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  Mudd's Angels

  by J.A Lawrence

  INTRODUCTION

  THIS BOOK COMPRISES the fourteenth and last of the first three seasons' presentations of the live Star Trek series. The first two sections, Mudd's Women and I, Mudd, by Stephen Kandel, were first telecast in 1966 and 1967; the third section, The Business, as Usual, During Altercations, was written for this book by J.A. Lawrence.

  James Blish, the adapter of the other scripts in the series, died in 1975. He left part of Star Trek 12, and the two Kandel scripts above, partially completed. They have been given a little polishing by J.A. Lawrence in the course of preparing these two books for publication.

  Please note that, due to a Tholian Web of great complexity having to do with rights and agreements, it was necessary to disregard the episode referring to Harry Mudd from the animated series.

  Again, thank you all for your letters. They do keep coming; the way Star Trek lives is a miracle.

  I would like to thank Mr. Dennis Simopoulos, Director of the Astronomy Department of the Kugenides Institute, for his technical help and endless patience.

  May the Great Bird of the Galaxy watch over us all

  J.A. Lawrence

  Athens

  1977

  For those of you who ask how to get in touch with Star Trek groups, you can write to the Star Trek Welcomittee, P.O. Box 206, New Rochelle, New York 10804, for a directory. They ask that you send a stamped, self-addressed envelope when requesting information. The Welcomittee Central Information Center is c/o Mary Louise Dodge, P.O. Box 207, Saranac, Missouri 48881.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

  MUDD'S WOMEN by Stephen Kondel

  PART II

  I, MUDD by Stephen Kandel

  PART III

  THE BUSINESS, AS USUAL, DURING ALTERCATIONS by J. A. Lawrence

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  ONCE THE MUDD affair was straightened out for good and all—insofar as anyone can be sure it was straightened out—the Scientific Advisory Board demanded an explanation of it, and Starfleet Command so ordered us. Few orders I have ever received turned out to be so difficult, but with the aid of my officers I managed to put one together.

  The report now lies in the SAB's immense library computer, and may be read by any authorized person, but it is dull stuff, as such reports have to be. It leans heavily on the facts, and the facts are the least illuminating part of the Mudd affair. What mattered was the man, and the SAB is relentlessly impersonal.

  When I had put the wooden document into final form as best I could, and Lieutenant Uhura had transmitted it to Command, I said so. I do not recall my exact words, but I think I said, "The Board won't get anything out of that, and nobody else will ever read it."

  "Too true," said Mr. Scott, my Engineering Officer. "It was aye a crazy business from start to finish, and muckle glad I am that we're shut of it. But yon report drains all the life out o't."

  I tried to catch the eye of my Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Leonard McCoy, but he was looking glumly at the deck. "Bones?" I said. "What do you think?"

  "I suppose Scotty’s right," McCoy said, rather reluctantly. "Of course we did include my psychological analysis of Mudd, but there's not much feeling in that either. Nothing knocks down an experience like trying to stuff it into the SAB's pigeonholes."

  "Well, that's that, anyhow," I said. "Too bad we couldn't give it any of the flavor, but we had no choice. Do you agree, Mister Spock?"

  My First Officer, who is half Vulcan, is notorious in Star Fleet for his devotion to facts and logic (though too few people know as much as we do about his more important courage, honor and loyalty). Aboard the Enterprise, Dr. McCoy, who knows better, pretends he thinks Spock a sort of organic computer. Even I was surprised when Spock said:

  "Not entirely, Captain. A better account might be possible, and if so, I would think it desirable."

  "Oho. Please tell us why."

  "The Mudd business—or the series—occurred in a reasonably well-organized area of the galaxy, Captain; an area where law and order either prevailed, or could be expected to prevail in the near future. The Scientific Advisory Board obviously believes that a detailed description of the events will make matters run more smoothly still.

