NEW TOS "The Vulcan Mind-Warp" 1/1 [PG] (story)
Harley Meloy
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Title: "The Vulcan Mind-Warp"
Author: Robert Harley Meloy
Contact: <lacks...@yahoo.com>
Series: (NEW) TOS
Part: 1/1
Rating:PG
Codes:
Summary:
"Green Blood Runs Cold... especially in the autopsy lab at Starbase X"
And / OR:
"In the tradition of Halloween shows like "The War of the Worlds" and "Catspaw" comes a tale of impish space intelligences, in search of their own planet's Messiah... Mr. Spock!"
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The Vulcan Mind-Warp"©1994,2006 by Robert-Harley :Meloy
(Non-profit fan fiction based on Star Trek©Paramount Pictures)
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PREMISE:
The Federation is besieged by VULCANS from the FUTURE: archtypal little green men w/ pointed ears & huge bald heads.
They are vastly superior intellects, cold-blooded masterminds searching for something only the past can provide. For without the 'bestial' capacity for emotions, long refined out of them, they face an evolutionary dead-end.
Therefore, they must study primitive 23rd century feelings and emotion. They begin with its most basic, elementary form: FEAR & TERROR...
TEASER:
Somewhere in the solemn depths of space, heartless alien dwarfs teleport aboard a luxury starliner & announce their purpose: To study the primitive humanoid emotion known as FEAR. Passengers huddle in horror as the Vulcanoids' long shadows fall upon them. The skipper and his first mate rush the intruders; they are promptly melted down into puddles of flesh.
Parsecs away, the Enterprise is in the solar neighborhood, en route from Pollux to Zeta Cancri... when she intercepts a Code 710 warning beacon from an Andorian listening post at the SE edge of Vulcan/Orion territory, somewhere between Sirius and Procyon: the sputtering image of an injured alien Commodore, hunched over a console inside a collapsed radio room. "Beware, all vessels: Keep away from this sector! Mauraders of unknown origin -- " Suddenly on the main viewscreen, dwarfish sillouettes materialize behind him. We almost discern their true, hideous nature - before the camera feed is silenced. The message, left on automatic, endlessly repeats...
Whoever these beings are, they don't even care if a warning is broadcast!
The Enterprise extinguishes auxilliary power and running lights, opens a sealed command program, and makes like a silent panther for Starbase X... a dark planet whose location is not marked on any starmap, it is headquarters for the ultra-secret agency known as Starfleet Intelligence.
END TEASER
ACT I, Opening - We watch as "specimens" are collected from every humanoid planet in the local neighborhood, and taken aboard the Vulcanoid time-craft as experimental test-subjects. Inside the torture chambers of these alien saucers, people of all colors (incl. blue, orange & purple) are strapped into mind-scanner chairs, with diminutive, giant-brained scientists at control panels reading the deepest levels of their psyches... a male is forced to watch while his pregnant wife is inserted with a probe; a boy is forced to witness the murder of his dog, etc. But these activities differ from today's Pentagon gulags and death-camps in one important respect: the Vulcanoids seem to have no more malice than charity. They are simply passionless and indifferent, as all emotions were phased out eons ago...
Meanwhile the great cruiser Enterprise closes in on her final approach toward the secret Starbase X surveillance outpost. Sensor sweeps detect scattered fields of nebulosity throughout this region of space, streaming from Algol to Rigel to Zaurak; they appear to be the remnants of a recent and dreadful battle, which doubtless chalked up massive casualties.
Kirk, Spock & McCoy transport to the surface at once. It is is a silver-grey world, with a slightly hazy atmosphere; the Starfleet Intelligence compound lies several hundred yards away from the beam-down point, standing off in the misty silver background: a fortress of flat black steel with narrow, slitted windows. Only 10% of the station lies above ground, the rest is a maze of secret tunnels, intertwined corridors & rings within rings.
