The planet hung in the blackness of space like a jeweled ornament on a celestial Christmas tree. Bathed in the white-yellow glow of its G2 sun 145 million kilometers away, Timshel turned slowly in its orbit, a blue-and-white oasis in a dark desert of desolation, an exquisite anomaly in the lifeless void that was the average condition of the universe.

As visiting interstellar vessels slowed from their headlong pace across the galaxy and spiraled in toward planetary orbit, the world before them became even more inviting. Polar ice caps shone like beacons, and then landmasses, slowly turning green, appeared beneath the swirling clouds.

Five continents, set in azure like green and brown patches in a blue quilt, swam into view as the planet turned, and then the sprinkles of islands and island groups. From the arctic regions to the temperate zones to the tropics, the colors and shapes of the land and sea blended from one into another to make a seamless whole.

A shuttlecraft, descending, would adjust its course toward the northern temperate zone. From its windows or viewscreens passengers would see mountains capped with snow thrusting their way through forests, and they, in turn, would open on plains carved by the brown traceries of rivers and streams. Finally, where the rivers merged or the oceans stopped at the land, collections of buildings and highways would appear, ivory models in the day, a handful of scattered jewels by night, that provided the only proofs of human habitation, the subtle answer to the question: Is there life on Timshel?

The shuttle coming in for a landing at the port near the largest collection of structures on the planet, Timshel City, would see, beside the deep blue of the western ocean, a glistening patch of white enclosed by a verdant ring in which the dominant green was dotted with red and yellow, like an impressionist painting. As the shuttle got closer, the patches and dots would resolve into buildings and flowering trees. The buildings were mostly low structures like villas, each nestled in its own garden privacy. Toward the center of the city, the height of the buildings gradually increased, although none was taller than five stories. Here, too, gardens were more formal and set between wide expanses of pavement, as if people walking across the man-made plazas in their pursuit of business or sociability might wish to pause and enjoy the fragrance and color of the natural world.

The buildings themselves, as newly disembarked visitors would discover, were graceful structures built with an eye for art as well as function. The city, with its seaside location and its mild climate, was like a year-round vacation resort. Columns and pedestals supporting arched and airy roofs might remind historically minded visitors of ancient Greece, as well as the statues placed here and there in the plazas and the gardens where they could be seen from a distance or come upon as a delightful surprise. The statues, by a variety of hands in a variety of styles, had one element in common: their subjects were not ordinary humans and aliens and animals but idealized creatures like Michelangelo's David or the Venus of Melos, as if Timshel City and its inhabitants were reaching for the perfection inherent in every being.

That, in fact, was the planet Timshel, known throughout the galaxy as a garden world and the favorite leave station for starship crews. Timshel itself was what the mother planet Earth had once aspired to be, the Garden of Eden before the Fall. A bit closer to its primary, less eccentric in its orbital inclination, a bit warmer on the average with less seasonal variation, a bit less massive so that people accustomed to the gravitational tug of a heavier planet felt a bit stronger and more vigorous on Timshel, air with a percent or two higher oxygen content that, mingled with the perfume of an alien world unpolluted by the burning of fossil fuels, made breathing on Timshel like inhaling nectar.

Unlike Earth, Timshel was unspoiled by the effort to lift itself to civilization from barbarous beginnings. Settled nearly a century and a half earlier by a group led by Praxiteles Timshel, the planet had avoided the pitfalls that had trapped other colonies. Where others had set about exploiting the natural resources of their worlds, farming and mining and manufacturing and turning their new worlds into prosperous centers of export and commerce, the settlement on Timshel had set aside a few areas in its temperate zones for the raising of crops through highly mechanized farming or by those who got their pleasure from labor close to the soil, had installed remote mining operations in the gas-giant planets and in the asteroid belt, and automated manufacturing plants among the asteroids and on the barren moons, and had set about building themselves a way of life focused on thought and discussion and creativity and art. And love. Timshel was a world of love. The citizens of Timshel were in love with each other, in love with the universe, in love with life. Being there, if only for a few weeks or a few days, or even a few hours, was like being reborn.

But something had gone terribly wrong.

Captain James Kirk looked up at his first officer from the viewscreen in his quarters on the Starship Enterprise. "How could anything so perfect turn bad?"

"We do not know that it has," Spock replied.

"When a vacation planet such as Timshel refuses to permit visitors to land, or citizens to leave, something is very wrong." Kirk stood and began to pace his quarters.

