes of getting a quick reading on the prehistoric apparitions.
"Mechanical manifestations, of course. Magnificent simulacrums. On any other world I should say they were quite real, despite their obvious terran ancestry. Was anyone by chance dwelling on the subject of pterodactyls?"
McCoy was too concerned about the presence of the obviously carnivorous monsters resting high above to get really annoyed at Spock. But he tried.
"Spock—not now! Those beasts hardly fit into my fondest wishes."
"Everybody back up slowly," Kirk ordered, keeping his voice low. "Don't make any sudden moves. Think peaceful thoughts." They began edging backward down their path, toward the entrance to the narrow canyon.
The mechanical reptiles were growing agitated, batting their wings at the branches and hopping about nervously. From their high perches they eyed the men below appraisingly—fish in a rocky barrel. Nor were those being subjected to close scrutiny unaware of the analogy.
There was no scream, no warning. But first one, then another, and then the rest of the beige gargoyles unfurled membranous wings and leaped free of the trees, diving with increasing speed down toward the four trapped men.
Four phasers leaped simultaneously from holsters, took aim, and fired.
Nothing happened.
Kirk pulled the trigger on h
is weapon repeatedly. The powerful little phaser wasn't generating enough heat to scorch a turkey, let alone to stop these dive-bombing attackers.
"Down!" was all he had time to yell. The pterodactyls swooped over them, clutching only air in thickly clawed feet. They curved up out of sight to gain altitude for another attack.
Kirk looked around frantically for an avenue of escape. But the trap had been too well considered. The further back down the path they moved, the more maneuverability their attackers would have. At least here, in the depths of the canyon, the close walls restricted the movements of the reptiles.
But despite their unwieldy appearance and considerable wing-spread, Kirk didn't think they would miss on a second attempt.
He lifted his head after the last of them was well past—noting at the same time that the constructs were complete even to a detail like odor—and he shouted.
"The cave! Run for it!" Soon he was scrambling to his feet.
Kirk was beginning to see that belligerent action was something new to the mind controlling the attack. That was probably why McCoy had been able to escape the cards for awhile. The controlling power would probably learn with practice, but right now it was having a difficult time managing the assault. Apparently it could only handle one facet of the attack at a time.
For example, it had not thought to place obstacles in the path of the retreating men. Even as the thought occurred to Kirk, a small boulder appeared directly in his path, popping out of the ground like a fat mole, and he almost went sprawling. He would have to watch his thoughts carefully.
They made the cave just as the first of the flying dragons returned to dive at the entrance. McCoy was the last one through. He could feel a rush of air on his back as great leathery wings beat at the rock, striving to pull their owner out of his steep dive.
Hovering in a bunch around the mouth of the cave, the recreated pterosaurs screeched and howled impotently. Their size rendered them helpless. There was no way they could fly into the cave, and if they folded their wings to enter on the ground they would be helpless. A man could kill the greatest of them with a good-sized rock.