Kirk looked at his enemy in shock. "Kumara! Do you realize what you're saying?"
The judge looked interested. "And what, pray tell, is a Vulcan?"
Kumara pointed, his anger and frustration having driven him past all rationality now. "That is a Vulcan, your greatness! An alien in your midst, an interloper, a monster with a computer for a mind and a machine's sense of ethics! An insipid, unimaginative, soulless automation who—"
Spock bore the steady stream of insults and imprecations stolidly. The judge, looking bored, finally cut Kumara off in mid-insult.
"Your claim that you are innocent will be taken under advisement," he told him tiredly. He looked at Spock. "Do you, whatever or whoever you are, acknowledge the truth of any part of this person's claims?"
"Of course not," Spock said, looking straight at Kumara. The Klingon commander threw up his hands and sat down hard on the bench.
"Thank you, sirs." The judge yawned. "That . . . that will do. I will now consult with my colleagues." He slid down from his chair and began poking and prodding the other ancients to wakefulness. Once active, all five retired behind the podium. Kirk could hear the tantalizing buzz of their conversation rise and fall, always just outside the range of decipherability.
"You fool!" Kumara whispered angrily at Spock. "Couldn't you see what I was attempting to do? With even one of us free, he might be able to hire help to rescue those reimprisoned!"
Spock's eyebrows rose alarmingly, though his voice remained unchanged. "And you said that Vulcans were congenital liars."
Kumara had a properly sarcastic retort prepared, but the reappearance of the five judges forestalled it. He turned as anxiously as the others while the ancients resumed their seats. All seemed almost awake now, as though it were necessary to bestir themselves at least for pronouncement of sentence.
"I see that your bickering has ceased," the high judge observed, with evident satisfaction. "That is well, as we have deliberated and reached a decision." He yawned again.
"Before you make your decision known, Your Greatness, I would like the answers to several questions. You can hardly deny them if you are prepared to execute or imprison us." Spock waited resolutely for a reply.
The high judge considered, and finally grumbled, "Oh, if you must. But make them interesting, lest we lose interest quickly."
"I believe you will find them interesting enough," Spock declared. He began to pace back and forth beneath the high bench, asking his questions as he walked. Kirk and Kumara watched him with equal curiosity.
"Why is it," the Enterprise's first officer wondered, "that, despite the large number of resting places, and a perpetual daylight that would seem to preclude any regular resting time, we have never seen a single one of you even appear drowsy? Why have we not seen a single live animal, despite an abundance of fresh-killed meat in the marketplace?
"Why the total absence of even simple vehicles, and the lack of interest in our battle to the death at the inn? Such a crowd would seem to be the type most interested in such conflicts, yet they uttered hardly a sound throughout the fighting.
"Then there is the very existence of this world, which defies so many natural laws. Despite this, we find ourselves confronted with a civilization and race that, excepting trivial differences, could be a duplicate of an earlier terrestrial or Klingon culture. That implies a coincidence of evolution under radically different conditions—a coincidence we have until now had no choice but to accept."
"Spock, what are you getting at?" Kirk asked.
His first officer turned to him, the conviction in his voice growing with each succeeding sentence. "Have the events of the past weeks not struck you as rushed, Captain? Do you accept the existence of the world you see around you here, regardless of the fact that our entire body of scientific knowledge declares it a flagrant impossibility?"
"Your first officer is mad, Captain Kirk," declared Kumara, watching Spock warily. "He denies the evidence of his own senses."
"Senses can be fooled," Spock went on, turning to the Klingon commander, "but a rational mind cannot. It has taken until now for the weight of successive incongruities to point out the greater one. I am beginning to believe my mind, not my eyes." He turned back to Kirk.
"Do you accept the existence of this world as you see it, Captain? Because I do not."
Kirk felt the hard wood of the bench beneath him, looked around and saw the eyes of judges, guards, innkeeper, and spectators on him, breathed deeply of the air, studied the iridescent sky through the glass dome, and replied, "Have I a choice, Mr. Spock?"