  "I am not so sanguine. Mudd was a random factor, a human sport who misbehaved and upset all calculations. He was a fascinating aberration, and I think it likely that he will not be the last. The Board, safe at Headquarters, has forgotten that such wild offshoots ever happened, and might happen again. Nor can we so remind them, for the form in which we were required to report precludes it. It would perhaps be well to make a closer record, in language that someone else might read, as a general warning that human beings can be wildly erratic."

  "Not, of course, including you," McCoy said.

  "Bones, belay that—Mister Spock's human side has saved us all time and time again!"

  "I know that. Sorry, habit dies hard. Spock, apologies."

  "Accepted, Doctor."

  "But what can we do?" I asked the bridge in general. "Lieutenant Uhura, you're our Communications Officer. Could you make a proper tale of the Mudd affair—make people understand the craziness Scotty mentioned, the problem Mister Spock sees in it, the way we felt about it? I agree that it would be worth doing."

  "Captain, I doubt it," she said, giving me my second surprise in as many minutes; the skills involved in her specialty were so various that I'd been sure they included this one. She must have seen my reaction. "You see, sir, my job is to communicate facts—or sometimes to conceal or distort them, but telling a long, complicated story—and this one is surely complicated!—is a special talent, and people who have it usually aren't encouraged to go into Communications. No captain wants a Communications Officer with an irresistible urge to romancing, or embroidering the truth when he finds it dull."

  "We don't need embroidering to this tale, but I take your meaning. Are we stymied, then? Or do you have an alternative idea?"

  "I do. Our civilian passenger—"

  "Lawrence? The Integrator? Surely they aren't encouraged to romance, either."

  "No, Captain, but an Integrator nevertheless does more than merely observe and record events. He has to weigh them for relative importance, draw inferences and make interpretations.

  "What I suggest is that all of us draw up our own individual accounts of our encounters with Mudd, including the computer. Then we hand the documents to Integrator Lawrence to… integrate as a narrative."

  "A splendid idea," I said. "But would the Integrator do it? I have no power to issue orders to civilians, except where the survival of the ship or the mission is concerned."

  "I think so. It will probably be quite a while before we reach Alpha Aldiss, and I don't suppose there's much to integrate before we arrive. I think Lawrence might be persuaded." She smiled. I did too—Uhura can be very persuasive.

  "Mister Spock, gentlemen, your opinions?"

  There were no demurrers, and Integrator Lawrence, it turned out, needed no persuasion. What follows, then, is that story. We are still too close to the events it covers to know how much sense it will make to a fresh mind. We are, however, quite sure that it is more coherent than anything we could have produced.

  James T. Kirk

  Captain

  U.S.S. Enterprise


  Star date 6107

  PART I

  MUDD'S WOMEN by Stephen Kondel

  STAR DATE 1329.1

  CLEARLY, the moving light on the Enterprise screen was not a star. Stars do not adopt evasive tactics. They do not try to run away from starships, but stay put in their orbits. So the moving light on the screen was baffling. Captain James T. Kirk frowned at it

  "An Earth vessel, Mister Spock?"

  "It's hard to say, Captain. I'm getting no registry beam from it."

  Chief Engineer Scott halted in his rounds of the bridge stations to look at the screen. "If that is an Earth vessel, he'll be overloading his engines in a minute."

  The moving light changed course. They watched the maneuver in silence. Then Sulu said from his console, "He knows we're after him, Captain!"

  "Stay with him." Kirk got up from his command chair to go to the Communications console, but Lieutenant Uhura shook her head. "I've tried all frequencies, sir. He either refuses to answer, or he's not reading us."

  Its changed course was heading the odd light into the dense glitter of an asteroid group. Kirk's frown deepened. "Deflectors on, Mister Farrell."

  The red-headed navigator, hitting a control, evoked the hum of the deflector screens. Sulu said sharply, "He's seen the asteroids, sir."

  Kirk nodded. "We remain with him, Mister Farrell. He's trying to lose us among them."

  Spock called, "Captain, I make it out as Earth vessel composition about the size of the small J-class cargo ships—" He broke off as his sensors gave him new, alarming news. "His engines are super-heating!"

