Sulu opened his eyes, stared in horror at the still growing pillar of boiling gases.
"We can't let them have that!"
"Fascinating," was all Spock said immediately. His attention was held by the tower of carbonized solids. "No laboratory in the Federation has ever produced a hand weapon of such power." He squinted into the distance. The cloud was finally beginning to dissipate, and he could see through it a little.
"The entire crest of the ice monolith you fired at appears to have vanished. Total conversion of matter to energy at this distance, and by a simple hand weapon."
"An army of Kzin warriors armed with these would be invincible," Sulu observed in awe, gazing at the simple cone shape he held. "One man could fight off a small ship. The whole galaxy would be their dinner table."
"And it was, Mr. Sulu, it was. I do not imagine they were called Slavers because of their benign dispositions."
"If we . . ." Sulu started to add, but something he saw caused him to pause. A rising wave of ice particles and small gravel was racing toward them like a dark cloud from the region of the destruction, carried on a disturbed wind front by the shock of the vaporization.
"Hit the dirt!" he yelled.
Both men curled up beneath their overhanging boulder, tried to press themselves into the solid stone. But like the power of the Slaver weapon, the shock wave when it arrived was far stronger than either had imagined. Both men were lifted from their places and slung through the atmosphere. Sulu did something to the Slaver device just before he hit the ground hard. Spock landed nearby, no more gently. A faint reverse shock whistled over them a moment later, stirring both immobile bodies like sawdust on a plate. They did not move.
A few minutes later a slim, flattened shape thrummed overhead. In its observation chamber, one seated Kzin let out a snarl of triumph at something just glimpsed below.
"There they are, Chuft-Captain!"
The injured commander leaned forward, recognized the two motionless bipedal shapes. "Peculiar. There must have been a ground-level aftershock. They were too exposed to cope with it." He grinned. "How fortunate for us. Set down as close to them as you can manage, Pilot."
"Yes, honored one." The pilot operated controls and the Traitor's Claw began a slow, smooth descent. The "stolen" police vessel touched down only a few meters from where the bodies of Spock and Sulu rested unmoving on the icy surface.
Chuft-Captain glanced over at Flyer. "Bring them in. Carefully."
"Yes, Chuft-Captain." Flyer saluted, turned, and headed for the airlock.
While he was gone the rest of the Kzinti waited anxiously in the observation chamber. Uhura regarded the aliens with interest. She had hopes that Sulu and Spock were feigning unconsciousness, perhaps in a bold attempt to get themselves taken on board the Kzinti ship, where with the aid of the Slaver weapon they might have a chance to overpower her captors. So she received a rude shock when the party of suited Kzinti returned, carrying two limp forms that showed no hint of consciousness.
"They are alive, Chuft-Captain," Flyer reported to his commander as the other Kzinti stood the two former prisoners back on the police web, which had been turned off to allow them to be placed, but which was then quickly switched back on to keep them upright.
"They have sustained some bruising, mostly internal, from what our physician told me," Flyer said. "Their life-support belts cushioned them enough to keep them alive. Without those belts, I am sure they would have been scattered in pieces across the ice."
"Some bruising, yes." Chuft-Captain's right hand rubbed at his cracked ribs, touched gingerly at the bandages wrapped around his chest. Flyer handed him an object and the commander gazed down at it speculatively. "Meanwhile we have the problem of this."
His uncertainty was understandable. Before being knocked unconscious, Sulu had managed to twist the cone shape. It had once more reverted to the maddeningly familiar silver sphere.
Both officers regained their senses together. Sulu saw that the Kzinti had no interest in them for the moment. The whole crew were offering suggestions dealing with the Slaver weapon. Much yelling and growling was evident. Everyone held a different opinion, it seemed. But eventually, simply by fiddling incessantly with the device, one of them discovered the sphere twist. Or rather, a sphere twist. Somehow it seemed to Sulu that the globe had been turned in a manner different from the way he had done it.