There they are greeted by the starbase intelligence chief, Commodore Forsythe, who informs them that the entire Orion sector was attacked by Bogies, unidentifieds -- invincible and undetectable on any known sensor wavelength, appearing "as if out of NOWHERE"...
The intruders seem to have the power to melt men's minds, by waves of sheer mental force -- to simply "think" us to death.
But a stroke of luck saved them from total annihilation, he explains, in the form of a too-sudden Vulcanoid ship materialization. While performing flight maneuvers timed to the nanosecond, which no 23rd-Century humanoid design could ever hope to duplicate, the lead enemy craft had abruptly solidified with its prow occupying the same space and time as the pockmarked surface of some nameless old asteroid. The resultant liberation of energy left no possibility of survivors.
So, it seems even the frightfully advanced Vulcanoid brains can fall to the luck of the draw, every once in a blue moon...
In the station's autopsy lab, Dr. McCoy is asked to view the dwarfish, pointy-eared corpses retrieved from the disabled time-disc and classify them, being expert in alien physiologies with years of experience. He notes the bony hands, the sixth finger; tests the green copper-based blood; examines the arrangement of internal organs; removes a brain & measures the huge inner braincase, and traces the DNA. At last, he declares them highly-evolved mutants of Vulcanian descent.
Naturally, the good doctor uses this revelation to rib Spock endlessly regarding their perpetual Mind vs. Heart debate, as final proof the alien science officer has been wrong all along -- PURE LOGIC LEADS TO GHOULISH MONSTERS.
But Spock is distracted soon enough, during a tour of Starfleet Intelligence's reverse-engineering section. This giant hangar contains the damaged time-disc... the only enemy saucer/time-machine ever recovered by allied forces. With such technology made workable, Starfleet could visit any planet, any era -- theoretically, any point in the history of the Universe.
He is asked to analyze its symbols, its control surfaces, its molded & contoured panels, which are believed to respond to pure thought. But he doesn't make much progress; the mathematical cipher-language of Spock's remote descendents is as foreign to him as calculus to a caveman.
Spock, Kirk and Intelligence Chief Forsythe agree to an experiment: Spock will attempt to gather information about his distant relatives by "remote-viewing" them through the Temporal Vortex Generator, a highly-classified toroid device unknown to the rest of the Starfleet. Much of the basis for this technology was gleaned from the hundreds of civilizations explored by Federation scientists and archaeologists over the years, including the Mars Pyramid, the Orion-T portal, and the Guardian at the Edge of Forever. Objecting, McCoy points out it was likely the base's reckless "off-budget" research into this forbidden area of physics that drew these creatures to the 23rd century in the first place. However, he is overruled.
The 'present day' Vulcan's mental feelers reach out through the artificially-generated time warp, stretching forward across the eons, half a million years into the future of his ancient & venerable planet. Far downstream in the dim & distant future, he detects cool, computerlike minds of formidable grasp...
"How lonely," moans Spock. "How absent of love & of life... "
Suddenly, he senses his intrusion has been detected. A coruscant feedback beam is reflected back upon him, highly amplified; Spock is knocked out of his laboratory chair, unconscious! Medical aids pull off his cranial wires as McCoy shoves bystanders out of the way to get at him. During a quick examination, he finds Spock is relatively uninjured. However, his cranial capacity has grown by almost one centimeter in overall volume!
"That must be how they evolved such large cerebral cortexes & dense layers of glial tissue," exclaims McCoy. "By mutual-resistance training."
Coming around, Spock voices concern that he's called attention to the base... and to himself. He'd experienced the distinct impression that those future Vulcan dwarfs were sifting his mind like sand through a shaker, & had partially downloaded his knowledge and experience before releasing him from their beam. They seemed to be keenly interested in his unusual half-HUMAN psychological makeup... for reasons known only to them.
END ACT I
Act II- (EXT. SPACE): Enterprise hanging off outer planet SATCOM 9.