Spock sighed heavily. "Think, Captain. We have in the past few weeks encountered two near duplicates of Terran ecology and humanoid civilization. In both cases the natives could, with very slight alterations, pass for human, Vulcan, or Klingon with relative ease. Both the world of Arret, in the negative universe, and this wandering planet support such civilizations in heretofore unsuspected astronomical environments. A mere coincidence? It boggles the mind."
Spock turned to face the judges, and Kirk noted with surprise that all five were now wide awake, more attentive than they had appeared at any earlier time.
"Whatever the explanation, you must confess, Your Greatness, whoever you are, that these coincidences leave a great deal unexplained."
"I would say that is putting it mildly, Mr. Spock."
All eyes turned to the source of that voice. Kirk's thoughts turned upside down, as his whole universe had during the course of Spock's speech.
"Karla Five!"
The woman walking toward them from the near door was none other than their pied piper into the negative universe bridged by the Beta Niobe Nova.
"I don't," Kirk muttered plaintively, "understand."
"Nor do I, Captain, but I have suspected. The very unlikeliness of Arret and this world suggested a possible tie, though I am still ignorant as to what it might be."
"Nevermind, Mr. Spock," Karla Five said reassuringly, "it was your willingness to voice what your mind suspected which has decided the trial in your favor. You were beginning to disappoint us." She turned to the judge's bench.
"I believe the time has come to end the masquerade, colleagues." She waved her right arm slowly, expansively.
The courtroom vanished. So did the town. Kirk, Spock, and Kumara found themselves standing alone on a rolling, grassy plain which ran unbroken to every horizon.
Well, not exactly alone . . .
Kirk squinted and held his hands in front of his face to shield himself. Where the judges had sat moments before were now suspended five meter-wide globes of radiant energy, each glowing like a miniature sun. Another globe occupied the position held a moment before by Karla Five.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was the presence of the last two globes, which drifted and swirled about each other in the places occupied only seconds ago by Van and Char Delminnen.
Kirk felt sanity slipping away, like water down a drain, and screamed inside himself for something solid, something real, to hold on to. It was provided by his own mind, which could find no room for panic amid all the curiosity.
"Who . . . what are you?"
The energy thing that had been Karla Five expounded in a deep non-voice. "We are the Wanderers Who Play," the not-words elucidated. "We are Those Who Meddle. We are the ones who long ago—so long ago that your terminology is not great enough to encompass it—deserted our final corporeal bodies for the configurations of pure energy which you now see."
"You said you play," Kirk said, eyes tightly slitted against the wonderful glare. "What do you play at?"
"Existence," the second judge murmured.
"To what purpose?" This typical expression of practicality came, naturally, from Spock.
"Amusement and edification," explained the judge of judges. "At regular intervals we conduct a tour of various galaxies which remain of interest to us. This we do to record the progress and development of the local space-traversing dominants. In this case, yourselves, gentlemen
. Our attention is magnified when several dominant forms expand far enough to come into conflict with one another.
"For reasons of convenience, and a certain amount of what you would term nostalgia, we have utilized this world as the vehicle for transporting us through space. It is our original home world. We are attached to it. And, while it serves no real purpose but one, that is sufficient to trouble taking it with us."
"That single purpose is information storage, gentlemen," continued the light that had been Karla Five. "We need a fair-sized solid for that. Our world serves us admirably. We have, of course, no need for the warmth and light which our exceptional atmosphere, as Mr. Spock calls it, provides.
"However, we still enjoy the presence of living things around us. We have the time and patience necessary to luxuriate in the contemplative thought patterns of growing plants."
"You have been undergoing a test," the judge of judges told them, "a test which is now concluded."
"The humanoid civilization?" Kirk asked, gesturing at the open expanse of prairie around them. "The city, its people . . . it was a laboratory experiment, in which we were guinea pigs?"