Expectedly, the silver ball vanished. But the cone shape did not appear. Instead, the sphere was replaced by a smaller, rose-hued globe. A small grid was set into the top of the ball.
None of the formerly talkative Kzinti volunteered an opinion as to the possible function of this new manifestation. The device had proven too many wrong already, and none of them wished to be embarrassed in front of Chuft-Captain with an inaccurate appraisal of the device's capability.
So it was Chuft-Captain who finally had to ask for theories. "What would this be?" He pointed a thick finger at the small, reddish ball.
"I have no idea," Flyer said quickly. He glanced thoughtfully at a gauge set into the side of his armored suit. "Whatever it does, it generates power."
That revelation produced more confused yowling and growls from the assembled Kzinti.
Nor were they the only ones speculating on the device's newest, and most surprising, manifestation. "There's a grid set into it," Spock said to Uhura and Sulu. "It may be another communications setting. Possibly related in some way to the first communicator shape keyed by the first notch in the toggle slot, but," and he almost frowned slightly, "that would seem redundant, and out of keeping with the Slaver's oft-demonstrated efficiency. Not to mention the economical, many-functions-in-one nature of the device itself. If we—"
A new—startlingly new—voice spoke in the observation chamber. It spoke in Kzinti, or at least something very close to Kzinti. It had the distortions common to an out-of-town rural visiting a large, cosmopolitan metropolis and trying to converse in the local dialect. That meant it was comprehensible, but spiced with a notable yet not quite definable difference.
It was immediately clear that the voice did not emanate from the mouth of any of the assembled warriors; this was confirmed by the manner in which they abruptly ceased all conversation among themselves. The voice sounded again. It had a faint crackle in it, like carbonation in liquid. All at once it became evident to everyone that the voice came from the little grid on top of the Slaver device's newest configuration.
"Whatever it is, it sure has the Kzinti frightened," Sulu observed with satisfaction.
"That's not surprising." Spock's placid expression showed that it wasn't. "The Kzinti, if I recall correctly, have many legends of weapons haunted by their original owners."
Uhura stared, fascinated, at the device. "Could it be a voice-response control, requiring verbal direction?"
The Kzinti had clustered closely around Chuft-Captain and the device, and the muffled sounds of conversation were all the frustrated officers could make out.
"I think not," said Spock. "Somehow it actually appears to be conversing with them." He paused, listening. "Yes. It gives replies to direct questions, and reasons abstractly where appropriate. A reasoning computer so small, capable of independent analysis and reply? Even with the subminiaturization that modern Federation technology has achieved, that is hard to believe. A computer, yes, of any tiny size you want. But one capable of reasoning and decision-making? An incredible accomplishment."
"Are you sure, Mr. Spock?" Sulu asked.
Spock listened for a while longer, then nodded affirmatively. "It is much more than a computer. Its logic circuitry must be infinitely more sophisticated than anything we have yet developed, save for huge reasoning computers such as the main one on board the Enterprise. This one appears capable of similar activity, and it is unbelievably smaller."
The crowd of Kzinti, their initial excitement beginning to fade, spread out from one another. So when the voice spoke again, it became loud enough and clear enough for the translators
hanging from each of the prisoners' waists to interpret.
"How long," Chuft-Captain was asking the tiny rose sphere, "since you were last turned off?"
"I do not know," the stilted voice of the Slaver device promptly replied. "When I am off I have no sense of passing time."
"Very well." The Kzinti commander opted for another tack. "What is the last thing you remember?"
"We were on a mission." Spock couldn't tell from the awkward inflection in the machine's voice whether it was referring to several Slavers, or the device and a single owner, when it said "We." "I may not tell you of the mission unless you know certain coded terminology."
Flyer spoke up. "If you could describe to us the positions of the stars above the last ship or world you were on, we would be able to guess how much time has passed since then."
"Without certain code words," the computer voice informed them evenly, "I may not describe the location."