Scott: (V.O.) "Ship's log, stardate 3471.8: No word yet from the Captain's party. Mr. Sulu & Mr. Chekov are busy making sure we stay concealed at all times behind one of the starbase's outermost satellites, maintaining radio silence as we await a signal from the landing team."
(INT. BRIDGE) A cratered sphere is displayed on the main viewscreen, slowly turning...
Suddenly, meson-waves rock the vessel, echoing off into the far reaches of space. In the dome overhead, gimbal-mounted gravity amps struggle to compensate; Scotty & the rest pull themselves back into their chairs. "What the hell?!"
Chekov rushes to the scanners. "Vulcanoid discs on our port beam, sir!" On the screen, above the planet's curved edge, a pack of predatory discs glides into view...
Meanwhile, back at Starfleet Intelligence, personnel are studying faded yellow images through the top-secret time vortex generator, covertly tracking the spatio-temporal vector of the Mauraders' main fleet (which presents such a juggernaut they don't even bother covering their tracks.)
Awestruck, the Intel people observe long-transpired eras, as cold calculating Vulcanoids probe ever-further backward into Earth's history, thus becoming the inspiration for UFO & saucer legends, such as the "Man from Mars" cliche... and even the basis of our Devil figure!
In the base dispensary, Spock rests up from his Vulcan mind-warp experience, using his temporarily-expanded mental powers to rapidly heal his frazzled brain cells and neuron endings, while he and Kirk commiserate over the situation. Soon Forsythe calls from the station's control room with an alert from base security:
Intruders have just knocked out the ring of defense satellites which lies between Sirius, Aldebaran, & Procyon, swooping down on them all completely undetected, and are now believed heading this way...
McCoy fumes. "Great; now they've smoked out the base's location, & we're all in danger. I hate to say I told you so, but -- I told you so dammit!"
"Kirk to Enterprise. Is everything all right up there?"
"We're under heavy fire, Cap'n. We're trying to hold 'em back from ye."
Kirk's face whitens. "Scotty... get that ship out of here, now!"
"Belay that, Mr. Scott," barks Forsythe. "You are to hold off the Intruder as long as possible. We must never let them gain control of this station, do you hear? That's an order! A Fleet Captain outranks a Ship Commander -- now cease all contact with us until further notice. Acknowledge... " But he is answered only by dead silence.
The sensor-operator gazes into a gooseneck viewer. "Commodore, scans indicate the Vulcanoid saucers have crossed the point of the Enterprise's last known position -- now coming this way."
Kirk urgently turns to the console. "And... what about my ship?"
"Unknown, Captain... I'm not reading her. But I am still reading the Bogeys; they just passed Satellite 7 - heading our way fast!" The command officers stand before an oval viewer, watching their arrival. It is a small fleet; evidently it was not deemed warranted to divert more craft from the main armada, which even 'now' is penetrating into Earth's long past in their relentless search for the precious secret Mankind holds.
"They could arrive instantaneously if they wanted to," McCoy surmises. "They're drawing out the suspense, to heighten the fearful effect on us."
"Well, we don't dare let them gain access to the compound itself!" Forsythe opens a locker, starts grabbing weapons & handing them out. "We'll have to form an infantry perimeter outside on the open surface. We must defend the station at all costs!"
"We'll be back soon, Bones," Kirk promises, slamming shut the carbine tube condenser-action on his phaser rifle (although everyone knows it's a suicide mission). "Better get some rest; I have a feeling you'll be pretty busy patching up folks soon."
EXT. PLANET SURFACE -
A starbase hovercar soars a few feet above the odd, silvery landscape which covers the planet, riding on its force field cushion. Under its bubble top, Forsythe sits at the controls; a phaser rifle hangs from Kirk's shoulder as he scans the horizon with a binocular-like viewmaster. More troops soon follow in larger hovertanks...
