Kirk waited, hand poised on the doorknob. He closed his eyes for a single moment, inhaled, then turned the knob and entered the crowded room with a purposeful stride. Spock and Richardson followed close behind.
At the unexpected entry, the man Kirk recognized as Palmer stopped in mid-sentence, his weathered face tightening with curiosity and a faint hint of irritation as he studied the three intruders. "Gentlemen?" he asked, maintaining the dignified pose despite the accusing expression. "Is there some mistake here?"
Kirk smiled reassuringly as he moved to the doctor's side at the head of the table. All eyes were on him. "Please pardon the interruption, ladies and gentlemen," he began confidently, scanning the curious eyes which stared at him from the long table, "but since this meeting centers on the possibility of contacting other intelligent life in the galaxy, I thought you might be interested in something I have to show you."
His eyes turned to the Vulcan, who was still clad in the woven hat, then nodded to Richardson as all eyes followed his gaze. In a single movement, the Vulcan reached up, removed the hat, and raised his eyes to the crowd as the slanted ears and undeniably alien features were revealed.
At first, there was a moment of hushed astonishment, a few disbelieving laughs, and a general aura of shock. Kirk's eyes traveled quickly over the crowd, noting that everyone in the room was staring at the Vulcan with wide-eyed wonder—with two obvious exceptions. Those two, however, had already risen from their seats on opposite sides of the table, their faces cold and expressionless. He saw one of them raise a hand, and something metal glistened in the palm.
In one quick flurry of movement, Kirk whirled about, tripped the stunned Doctor Palmer, and sent him sprawling to the floor—out of the line of fire when a silent weapon hurled its death charge into the air. Spock had been right; it wasn't a conventional weapon. In a moment of out-of-sync disjointedness, he saw the small cartridge hit the wall behind where Palmer had been standing just a moment before. The capsule disintegrated on impact, and a green fluid oozed down the wall.
Poison—undoubtedly undetectable once in the bloodstream—and undoubtedly a poison for which there were no antidotes on Earth. The operatives had probably intended to make their silent move sometime during the meeting itself; and, at the very worst, the cause of death would have been listed as coronary arrest or massive stroke. The weapon was held in the palm of the hand, barely larger than a coin, and could be discharged repeatedly during an apparently innocent movement such as a wave of the hand.
For an instant, time stood still; but the crowd quickly began dispersing as reality returned. People ran to the exits; and Kirk noticed abstractly that Palmer and his two associates had ducked out a back entrance which lead into a kitchen area—where they would hopefully be safe until the melee was over.
He saw the Vulcan move in on one of the operatives instantaneously, the hard fist lashing out to send the pseudo-man to the ground. But the satisfaction faded when he turned to see the expression of horror on Richardson's face. In a single instant, he knew that his roommate had been hit by one of the cartridges, and he felt himself go cold inside as it all came home. They had come here to die, or simply to go back into nonexistence … but now that it was actually happening, EnsignKirk discovered himself all but paralyzed with resentment and something bordering on terror. Disjointedly, he realized that these two alien machines were responsible for the whole thing—his out of place life, the surreal universe to which he had belonged … and now for the death of his friend.
Turning his anger on the operatives, he forced himself to move, lunging across the table toward the second android. In the sudden confusion, most of the guests were already gone, and the few which remained were beginning to run toward the door, some tripping and falling, then quickly regaining their footing. As if in a film, Kirk heard the muffled shouts, the shuffling, and the sense of panic which permeated the air. In another moment, his ears detected the horrible hiss of the weapon's discharge once again, as the operative fighting Spock began firing several rounds in a circular motion, obviously aiming for the direction of Palmer.
By the time Kirk's shoulder impacted with his own android's stomach, however, the room was clear except for Spock, Richardson and the two machines.
With difficulty, Kirk wrenched his gaze away from Richardson, and managed to bring the Romulan machine to the floor. But he knew he would have little hope of defeating a mechanism in hand-to-hand combat. Desperately, he grabbed for one of the chairs which had been overturned in the panic, and brought it down across the Romulan's head. But instead of lapsing into unconsciousness as a human would have done, the operative merely rolled to its side, its expression never changing as it kicked Kirk's feet from under him and brought him down. The chair splintered, raining jagged wood.
Kirk grabbed in slow motion for the mechanical throat, then forced himself to remember that his usual street tactics would be of little value now. His eyes scanned the floor; and a bittersweet satisfaction settled in his stomach when his gaze settled on one of the candleholders which had been knocked askew. He grabbed it frantically before the operative could get a firm grip on him. Then, rolling quickly to his feet, the human backed up as the machine advanced, its cold blue eyes never wavering. When the android stood less than a foot away, looking down at Kirk as if in victory, the human lashed out with the crude weapon, driving the point of the candle holder deep inside the glass eye. The mechanism reacted only by stumbling back one step, then advancing again, using the visual sensor in the other eye to sight its target. Somewhere, it had lost the weapon it originally carried, and relied on its own strength now, moving in on the human once again.
Kirk doubted that the device would be foolish enough to repeat the same mistake twice, and he waited until it loomed over him, its six-foot frame blocking all other sight. Every instinct told Kirk to kick, to go for the vulnerable areas as he'd done in the past; but he realized that this machine had no weak points … other than its numerous sensors.
He could easily see where his first attack had all but obliterated the one eye; and if the mechanism could be permanently blinded, it would hardly be able to complete its mission. At the very worst, it would wander around aimlessly until its power source was exhausted.
As he saw the mechanical arm rise above his head in slow motion, he feigned to the right, then deliberately rolled to the floor, slipping between the machine's long legs and coming up behind it before it could turn. With a grunt of pain as one leg kicked him a glancing blow, Kirk picked up the dismembered chair, wrenched one sharp wooden leg free, and used it as a club to beat the insane machine back. Then, continuing to battle the flailing arms, he drove it toward the table, his thrusts laying several layers of pseudo-skin open to reveal nothing more than a bloodless mass of what faintly resembled human flesh. As it fell to the floor, apparently disoriented by the battering which clouded its sensors, Kirk turned the sharp end of the chair leg toward its midsection, leaned into the thrust with all his strength, and drove it deep inside the mechanical assassin.
Though the expression on the operative's face never altered, there was a sound of what might have been mistaken for pain in a human. But the last shred of logic informed Kirk that it was nothing more than the advanced gears and sensor mechanisms grinding to their final halt, nothing more than the programming banks being destroyed once and for all.