Mudd in Your Eye Read online

  "So don't sit close," he told her, settling pointedly into the farthest chair from her at the dining table. Even though there was a coaster right there in front of him, he set the glass directly on the tabletop, leaving a ring from the condensation that ran down its side.

  Her fantasy was irreparably shattered. No quiet evening staring fondly into his eyes, no backrubs turning slowly into quiet lovemaking—just this tired irritability and spiteful reaction to everything she said. She stood before him with her hands on her hips, breathing hard and trying not to let herself explode when he took another long drink of his laliska.

  "Simon Nordell," she said at last, "is this the way you really want it to be?"

  "Me?" He looked at her indignantly. "Why is it always my fault? You're the one who started in with the questions the moment I came through the door."

  "All I asked was what was wrong."

  "And I told you. Now could I relax for a minute without the security debriefing?"

  Security. Every time she tried to be assertive, he blamed it on her job. As if she couldn't show any personal strength on her own.

  "Fine," she said, suddenly making up her mind. She stepped into their bedroom and tugged the top cover off the bed, then went back out and flung it onto the couch. "Relax all you want, but you can do it right there, because that's where you're spending the night." She went back into the bedroom, punched the privacy button, and as the door slid shut between them shouted, "And you'd better not try coming in here without an apology."

  Whatever he said in reply didn't make it through the room's soundproofing.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly conscious of just how small a starship bedroom was, even in a two-person cabin. And it was a long time until bedtime.

  As her breathing slowed, she wondered: Would he come knock on the door? He had better. Otherwise it was going to be a lonely night for both of them.

  Spock settled into his chair at the bridge's science station, ready for a long evening of data analysis. The Nevis system was astronomically unusual enough that a few hours of observations would no doubt reveal a great deal about the ability of double star systems to support life-bearing planets, and Prastor and Distrel were also interesting in their own right. Two inhabited planets in the same system would provide a wonderful laboratory to study the parallel evolution of both geographic and biological aspects of living worlds. Yet the earlier contact teams had made only the most rudimentary of sensor sweeps. The computer records contained only low-resolution surface maps, and demographic information was even sketchier.

  Spock had already made some interesting discoveries. For instance, there was a very good sensor web around both planets, and even scattered through interplanetary space between them. It was apparently a sophisticated information-gathering system, a spy network that, judging from the sensor capability, could track every living being on either planet or in transit between the two. It was no doubt the result of escalating defense technology, but the duration of the conflict in this system bore testimony to its ineffectiveness in preventing attack.

  Even so, its very existence underscored the value of a careful survey. The sensor web bespoke a high level of technology, high enough to affect other cultures now that the Nevisians had begun trading. Whether or not they ever planned on joining the Federation—a prospect that seemed somewhat dimmer after the unfortunate first meeting in the Distrellian leader's banquet hall—it never hurt to gain as much information as possible about an alien race's planetary resources or technological and economic capabilities. It might even help the next people who dealt with them to avoid some of the mistakes that the Enterprise crew had made.

  Spock wondered how much of the trouble they had encountered could have been avoided had they gone down to the surface with better information. Perhaps some of it, but with Harry Mudd complicating the issue something would undoubtedly have happened sooner or later no matter how well briefed they had been. Mudd had almost certainly been waiting for his chance to get back at Kirk and Spock for thwarting his earlier schemes and leaving him a prisoner of the androids; he would have engineered an excuse to throw them off the planet if one hadn't arisen naturally.

  Of course that couldn't have been his original intention when he had come to the Nevis system. Mudd couldn't have known that the Enterprise would be sent to investigate the results of his trade agreement. He had undoubtedly come here primarily to establish himself as the middleman and skim off half the profit from the sale of Palko fruit, and he had merely taken advantage of the opportunity to settle the score with his old antagonists when it had been presented to him.

  That still left the question of the Stella android. What was she doing here? Watching over Mudd, of course, but the androids could have done that just as well on their home planet. They would never have let him go even with a chaperone unless they had a good reason to do so.

  Unless he had reformed, Spock admitted. That was the sole condition of his release. Logic demanded that Spock at least consider the possibility. But not even logic could make him believe it. It would be easier to believe that the stars could spontaneously rearrange themselves to spell out messages in Klingon.

  Mudd could, however, have convinced the androids that he had reformed. This might be a supervised test on their part, to see how he behaved in galactic society before they released him completely. That would be easy enough to check; Spock activated his communicator and hailed the Distrellian Grand General's palace.

  "This is science officer Spock aboard the Enterprise," he told the woman who answered. "I wish to speak with Stella Mudd."

  "One moment please." The woman consulted a monitor outside of camera range, then looked back up at Spock. "I'm sorry, sir, but she is in private conference with the Grand General. Would you like to leave a message?"

  Did he? Spock considered the implications. If Mudd discovered that Spock wished to speak with his chaperone before the android did, then Harry could order it to answer untruthfully. He did, after all, have limited control over it, even though it wouldn't let him go free. No, it would defeat the purpose of asking the android for information if Mudd had time to prepare it for questioning.

  "No, thank you," said Spock. "I will try again later."