  Farrell shouted, "There go the engines now, sir!"

  Kirk wheeled toward the screen. The light had burst into a flare—and winked out. Darkened and now powerless, the small vessel would be drifting at the mercy of the speeding asteroids. A somber Farrell said, "He's had it. One impact, and that'll be one dead ship. Unless—we could put our deflector screens around him—?"

  Scott, his mind on his precious engines, cried, "We'll overload ourselves if we try that, Captain ! He's too far away!"

  Kirk ignored him. "Mister Farrell, cover him with our deflector screen. Mister Scott, Mister Spock—stand by in the Transporter Room."

  The hum of the screen rose high and strained. To the flash of red lights the alarm whined through the bridge. At his own console, Kirk was close to regretting his decision. Engine temperature was climbing, far too rapidly. The needle rose higher… higher.

  The lights dimmed and brightened. "That, sir, was one of our dilithium circuits," said Sulu.

  Kirk seized his intercom. "Bridge to Transporter Room. Start beaming that crew aboard!"

  The lights dimmed again. Uhura, over the protesting roar of the engines, cried, "I'm getting a distress signal from them, sir!"

  Kirk spoke into his mike. "We're getting a response, Mister Scott. Ask them for coordinates."

  "I have, sir. We're locking on!"

  Medikit in hand, McCoy hurried to the Transporter Room. But the materialization process taking place on the platform startled him. Though all the six positions on the platform were activated, only one shape was gathering substance. It gathered a lot of it. It continued to collect it for some time, until it had formed into an obscenely fat man. He wore a shabby, gilt-buttoned uniform of no known designation and a yachting cap was set rakishly on a gray, curly fringe of greasy hair. But despite the soft jowls that spilled over the collar of his uniform, McCoy did not think he looked soft. He had the unmistakable air of a man who knows his way around—and has often been around it. With an unconvincing look of narrow-eyed suspicion, he stepped from the platform.

  "Not meaning ingratitude," he said, "but where is it I find myself?"

  McCoy, replacing his kit, said, "On board the U.S.S. Enterprise."

  The fat man glanced heavenward. "Praise be." He extended a pudgy hand to the doctor. "I am Walsh—Captain Leo Walsh."

  McCoy ignored the hand. Spock pressed forward. "How many more in your crew?"

  Yellow teeth showed in a grin. "Just a few more."

  Scott said, staring, "Your vessel's breaking up, man! If we don't get them over here now…"

  "Wasn't sure this was a friendly ship." Walsh pointed to the Transporter controls. "All three of 'em should be in position now."

  Scott swept his hand down across the console.

  Up on the bridge, the lights dimmed again and did not brighten. Kirk saw the third dilithium circuit indicator cease to function.

  "We're supplementing with battery power, sir," said Sulu worriedly.

  "Mister Scott! Are they all on board yet?" said Kirk into the mike.

  "Only one, sir. But we're locked on to three more."

  "There she goes!" yelled Farrell.

  The screen flashed as an asteroid hit the darkened ship in dead center. Then the bland, oblivious stars returned. If any human life had been aboard… "Are they safe, Scotty? Did you get those others?"

  "I—I can't say, sir."

  Scott, like McCoy and Spock, was anxiously watching the transporter platform. It glittered with the sparkles that preceded materialization, but that was all. McCoy glanced at Walsh. Though some concern showed on his fat face, he stood composedly, almost nonchalant; a man on intimate terms with that unpredictable female, Lady Luck.

  Urgently. Kirk's voice reached them. "Their ship's gone. Did you get those three, Mister Scott?"

  "We're not sure, sir. We're locked on to something."

  McCoy went to the console. "Scotty, what's wrong?"

  "I dinna ken! With the dilithium crystals out--"

  "At best," Spock said, "it will take longer on battery power."

  "Never trusted the blasted thing anyway," McCoy growled. "Dematerializing people, squirting their atoms around the universe like—"

  "Now!" said Spock. "Got them!"