The commanders reason that the best they can hope for is to DELAY as long as possible the Vulcanoids' access to the top-secret installation until reinforcements can arrive, like the Alamo. They've got to at least try.
Skulking behind staggered rock formations, phaser-rifles at the ready, the starship captain moves forward along with the infantry men. They crawl on their bellies to a ridge crest at the edge of a canyon, to obtain a commanding view of the basin below. Kirk lays down flat and peers over the rise.
Off in the distance, toward the far horizon, alien craft are descending like black vultures, & sadistic space-elves teleporting from the sleek machines...
The armory corps fire anti-spacecraft guns at the disks overhead, as well as shooting photon grenades at ground forces, from shoulder-held launchers; these matter-antimatter blasts irradiate the surroundings with intense, sporadic flashes, leaving leave deep craters in the planet's crust.
In response, the unaffected Vulcanoids' eyes glow bright green -- and a salvo of deadly thought scorches the entire area, turning everything bright violet, and melting neighboring trees and rocks into liquid lumps.
Captain Kirk rolls across the front line, firing volley upon volley at the invaders, to no effect. All around him, fellow soldiers and space marines fight and die, rush forward & burst into spontaneous combustion, retreat only to dematerialize - or in some cases, be swept off their feet and smashed into the ground, broken. The battle cries & screams of agony waft across the canyon, as red blood spills across the silver sands and men are stomped like ants upon that lonely, distant plain -- mercilessly smoked by the withering mental force of these green-eyed monsters from hell.
The Earthmen's phaser-battle on the surface w/the evil "Martians" lasts all afternoon and into the night, as each course of reinforcements is wiped out in its turn. Yet the station, standing off in the background over some hills, is as yet undamaged. It is certain the Mauraders could simply destroy whole continents with the blink of an eye, but the base's specially-timed reflector fields, made to modulate at continually varying frequencies whose selection was determined by the uncertainty principle, prove somewhat effective in staving off the defenders' total destruction. The resistance might be just enough to hold these hobgoblins, small in number, at bay for a while. But the expected help from Satellite 7 does not arrive, and eventually they run out of troops.
The superior intelligences can be overheard thinking:
'It is time to stop toying with these feeble-witted apes from Earth... '
END ACT II
ACT III - (EXT. PLANET SURFACE):
The starbase is totally at the invaders' mercy. Its environs are a nightmare of dead bodies for miles, as far as the eye can see. Now at long last, the green devils have decided to close in for the kill.
But, just as it seems all is lost...
...the Starfleet troops are rescued by powerful phaser-beams from the sky, which temporarily distract the super-evolved mutants!
It is the U.S.S. Enterprise, providing a diversion by drawing the Vulcanoids' fire, to give the ground forces some cover. Scotty had been hiding the ship in an asteroid field all this time, making repairs & standing by until they could afford to make their move (during which time the ship was ignored like a gnat by these mental giants, while they tested the terran infantry on the planet). Unfortunately that means that the starship-sized gadfly has now itself become the target of the invincibles!
With the first stroke of irresistable force, the great flagship's normally vigorous shields are blown away like petals to the wind. Then the aliens pause - almost as though to savor the moment, if we didn't know better - before smiting the old girl into utter nonexistence...
But instead, at the last minute -- the entire fleet abruptly departs like a flock of raptors, all taking wing at once! It's seems as if the saucer-men, now hastily shrinking into the curled-up dimensions of subspace, have been called away by something more important...
By now it's nearly dawn; the one-sided firefight on the surface is finally over. Battle-weary after 9 hours of combat with the aliens, Kirk & Forsythe are among the handful of survivors, returning in the hovercar to its garage inside the station proper. On arrival, they're slumped over with exhaustion, covered with wounds and scars. They are instantly taken to the sickbay, where Spock has by now recovered from the disasterous Vulcan mind-warp experiment.
It is at this point when Captain Kirk discovers that during all the chaos and madness of warfare and destruction, lost men & communication breakdowns ...his close & trusted advisor McCoy has turned up missing!