  He broke the connection and leaned back in his chair. He supposed he could send a message to the androids' home planet, but at this distance it would take even longer to get a reply than simply waiting for the local Stella to become available.

  Private conference with the Grand General? It was late evening at the palace. What sort of conference would the Distrellian leader need with a Stella android at that hour?

  Unless of course he wasn't aware she was an android. He had seemed quite interested in her at the party. Perhaps he was trying to initiate a dalliance with her, or even steal her away from Harry.

  From what Spock had seen of her behavior and attitudes, that would be an …interesting prospect. He nearly smiled at the thought.

  Chapter Six

  HARRY WASN'T SMILING. He mopped the sweat from his forehead with his silk handkerchief, then peered cautiously around the corner and down the dimly lit stone hallway. Nobody there, though by now he would be hard pressed to say where there was. The Grand General's palace was a veritable honeycomb of corridors and levels, leading deep underground and far past the outer walls of the compound on the surface. Mudd had spent the last half hour exploring ever farther downward, looking for secret passageways or locked rooms that might indicate hidden treasure beyond, but he had found everything here depressingly open and mundane. Storage rooms filled with old tax records, ancient furniture stacked haphazardly to the ceilings, dusty paintings of rulers deceased for millennia, but not a hint of anything more exotic.

  What was it with these Nevisians? Had they no imagination? These were the cellars of the Grand Palace; surely there must be some planetary secrets stowed here.

  If so, they were well disguised. And the one secret that Mudd most wanted to find seemed best hidden
of all. He had found absolutely no clue that it even existed, much less where it might be, and he had already spent far too much time searching for it. Fortune had smiled on him in making the android Stella resemble the Grand General's first concubine, killed years ago in one of this hellish planet's incessant battles, but even the Grand General's infatuation with her could only distract her for so long. She would eventually come to check on Harry, and he didn't want her to find him here.

  It would be embarrassing enough if someone from the palace found him. Fortunately the vault was on the ground floor where the Grand General could show off his riches to visitors without inconveniencing them on stairs, so nobody could accuse Mudd of going after the family jewels. Also, the party upstairs was winding down and most of the Prastorians had gone home, so the staff was busy cleaning up the detritus of the week-long bacchanalia, but there might still be guards protecting whatever was stored down here. And Mudd had trespassed far beyond the point where he could reasonably claim to have just taken a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom. He would have to feign drunkenness, or even total dementia, if he were accosted now.

  And all for what? Tax records and a few antique chairs? This was ridiculous. Worse than that; it was downright insulting. He hadn't stopped a war and set up an interplanetary distribution system just to start a fruit-sales network. He was after much bigger game here.

  He'd had plenty of time to study the androids' records during his incarceration with them. They had been in this sector of the galaxy for over a million years; even though they weren't programmed to explore on their own, they had amassed considerable information about people who had visited them. And one of the most intriguing records concerned a group of Nevisians who had visited the androids over thirteen thousand years ago. A thousand years before they had gone to war with each other. They had been a younger, more exuberant race then, swaggering out into the local region of space with every expectation of founding a galactic empire. They were proud, cocky, ambitious—and unfortunately undergunned. The androids had no record of who finally chased them back to their home system, but the Nevisians had quickly become minor players in local interstellar politics, then no players at all. They had pulled home their explorers, withdrawn their ambassadors, and dropped out of sight. Some time later, probably for something to do, they had begun to fight among themselves.

  The kicker was, they had done all this without starships. According to the androids, they had simply beamed themselves where they wanted to go, even across interstellar distances. That was a trick nobody in the Federation knew how to do, and Mudd figured he could name his own price for it if he came up with the technology.

  The trouble was, the Nevisians had apparently forgotten it. They still had fairly respectable transporter capability—they beamed back and forth between Prastor and Distrel as easily as most people beamed from starship to surface—but Mudd had seen no sign of interstellar travel in the entire time he'd been here. He had already examined the transporters in the palace, and even bribed one of the operators into selling him the schematics for them, but they were obviously not what he was looking for. Now he was reduced to skulking about in the shadowy catacombs in search of ancient clues. It was enough to make an entrepreneur weep.

  Worse, now that Kirk was here with the Enterprise, Mudd had to move fast. It wouldn't take that pointy-eared pet Vulcan of his very long to grow curious about the level of technology here, and if he discovered the long-range transporter before Mudd did, Mudd could kiss his profit on it goodbye. The Federation might not mind if he sold exotic fruit to the rest of the galaxy, but technology like that would be confiscated "for galactic security" or some such excuse within a heartbeat. Mudd's only chance was to make a swift escape with it and sell it to as many races as possible before anyone could hoard it for themselves.

  Provided he could make an escape at all. By pretending to take an interest in interstellar politics and proposing to stop the Nevisians' twelve-millennium war, he had managed to win his release from the android planet and reduce his number of keepers to one of the Stella harpies. He had assumed that she would be easy enough to shake when the time came, but now he wasn't so sure. Without a working interstellar transporter he would have to leave by ship, but hers and the Enterprise were the only ones available. Mudd was certain she had disabled hers just to thwart him should he try to liberate it, and while he was sure he could eventually find whatever she had done and repair it—he was good at bypassing lock-outs and the like—he suspected she wouldn't allow him the time. The Enterprise would be even harder to hijack, though Mudd wouldn't rule out the possibility. The larger the ship, the larger the crew, and the more weak links for a sufficiently gifted operator to exploit.

