Star Trek: The Original Series - 147 - Devil’s Bargain Read Free Page A

beautiful I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen many.”
    “Thank you, Captain, I agree,” Hannah replied. Her voice was as mellifluous as her appearance was beautiful. “I was born here, and I feel that I am oneof the luckiest creatures in the galaxy. I wish that you could have come at a less trying time. You seem to appreciate the finer things, and there is so much I could show you.”
    “So you are native Vesbian?” Kirk asked. “And you have never left the planet?”
    “Oh, I have been to Starbase Twelve and to a few other nearby Omega sector systems on short trade expeditions. But those only lasted for a standard week or so.” She looked over the rail of the antigravity sled and motioned outward. “For you see, Captain, I heard the call of my native world, I felt it. For a Vesbian, there is no place like home.” She turned back to Kirk. “Can you understand how I feel, Captain Kirk?”
    “I don’t quite understand,” replied. Kirk. “But I’m beginning to.”
    The antigravity sleds arrived at their destination after twenty minutes or so of flying and came to dock near a rocky outcrop in one of the snowcapped mountains.
    “Welcome to the Hesse Mountains,” Hannah said. “I was born near here in a little chalet. My dear mother is buried in a cemetery at the foot of this hill.”
    “I’m very sorry to hear that,” said Kirk.
    “Since Miriam died, Hannah has been more than a daughter to me. She has been a helpmate,” the chancellor put in. “She is extremelyaccomplished, and a graduate of our finest institution. It is not nepotism that led me to appoint her to her current post, but her ability.”
    Kirk leaped down from his sled to the landing platform surface. He turned to aid Hannah in her descent but found that she had lithely sprung off the antigravity sled and landed gracefully beside him.
    In the side of the rock before them was set a large door at least ten stories tall. It hung on enormous hinges and was in the open position.
    “How thick would you say that door was, Spock?” Kirk asked.
    “Approximately 9.2 meters,” Spock replied. “A formidable barrier.”
    So this was the plan, Kirk thought. Underground shelters. The chancellor led them through the opening and into the heart of the mountain.
    It was an impressive tour. The Vesbians had dug deep. The shelter was not merely in the mountain but under the mountain, dug into its very roots. The Vesbians had carved a vast warren using mining phasers and hard labor. Spock provided an estimate that the space could easily house up to a third of the population of the colony, which was near twenty thousand. Under the living and working quarters were the food stores. Not only were there large stockpiles of grain and other essential nutrients in dried form, there were hydroponics labs filled with growing plants, and underground hangars filledwith all variety of the planet’s fauna, including a herd of the local cattle. In fact, the complex resembled Noah’s Ark more than it did a fallout shelter.
    “Would you estimate that they have provided sufficient genetic variety to re-create the ecosystem of the planet here, Doctor?” asked Kirk of McCoy.
    McCoy checked his life sciences tricorder readings and nodded. “Possible,” he said. “I think they’re very near to the threshold for that. But the thing is, Jim, how are they going to do that on the surface after that giant rock hits? When that door opens up again, it’s going to be a different planet out there. Paradise will have vanished.”
    “I know,” said Kirk. “We’ve got to get them to see this.”
    “Seems you’ve taken a personal interest in the matter,” McCoy said, nodding toward Hannah Faber. “And if I’m not mistaken, the matter has taken a personal interest in you.”
    “You could be right, Bones,” Kirk replied.
    “I often am,” McCoy said. “But any country doctor could’ve told you that.”
    •   •   •
    During the tour of the fallout shelter, Kirk was