"How could this have happened?" Kirk demands.
"We ran out of medical staff about 4 hours ago," explains the base surgeon, "so Dr. McCoy went outside to treat casualties on the south perimeter, when...they abducted him, Captain." The medics on the ambulance crew fill in details, recounting how a dark lozenge dropped its image as an Earth-fighter & dematted the doctor away to God knows where.
"Then that whole attack was only a diversion to distract us from their real goal - which somehow involves McCoy." Kirk pounds his fist on the arm of his chair, frustrated to realize he was unwittingly maneuvered into playing the role of a brute beast, trained and controlled with subtle tricks by very manipulative mega-intelligences. He isn't the only one who feels that way.
"Captain, I believe Dr. McCoy was taken to the future as a hostage." Spock expresses concern that the Vulcanoids may be planning to lure him to their degenerating twilight world, hoping he will somehow advance their mysterious agenda...
That evening, an alien force "assumes control" of the base's subspace transmission network. A message from the 5,000th Century blasts forth:
"We have your old friend here, Spock." Vulcanoids appear in a cave full of stalagmites and machinery, their bald heads & pointed ears casting fiendish shadows on the stone walls behind them. They stand at strange controls before the doctor, who is bound to a neuronic pillar with probes coming out of his brain. "Your old friend will die horribly should you decline to take his place, submitting yourself instead to our examinations & tests. Will you save him, or...?"
"Don't listen to 'em, Spock! It's a trap!" cries out Bones, in agonized echoes. In the background of the cavern, we see divers crude implements of torture which the aliens have assembled down through the ages: a medieval rack; an iron maiden; a king-size bed of nails; etc. It seems the reason such archaic contrivances are used rather than more sophisticated pain-inducing methods is that psychological impact is the real focus for the Vulcanoids - not physical torture itself, which is just a means to that end.
"Silence, Earth-man! Or we will induce even stronger sensations of horror!"
The base Commodore contacts Starfleet HQ on Earth with the news, encrypted by means of unpredictable quantum decay. Spock requests permission to operate the Vulcanoid time-disc, travel to the future, and send McCoy back.
"Permission denied!" bellows Admiral Komack. "Time travel could open up a whole new Pandora's Box of hopeless paradoxes and time-loops we can't even begin to cope with! Any man who tries to fly that machine will be shot on sight -- then arrested & court-martialled! Is that clear, gentlemen? (snarling) Command out!"
Beside himself with frustration, Kirk paces a groove in the floor... until, at last, Spock expresses a desire for meditative privacy. Kirk duly excuses himself and storms out the door to locate Forsythe.
Waiting until his commanding officer leaves, Spock sneaks off down a curved side-corridor. Using a tiny force-field knife concealed in his bootheel, he cuts open a small section of the wall at the precise junction point where security cameras and sensors are routed, remotely programming the system to display empty hallways, with added stock footage of occasional passersby. He quickly moves on...
Soon he comes to an intersection. At the far end of a darkened passagway lies a guarded entrance marked:
TOP SECRET UMBRA - NO ADMITTANCE W/O LEVEL-33 + PASS
This is the door which leads to the station's reverse-engineering section.
Like a creeping cat, Spock slinks up behind the security guard & applies the Vulcan nerve grip, quietly putting him in slumberland and laying him down gently. Then, taking the magnetic code-key from the guard's belt, he deactivates the alarm, opens the doorway, and deftly slips inside.
There before him, unguarded, sits the smooth black saucer from the far-distant future planet Vulcanis, resting on tripod legs. He must act quickly...
But unbeknownst to our noble friend, his activities are being monitored on a secret subspace channel by the Internal Affairs computer. "Attention! Attention! Security breach! Commander Spock has gained access to the vehicle storage hangar and is attempting to commandeer the Vulcanoid object. He is highly cunning and extremely dangerous. You are hearby authorized to use any & all deadly force necessary to stop him!" In the control room, Kirk lurches anxiously; Forsythe bids him be still.