  However, all that would have to wait until the time was ripe, and unfortunately it was nowhere near that stage yet. In fact, it was time to retrace his steps and put in another appearance upstairs before bedtime, lest his disappearance arouse suspicion in that infernal mechanical Stella.

  A noise from below made him pause just as he was about to step into the stairwell and begin the tedious ascent. It had been a high-pitched whine, followed by a whoosh of displaced air. Almost certainly a transporter. Could he have finally stumbled upon his quarry? He took a cautious step forward and peered down to the next floor, but he couldn't see anything from that angle and he didn't want to reveal himself by openly descending the stairs.

  Another transporter sounded, then another and another. And now Mudd heard voices whispering softly. That answered one question: someone had beamed in rather than out. And from the sounds of it they had materialized in the open corridor directly below him. That seemed an odd place for someone to arrive, unless they were interested in the same thing Mudd was.

  Could it be Kirk already? Damn the man for meddling—he always managed to arrive at the most inconvenient moment. It had taken all Mudd's self-control to smile and welcome him to the peace celebration, and it had been a stroke of sheer luck that an opportunity had arisen to kick him back off the planet before he could do any more damage than he had. Mudd suspected he wouldn't be so lucky a second time.

  But on the other hand, maybe he had just been handed Kirk's head on a platter, for if it was Kirk and his crew sneaking into the Grand Palace to steal the silverware, Mudd just might be able to get them kicked right on out of the Nevis system.

  Taking from his pocket the miniature tricorder that he had intended to use to probe the secrets of the interstellar transporter, he knelt down, supressing a grunt, and peered around the edge of the stairwell. All he needed was one clear scan of them that he could show the Grand General, and the game would be up.

  But what he saw instead made him nearly drop the tricorder. They were Prastorians. Dozens of them in deep red battle armor, armed with disruptors, gathering for a sneak attack on the palace.

  Mudd had seen disruptors in action when he first arrived here. They were directed energy weapons, something like phasers, but considerably messier. They had no niceties like a "stun" setting; they were for killing, nothing else. And they had a very, very long range.

  Not even waiting to scan the Prastorians with his tricorder, Mudd crept slowly backward, stood up, and turned to go. He had to get upstairs and spread the alarm. But as he started upward with exaggerated caution to avoid making any noise, he momentarily lost his balance, and when he reached out to steady himself against the banister his tricorder clicked against the wood and the sound echoed in the stairwell.

  He immediately heard a shout from below, and the footsteps of many people running toward him. Mudd glanced down the corridor, looking for cover, but it was too far to the nearest doorway. His only chance lay in outrunning the soldiers on the steps, or at least keeping one flight between them so they couldn't get a clear shot at him.

  He took the first few steps two at a time, heedless now of the noise he made, but he only made one flight before he had to slow to one step at a time. It was no contest and he knew it. Of his many skills, running was probably hi
s least impressive.

  There was no reason now to remain silent. It was highly unlikely that anyone in the palace could hear him, but it was even less likely that he could outrun trained soldiers, so Mudd shouted at the top of his lungs "Help! Attack! Help!" as he ran. The footsteps below paused, and voices hurriedly conferred in whispers, but that only gained Mudd a few seconds before they were after him again.

  The fact that they paused at all, however, gave him another idea. As he rounded the corner and began to ascend yet another flight, he slapped the walls repeatedly with his hands, hoping it would sound like more footsteps, and he shouted, "Thank God you've come! They're right behind me! Prastorian soldiers. Get ready to shoot!"

  "How many of them?" he asked in a deeper voice, then answered in his own, "Only ten or twenty—you can take them easily."

  He continued to stagger up the stairs, panting now from the exertion, but his fake dialogue had earned him a reprieve. He made it up two more flights before he heard pursuit behind him again. As soon as he was sure they were gaining on him he resumed screaming "Help! Attack!" and he made two more flights before he slipped on a step and fell heavily to his knees. He was only three or four flights from the ground floor, but that was as far as he was going to make it; his left knee could barely hold him when he stood up. Running on it was out of the question.

  So he shouted upward one last time, "We're under attack!" Then he turned and stood on the landing, arms at his sides, to await his doom.

  But just as the Prastorians burst into view, he heard a door slam open above him, and a familiar voice screeched, "Harcourt? Harcourt Fenton Mudd, what are you up to now!"

  Oh joy, Mudd thought. Of all the people who could have come, it had to be her. "Now we're in trouble," he said to the surprised Prastorians.

  Spock's call caught Kirk in the shower. Could Admiral Tyers have responded already? She'd been out of her office when he'd filed his report; he didn't expect to hear back from her until tomorrow. He switched off the ultrasonic beamer, stepped out of the cubicle, and padded across the soft carpet to the intercom. "Kirk here," he said.