"Restrain your bitterness, Captain Kirk," said Karla Five. "We mean you neither ill nor good. Allow us this harmless academic pleasantry."
"Lieutenant Kritt didn't find it very harmless," Kumara muttered. Karla Five's reply was filled with reproof.
"That was of your own choice and doing, Commander Kumara. We did not interfere. We only studied. When you and Captain Kirk persisted in your futile battle at the inn instead of attempting to work out a peaceful settlement of your differences, we were most disappointed. Most."
"Terribly sorry," Kumara countered sarcastically. "The experimental animals offer their apologies. Perhaps you didn't bait the maze sufficiently to produce the reactions you wanted."
"Speaking of differences and bait and mazes," Kirk said, "what of that negative universe?"
"It did not exist, not in the form you believed you saw it in," Karla Five told him. "Even we cannot accomplish a passage into something which does not exist. It was created as the first part of your test, from a play theory one of us had generated."
"Mine," said the fifth judge, with a touch of pride. "It was rather a good theory. Pity it does not exist."
"Even if it did," Karla Five went on, "a less likely method of interdimensional travel than diving into a raging nova would be difficult to imagine.
"You accept too readily the evidence of your senses instead of your mind, Captain Kirk, Commander Kumara—even you, Mr. Spock. Think again on the people of Arret—would a race which appeared with all the knowledge it would ever have be able to exist, once its devolution was a known fact? No, it would go mad with the knowledge. Would an Arretian child be born in a grave, as a senile adult form, only to die within a living mother? For that matter, by what process would a new Arretian come into existence?
"I am surprised at you all for not seeing through that first fabrication. But then it was necessary to bring you together, to see if you would react more sensibly than you did apart. As you know, you have not."
Kirk looked over at Kumara, and found the commander staring back at him. "Negative universe—you too, Kumara?"
The commander nodded slowly. "A mere two tri-aines ago. We did not think we would survive. The negative world which aided us was a near duplicate of Klingon. In fact, its name was—"
"Nognilk," put in Spock.
"The very same," admitted the tired commander. "The inconsistencies . . . Why did we not sense them before!"
"And the Delminnens?" Kirk asked.
Somehow the judge of judges managed to convey the impression of indicating the two globes which swirled and darted about each other.
"These two Wanderers were given the task of playing at being human, at being the humans Delminnen. The message from your Starfleet base, Captain Kirk—and your Imperial Sector headquarters, Commander Kumara—was an artifice of ours, designed to bring you hastily to the system designed. We followed your foolishly primitive attempts to unite the human couple through violence with considerable sadness.
"In the end, it seemed that total destruction of one vessel or the other must result. Hence our appearance here at the crucial moment, to prevent that. It was we, Commander Kumara, who planted the suggestion of a contest in your mind."
Kumara looked shaken.
Spock broke in: "But the Delminnens are real people."
"So they are, Mr. Spock," admitted Karla Five. "They continue their hermitage on the far side of their moon from where you set down, quite unaware that anything out of the ordinary has taken place. Incidentally, they are as harmless as your records indicated. Should you return to their system, you will find planets Eight and Nine orbiting their sun unchanged—their 'destruction' merely being another of our engineered illusions."
"World-maker or not," Kumara whispered to Kirk, "I'd hit it if I could be sure of contacting something."
"We must leave you now, gentlemen," Karla Five continued. "There are many among us who have profited from your actions of the past seconds—seconds only to us, of course, weeks to you. We are sorry at the laggard pace of your development."
"What do you intend to do with us?" Kirk asked hesitantly.
"You will all be returned to your respective ships and permitted to return home. But carry with you this warning, which we make most regretfully.
"If your races have not made substantial improvement over your present degree of maturity, or rather lack of it, by the time of our next visit to this portion of this galaxy, we will be compelled to regard you as degenerates incapable of proper development. Consequently, you will be eliminated from the cycle of advance.
"Good-bye, Commander Kumara." Karla Five glowed bluely, and the Klingon commander was gone.