END ACT III
ACT IV (INT. STATION - Secret Hangar Bay):
As Spock attempts to board the futuristic craft, twenty ham-fisted cops teem through the door, bursting as one body into the huge hangar chamber. We hear the Internal Affairs computer shrieking bloody murder in the background.
However, Spock's direct contact with the Vulcanoid mentalities has caused his cerebral functions to grow exponentially. As a result, he no longer needs proximity to disable a subject; he simply casts his gaze upon them at a distance, and they lapse into unconsciousness.
At last he enters; the hatchway slides seamlessly shut behind him. Molding his hands to the controls (and visa versa), the strange craft comes to life...
Just then he hears the muffled voice of someone outside, pounding on the door. "Open up! More guards are on the way!" It is Captain Kirk; somehow he's managed to sneak past the station chief. Spock opens the hatch and he jumps on board. "I don't know how you plan to get us all out of this, Spock, but -- let's GO!"
Spock seals the door and turns back to the controls. He begins to guide the vessel with pure thought, pure intention. As he concentrates, the compact black disc slowly rises upward...
...and then rapidly "phases out", as if "desynchronizing" into the curled-up dimensions of microspace between widely seperated spacetime coordinates.
(EXT. HYPERSPACE - SAUCER):
Kirk and Spock ride the cosmic waves toward a dying, cinder-like planet in another time zone...
(INT. SAUCER):
"So," says Kirk, turning to his steadfast alien friend, "what's your plan?"
"I have no plan, Captain." Spock steers the craft with great focus. "I acted most illogically."
"Hah?" Kirk reacts. "You're telling me you have no plan? Did I understand you to say there is no plan?!"
"My only 'plan' was to take McCoy's place, and send him back to our era in the saucer."
"What? And you -- you call Bones the martyr??"
"It was my human side that abandoned all reason, Jim."
They materialize above a pocked & pitted icicle in outer space, filled with craters and traumas, large as life in the viewport before scattered stars.
Kirk sighs grimly. "Sometimes, Mr. Spock, I wish you DIDN'T have a human side..."
With the help of the saucer's time motion retro-reference simulator, they compare the present stellar positions to familiar constellations like Jorax and Nemon-Rak, verifying the correct date has indeed been arrived at:
Vulcan, circa 500,000 A.D.
"We've been expecting you," says a voice in Spock's mind, as if greeting an old aquaintence.
A powerful outside force takes control of the craft, guiding it downward. Soon the disc lands near what looks to be an entrance to an underground complex, burrowed far into a steep, rugged mountainside. Kirk cautiously disembarks, his phaser drawn, followed by Spock, armed only with his tricorder (for subspace tracking of McCoy's unique brainwave signature).
Before them lies a funereal landscape with a giant red sun, peeking over the barren horizon like a bloodshot eye. All the planet's seas dried up long ago, leaving desert pools of dust; Sheer jagged mountains in the distance throw sharply-divided shadows across vast craters filled with rippling sands.
The massive, stonelike doorway grinds open to admit them...
They descend a ramp straight down a long narrow tunnel. Granite columns line the labyrinthian passages, flanked at regular intervals by support pillars.
Up ahead, cave walls sparkle with gypsum and feldspar; stalactites dangle from the ceiling like splendorous candlelabrae. Through grilled airshafts they see a dark maze of caverns and ebon metal, extending far below the planet's crust - an immense underground complex of power-plants, vast cellular banks and throbbing alien devices.
What unprecedented scientific marvels it must contain! Spock tries to mask his excitement as they catch glimpses of inconceivable machinery beyond, built by a race so old that even their primary will soon be nothing more than a burnt-out core with a faint nimbus of x-rays, a ghost of its former self.
Following the tricorder, Kirk and Spock pass by many levels of vacuous pitch blackness and half-lit galleries, which occasionally seem to stir with subtle hints of activity...