Patience was not one of the Kzinti's finer qualities. Chuft-Captain couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice when he next addressed the device. "One of the settings on you was a matter-conversion beam of tremendous power. We know that, having observed it in operation." He glanced back, smiling victoriously at the frozen prisoners. "We all saw what it can do." He turned back to the device. "Tell us how to find that setting on you."
There was a pause, then, "Move the toggle until you reach the original null position."
This affirmative response, without a single reference to code words, produced an excited, anticipatory chattering among the assembled Kzinti, so much so that their yowling drowned out everything else the computer was saying.
"That's the end, then," said the despondent Sulu. "They've succeeded in communicating with the device."
"There must be something we can do." Uhura fought against the invisible bonds restraining her, found the police-web field strong as ever. Then she noticed Spock. The first officer was never demonstrative, no matter how serious the situation; but considering the gravity of their present predicament, he appeared even more phlegmatic than usual.
"Mr. Spock, you know what's happened," she called to him. "Don't you have any suggestions?"
Spock apparendy did not. He was staring blankly at the excited cluster of milling Kzinti. "Most peculiar," he murmured, and that seemed to constitute his final words on the matter.
Uhura stared back at the Kzinti, but saw nothing to inspire such a comment from her superior.
Chuft-Captain raised the Slaver weapon, brandished it aloft triumphantly. If Uhura had no inkling of why Spock was so fascinated, Sulu did, the moment he set eyes on the weapon again.
It had changed, obviously in response to Chuft-Captain's request. But it had not changed into the matter-conversion configuration. At least, not into the weapons mode Spock and Sulu had used prior to their recent recapture. Not one cone but a pair projected from the hand grip now. Neither apex faced outward. Instead, the two points faced each other. They came close to touching, forming a distorted dumbbell shape.
Still chattering enthusiastically among themselves, the knot of Kzinti trooped from the chamber, moving toward the ship's airlock.
"That was not," Spock said decisively, "the total conversion beam. We must assume the weapon gave them directions for employing still another new setting."
"But if it wasn't the conversion beam . . .?" Sulu hesitated, glanced anxiously around at the exit taken by the departing Kzinti.
Uhura, meanwhile, was shifting her attention from one officer to the other, their statements only serving to confuse her further instead of providing enlightenment.
Followed by Flyer and the rest of the Kzinti, Chuft-Captain marched outside. The Kzinti commander still walked in pain, leaning to his left and occasionally clutching at his cracked ribs. The party of armor-suited aliens moved a respectable distance from the Traitor's Claw. Having already observed the power of the Slaver weapon, Chuft-Captain wanted to be well clear of his ship before activating it again.
Once they had ascended a jumble of shattered ice blocks, he inspected the re-formed weapon. The double-cone arrangement looked little more like a weapon than many of the device's previous manifestations.
"Like the other configurations," he informed his subordinates, who stood below and slightly behind him, "this new one appears to be devoid of a gun sight."
"It may be a broad-beam weapon," Flyer suggested, "for use on distant or rapidly moving or multiple targets. We saw its power. There may be only a need to aim it very generally in a target's direction. It is definitely a weapon. I suggest you fire at a very distant subject."
Chuft-Captain concurred. "Very well." He assumed as formal a marksman's stance as he could manage with his damaged ribs.
"We can't let them have that weapon." Uhura fought the police web frantically. Though she exerted all the energy in her body, shoving in every direction including straight up, she was unable to move a centimeter and remained frozen in place.
Spock's reassuring comment was delivered with an eerie calm. "They're not about to get it, Lieutenant. I think you are worrying needlessly." She stared at him uncomprehendingly. Sulu did likewise, but the helmsman had a glimmering of what the first offieer meant.
"Why aren't they?" she asked.
"Assume you are a Slaver war computer, Lieutenant Uhura. A small one, to be sure, but a war computer nonetheless. You have been deactivated, you do not know for how long, but when you were deactivated there was a war in progress. Assume furthermore that it is likely, as Mr. Sulu has suggested, that you are a secret weapon in the truest sense of the term, on a secret mission of some sort." He paused a moment, continued when Uhura had had time to digest this.