"Back to his vessel, and McCoy to yours," the globe explained. "And now—"
"Wait!" Kirk shouted. "Why do you care? Why this concern with our development, this need for elaborate interference?"
There was a pause; then: "We strive constantly to upgrade the maturity of those races we encounter, Captain Kirk, in the faint hope that one day one or more of them will reach our own level. It is very lonely to exist at the apex of creation, for an apex is surrounded always only by emptiness."
"How much longer do we have . . . before you return again?" the captain asked hurriedly.
"Not long, I fear," confessed the judge of judges. "No more than another twelve of your millennia. Now go . . ."
And they were gone.
Sulu was studying standard readouts from the world below. He turned to inform Uhura of one especially interesting discovery—and nearly fell from his chair as the captain re-materialized in his. Uhura had started to turn at Sulu's call, only to pause and gasp as the science station was once again occupied by its usual tenant.
Although he stood between the two materializations, Dr. McCoy was too pleased to see both men return alive to be shocked. That would come later.
"Jim . . . Spock! How did I . . . How—what happened down there?"
Kirk felt the comforting solidness of the command chair. That, at least, was real . . . wasn't it? At least it was as real as the mystifying globe sitting alone in the viewscreen. Amazing how one could overlook the obvious when confronted by the impossible.
"Mr. Sulu?"
"Yes, sir?"
"What is the mass of the world below us?"
Sulu looked puzzled, while at Kirk's right McCoy was barely able to hold himself in check. "The mass, Captain? But we already measured—"
"Compute it again, Lieutenant."
Sulu proceeded to carry out the puzzling order, bent closer over his instrumentation, and finally looked back in total confusion.
"I don't understand it, sir. There's a new reading, but it's impossible."
"What is it?"
"According to the latest readings, the mass of Gypsy is only point six four that of Earth. But the gravity reading remains constant. That's im
possible."
"Not this time, Mr. Sulu. The gravity is correct, and no doubt artificially enhanced. While the mass—"
"—is undoubtedly correct," Spock finished for him, "for a mobile filing cabinet of such size."
McCoy looked askance from one to the other. "Jim, what is all this . . . this talk of filing cabinets and artificial gravity? How did you get back here, anyway?"
"Twelve thousand years," Kirk murmured, not hearing.
"What . . . what's that?"
"Captain," Arex reported, "the Klathas is picking up speed. She's moving out of the area on impulse power."
Kirk moved to the intercom. "Engineering . . . This is the captain speaking. Scotty, are you there?"
"Aye, Captain."
"Do we have enough power to get under way?"
"Aye, but barely. I think we can manage warp-two, but not much more."
"It'll do. Thank you, Scotty." He clicked off, then turned back to face the helm once more. "Mr. Sulu, set course for Babel. I have a story that's going to interest Commodore April. It seems he and Sarah owe their unexpected rejuvenation to a dream . . . unless that's an illusion too."
"I think not, Captain," declared Spock thoughtfully. "It was the Aprils who pulled us through the first part of the Wanderers' test. Clearly they were impressed. The Aprils' new life strikes me as a realistic reward for . . . for a maze well run."
"Excuse me, sir," Sulu wondered, "but we have superior speed now. Aren't we going after the Klingons?"
"No, Mr. Sulu . . . and they are no longer concerned with us. Kumara has too much else to think about now."
"In heaven's name, Jim," an exasperated McCoy blurted out, "what happened? Why are we suddenly running from the Klathas . . . and it from us? And by the way, where's Char Delminnen?"
"Twelve thousand years," Kirk whispered again. Then, louder: "Home is where the heart is, Bones—if the mind concurs. Rest easy that the Delminnens are perfectly safe."
McCoy turned in frustration to Spock, who was busy as usual at his library computer console. "Spock, you tell me. What's Jim mumbling about? What does he mean?"
"What he means, Doctor, is that we had all best learn to be good little boys and girls or we're liable to get spanked."