Suddenly, without warning -- Kirk's phaser whips out of his hand, clinking off into the darkness!
They move on...
Soon the tunnel opens onto new vistas. Before them lies a palace of flint, agate and amethyst, glowing in the dark, coated with fluorescent mineral powders and phosphates. They climb down a ladder-like ridge of rock, over high stone ledges suspended above black chasms. Sheer interstices drop off on either side into nothingness..
Kirk slips, catches himself. Swinging in mid-air, he notices the faint but growing trace of sulphuric acid in the warming atmosphere. Looking down, he sees the acrid odor is rising from the blue flames of a burning lava river, far below their level. He hears the trickle of vitriolic molten magma as he pulls himself up. Spock had already noticed it, but kept quiet for morale.
The two would-be rescuers push onward, descending the zigzag staircase of stone all the way down to its base. Across the smooth cave floor, a short "elfin" door awaits, beyond which lies another long gallery with myriad halls, each of which branches off into untold black side-tunnels and blind alleys. They select the shortest route to the blip on Spock's sensors and follow it.
At last, they come to a fork in an unbroken passageway, and spy a glint of sinister greenish light, far down at the other end of a branch tunnel. The tricorder registers McCoy's wave-function. They pick up their pace, heading off in that direction...
The source of the signal lies at the far end of a quarter-mile offshoot passage. But a series of three razor-sharp pendulums must be crossed to get there, each swinging at different instants across the passage to be traversed, each anchorlike blade sailing through the air with a horrendous swoosh...
"It's a damned alien spook-house!" Kirk whispers.
"The builders have evidently installed many devious snares in this maze by which to test their 'lab rats', Captain. We must excercise extreme caution..."
Spock's amplified sixth sense is what allows them to anticipate the exact moment at which to step past the threshold of each pendulum blade, very carefully in graduated stages, one man for one blade at a time. There is a small area to stand in-between each swinging scythe of death.
With great difficulty, they manage to make it past all three of the pendulum-blades alive. Now they have committed fully to continuing forward, rather than go back through that again. The two explorers head further down this long stretch of corridor which seperates them from the old ship's surgeon in the torture room, who could well be dead by now...
Suddenly, the tunnel's false sides slide back to reveal densely-clustered, pointed spikes -- as the walls start closing in on them!
At least the walls up ahead still remain apart, for now - giving the Starfleet men some temporary clearance room to squeeze through, unlike those just barely passed which, even now, are clapping shut as the closure "zips up" right behind them, literally nipping at their heels.
As they race along, Spock outpacing Kirk -- the latter silently drops away behind him. Sensing the lack of footfalls from his Captain, Spock stops & turns around to find that back the other way, Kirk has fallen through a trapdoor into a hidden "cellar" under the floor, which is filling up with poisonous orange gas... while the lid slowly closes.
Spock starts heading back in the direction they came -- meanwhile, in the short space between him & the trapdoor, the spikes are coming ever-closer together!
As he rushes for Kirk's last known location, still meters away, it becomes apparent that he may not be able to find the right panel; it's already almost sealed up tight to blend in with all the others. But then he notices slight fumes or whisps of colored gas, seeping from a crack in the floor about ten feet further...
It is farther back up the tunnel than he'd hoped. Fortunately, the walls they've already passed before that point are now re-opening again, which might leave some room, if timed perfectly, in which to survive... if only he can make it to the trick panel before the closing walls do--
However, a SECOND wave of narrowing walls is quickly following up in its wake!
He leaps with superhuman effort and falls upon the closing metal square; his weight pushes down on the trip-section in the floor, causing the trapdoor to spring back open again. And not a moment too soon -- as sawtoothed Rigellian cryozoids, floating in their native atmosphere, are in the process of tearing chunks out of Kirk's boots. Reaching down into the 10 ft. hole he pulls the Captain out, coughing and choking -- dragging him away stumbling, right before the walls clap shut where they'd just been standing a microsecond earlier.