  The shimmering on the platform was assuming shapes—shapes that pulled a gasp from Scott. Three women slowly coalesced—three women, each possessed of a loveliness calculated to fire ardor in the breasts of saints. All the words occurred to McCoy… "captivating"… "breath-taking"… "gorgeous." A blonde of golden dreams; a dark enchantress who might have launched the Greek armada toward Troy; a small, silvery nymph who suggested ice lit by fire within. And their appeal was frankly sexual. They smiled in open invitation to every man in the room.

  Even Spock was taken aback. Scott whispered, "How about that?"

  Walsh went to the platform. "It's all right, ladies. We're in good hands."

  Good or bad, they intended to be in somebody's hands at the first opportunity. They made this abundantly lucid by the way they moved from the platform.

  Still ignorant, up on the bridge, of the kind of guests he was entertaining, Kirk signaled the Transporter Room. There was no reply. Farrell, turning, said, "We're clearing the asteroid belt now, Captain."

  "Deflector screen off. Conserve power, Mister Farrell."

  As the whine of the strained engines diminished, Kirk tried the Transporter Room once more "Are you reading me or not, Mister Scott?"

  Spock's troubles began as he escorted the group down the corridor. Within three minutes he counted twenty dropped jaws as crewmen forgot why they had been passing. The women swayed, deliberately provocative, highly subversive. As he herded them into the elevator, he drew a deep breath of relief.

  Walsh undertook to enlighten him. "These starships are somethin'—but men are men, wherever they are. Machinery will never take it out of 'em."

  Spock addressed the elevator's control console. "Deck Twelve."

  Walsh glanced at his ears. "You're part Vulcan?"

  Spock nodded, eyeing him calmly. Mudd whispered, silently. "So a pretty face doesn't affect you? Not unless you want it to."

  It was an unfortunate remark. The women closed in around him, drawn like magnets to the lodestone of the unattainable. It was not the first time that Spock had encountered this phenomenon; he gently but firmly interposed a lever between himself and the women. />
  "Save it, ladies," said Walsh with a careless shrug. "This breed can switch off its feelings."

  Spock's eyes flicked him, but his face was impassive. The dark girl spoke. "I apologize for Mister Walsh, sir. He's so used to buying and selling people, he—"

  "I'll handle the conversation, love," Walsh told her.

  On the way to the Captain's cabin, the men who didn't stop to gape indulged themselves in appreciative whistles: discipline on the Enterprise appeared to be seriously threatened. Stalking ahead of the guests, Spock very sincerely wished that Walsh's vessel had been a J-class cargo ship.

  Kirk's back was turned as he ushered the party into the cabin, which had not been designed for the comfort of six people. Spock's left eyebrow cocked in well-controlled amusement. He'd set up this encounter, and was mildly curious to see the results. He spoke in his most formal military tone.

  "The commander of the transport to see you, sir."

  The fuming Kirk wheeled. "What the… hell did you think you were doing?" is what he had meant to say. He never said it.

  The wave of female magnetism hit him like a blow; the three beautiful women liked what they saw, and he was going to like them. Long eyelashes swept up and down over gleaming eyes. Hips rolled sweetly in the close quarters; Spock would have sworn he could smell musk. They liked the Captain; they liked his looks, they liked his bad temper, they liked the set of his shoulders—and above all, they liked the way he was looking at them. Walsh, wearing an affable, knowing smile, let Nature take its course.

  Kirk groped for his lost composure. "And— these ladies? Are they your… your crew, Commander?"

  The fat man showed yellow teeth in a grin. "No, Captain. They're my cargo."

  Kirk swallowed. He looked at the women. Cargo? These divinities of female shape? That somber beauty—the heat was too much. He ran a finger round the suddenly-tight collar of his shirt. He dragged his eyes to the unpleasantness of Mudd.

  "Uh—what do you mean by cargo?"

  "The ladies are cargo. Cargo is my business. However, if your question concerns the character of these ladies, let me assure you—"