"Now you are abruptly awakened by aliens you have never seen before and retain no memory of. They do not know any of the military passwords. They are certainly not recognizable as belonging to the hierarchy of possible Slaver allies. They ask you so many questions it's obvious they know little about you and are trying to find out a great deal more, particularly anything involving weapons settings. Your true owner is nowhere about." He turned to eye her expectantly.
"What would you think?"
Uhura didn't have to consider long before replying. "I'd think that I'd been captured by the enemy. Or at least by a non-ally."
"And when they asked you," Sulu prompted eagerly, "how to find your most powerfully destructive setting, what would you give them?"
Uhura and the helmsman exchanged meaningful glances while Spock merely stood staring thoughtfully out the main port, wishing the Kzinti were in view and yet very glad they weren't.
Chuft-Captain aimed the double-cone arrangement as best he could. Focusing on a distant hilltop, he pulled the trigger on the Slaver weapon.
Chuft-Captain vanished. So did Flyer and the rest of the Kzinti standing with him. So did several tons of ice and stone beneath them, and so did part of the hull of the Traitor's Claw.
In fact, everything within a radius of twenty meters of the former Chuft-Captain simply disappeared—including, naturally, the Slaver weapon. As Spock had surmised, the war computer built into the device had reasoned that the Kzinti were not entitled to operate it. Instead of the weapons setting discovered by Spock and Sulu, it had provided Chuft-Captain with its self-destruct setting.
Portions of three rooms on board the Kzinti vessel had been opened to space. The control room, a storage chamber, and the crew common room now looked out onto a near vacuum. Walls, equipment, and the ground they had rested on had completely vanished. The conversion had extended to within half a meter of Spock's left leg.
There were no aftereffects. The self-destruct setting operated much in the manner of normal atmospheric lightning: a million-volt bolt could strike a tree and a man a few meters away might not be harmed. Similarly, though the imprisoned officers had been standing frozen on the very edge of the disruption field, they had not been touched. Within the disruption field, however, everything for a radius of twenty meters from Chuft-Captain had b
een converted. A violent whoosh of air escaping from the Traitor's Claw was the only sound produced by the disappearance.
Spock barely had time enough to say clearly, "Activate life-support belts!" Having cut into the control room, the self-destruct field had sliced through the police web and its power supply. The three prisoners found they were able to move. Hands touched controls at their waists. Three lime-yellow auras sprang instantly into existence in the dim light of the powerless observation room.
Uhura was studying the smooth-sided, round-bottomed crater in front of them with interest. "Total-disruptor field." She wasn't worried about an attack from any remaining Kzinti. If any remained aboard, they would be too busy trying to lock themselves into airtight compartments and find alternate sources of atmosphere to bother offering hinderance to escaping prisoners.
"Yes," commented Spock. "Another conventional weapon. It would seem that the total-conversion beam Lieutenant Sulu and I discovered was the only thing the Slavers had that we do not also possess, in one form or another."
Sulu walked to the edge of the sliced-open room. It had been cut, he noted, as neatly as with any industrial phaser. The sides and bottom of the crater were smooth as glass, marred only by a few unbalanced boulders and chunks of ice that had fallen into the pit and gathered at the bottom.
"No sign of the weapon, of course." He stood straight, sighed in disappointment. "It would have looked nice in some museum."
"It would never have remained in a museum long, Lieutenant," Spock observed quietly. "There was too much power in that single unique setting. If not the Kzinti, then the Klingons or some other warlike species would have tried to possess it, to copy it, and to duplicate its destructive potential." His gaze lifted and he stared across the open pit. On the far side of the pit and intervening icefield the shuttlecraft Copernicus waited. Only the gaping glassy depression in the ground indicated that anything out of the ordinary had occurred on the barren planet of Beta Lyrae. The depression . . . and a small police vessel sliced as neatly as an apple by the knife of some titan.