They must now run twice as fast, to make up for lost time -- the "zipper" tunnel has almost caught up with them, at one point even spearing the flared cuff of Kirk's trousers; he tears free at the last possible moment. They sprint onward, desperately, toward the green light, as section after section of the passage behind them slams shut in sequence, like terrible jaws in pursuit.
If only they can just reach the doorway, at the other end the tunnel--
The two old companions pour on the steam, giving this last leg of the marathon everything they've got...
With one last great herculean surge they lurch forward and tumble headlong through the final threshold, free & clear -- and just in the nick of time, as the last sections of spiked slabs mesh together with the resounding boom of a thunder-crash!
They find themselves now inside a rock-hewn chamber, lying motionless & exhausted. Soon they get up, dust themselves off, and begin wandering around. It is an apparently abandoned facility, with weird equipment on 'naturally'-formed stone shelves and benches; they poke into various nooks and crannies...
Rounding a corner, they spot McCoy -- seated in a stone chair, uninjured, with filaments coming out of his brain. He'd never been physically tortured at all! It was only the FEELING of terror which these hideous evolutionary mutants wished to generate in their abuductees, and that was done more efficiently via mind-control -- by implanting the desired stimuli directly into the subject's nervous system.
"Man, am I glad to see you guys," the doctor grins broadly. "Nothing like a little sentimental journey back home, eh, Spock? "
"We knew you would come for McCoy. But we needed PROOF." The Enterprise officers spin around... to find that several Vulcanoid scientists are watching them through a hidden observation window!
The controlled experiment is over, & they've passed the test: Spock's heroic, self-sacrificing action has saved the Galaxy. For as a half-human hybrid, he has provided the Vulcanoids with an example, a role model -- a bridge between the Mind & Heart. Now that they have seen direct proof, exhibited by Spock himself, that such a marriage of logic & emotion can indeed be produced in their species, they admit their project had been a dismal failure right up until Spock's final test proved his mettle for all time. They release McCoy and explain their hitherto irresolvable plight to the Starfleet men:
The primary star of their trinary system, Omicron-2 Eridani, had cooled into a final ice age. Rather than leave their ancient home, they tried to make a new sun out of the white dwarf secondary, bringing it in closer to the inner worlds. It became actinic as it increased its spin, throwing off heavy isotopes into the void and necessitating their retreat below the surface. Already a reclusive race of dispassionate minds, down here they grew exclusively focused on intellect. Now, millennia later they find that - even with their highly-advanced genetic manipulation - they can no longer reproduce viable offspring, without some unknown factor. If there are to be future generations, the progenitors must carry that creative spark...
Therefore their ultimate object is to develop the higher emotion of love! Without it, they know they cannot pass on this mysterious spark of vitality and thus their race cannot continue. So, in order to aquire the ability to love, it had seemed logical to study the lower emotions first, gradually working their way up to the more difficult ones.
But being devoid of feelings in the first place, they can only measure, analyse & infer the concept of emotion. Without being able to experience it directly, they can only know it abstractly by measuring its physical behavior & effects, with the result that they are still motivated purely by logic, after thousands of experiments and theories. This rigid, self-reinforcing thought pattern cannot help but form a vicious circle or "catch-22"... preventing them from apprehending what any fool could have told them (as old Doc McCoy is quick to point out):
"You can't fix what's in your head with what's in your head!"
Spock proposes a solution: he offers to directly convey his half-human katra pattern to the Vulcanoids via "mass mind-meld", wherein he melds with two beings at once, one hand on each massive cranium; they each in turn meld with two more apiece, each of whom produce eight more, then sixteen and so on until the whole dying race has received his touch, freely given to heal their degenerative civilization.
Though his amplified powers will eventually wane, Spock, son of Vulcan, shall be called their Savior.
FADE OUT