He compared his memories of Timshel with his surroundings. Ordinarily he accepted his familiar environment without question, but approaching a world like Timshel brought new awareness. The Enterprise slammed toward Timshel within the star-streaked otherspace of warp drive. Even though the starship had undergone a recent maintenance layover at Starbase 12, the ship had the characteristic odor of its equipment and crew and fittings, the unique combination peculiar to every space long enclosed and by which a crew member, though no longer aware that his ship smelled, could distinguish the interiors of other ships at a sniff and even, sometimes, other crew members. Such is the power of the olfactory sense even in creatures as poorly equipped as humans: satiated, it turns off; stimulated by new input, it becomes a source of unconscious information waiting to be tapped.

Everything is unique, but nothing is perfect. Even in ships otherwise as nearly identical to the Enterprise as blueprints and workmen could make them, patterns of use and wear develop over the months and years. The casual eye might not detect the difference, but the unconscious mind registered the placement of furnishings, the slight wear of floor covering, the rub of hand on armrest, the subtle indentations of fingers on keys.

"There is an answer to every question, Captain," Spock said evenly. He was standing, his arms folded across his chest, beside the entrance to which he had just been admitted. "The problem is asking the right question."

Kirk gave Spock a look of exasperation. "I asked the question: How could anything so perfect turn bad?"

"Too many undefined terms," Spock said. " 'Perfect,' for instance, and 'turn bad.' We do not know what they mean. I take it that you have been to Timshel."

"Twice on shore leave, once while recuperating from a battle injury."

"And the planet was, as you would say, 'perfect'?"

"Well--" Kirk began, and then smiled at the logic trap Spock had set for him. "Maybe not for the crew seeking nightlife and the social interactions that usually accompany it, not the normal shore-leave pattern perhaps, but it offered an ideal life of art and leisure in an ideal city with an ideal climate. Timshel City was like a vast university dedicated entirely to learning and self-fulfillment, to discovering how the universe had started and how it had developed and how it operated, and the part sentient life played in it, and how people should think and feel and behave in the light of such knowledge."

Spock raised one eyebrow. "And how could something like that 'turn bad'?"

"That's the question, isn't it, and that's what I asked. And the answer is: I don't know. If something like that can turn bad, what hope is there for any other human aspirations in this universe?"

"It has been my experience with perfection," Spock said, "that not only is it beyond human reach but the attempt to achieve it leads to disillusion and sometimes to disaster."

Kirk smiled. "That's strange coming from you, Spock. I always thought you aimed for perfect logic -- and achieved it."

"That is only the goal, Captain," Spock said seriously. "And I know that, hard as I try, my best efforts may fall short. It is a matter, you see, of incomplete data, even if the process itself is flawless -- which, of course, it cannot be--"

"I understand," Kirk said hastily. "The imperfect question, then, in the absence of complete data, is how to come up with an imperfect answer. There's only one way to do that, it seems to me."

"And what is that?"

"Your logic fails you?"

"Sometimes," Spock said without irony, "your logic escapes me, Captain."

"Before I unveil 'my logic,' let's get the troops together," Kirk said. Before he turned to follow Spock, he glanced at a holographic cube sitting on his desk.

Kirk looked around the briefing room. It was quiet with the silence that precedes a burst of conversation. They sat, the five of them, in the chairs that by long custom had become theirs, arms folded or elbows placed on the table before them so often in the past that the chairs leaned at the accustomed angle and the appropriate portion of the body automatically went to the worn places on the table: McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, Spock, they looked intently at Kirk.

Finally they all spoke at once, but it was McCoy's voice that rose above the others'. "You can't do it, Jim. One Federation agent has gone down to Timshel already and has never returned. We can't afford to lose a starship captain."

"Much less our starship captain," Uhura said.

"Two," Kirk said.

"Two?" Scotty echoed.

"Two Federation agents. One of the best intelligence agents in the Federation, Stallone Wolff, went in a year ago and never returned. Danielle Du Molin went in three months ago to find out why Wolff had never reported or returned. She got out one report and then she, too, fell silent."

"Not Dannie!" McCoy said.

"Who is Agent Du Molin?" Spock asked.

"A friend of our captain," McCoy said. He turned back to Kirk, on his face an expression of sympathetic concern.

Kirk nodded. "It's the chances we take. And this is a chance I must take. Our orders are explicit. 'Proceed to Timshel and discover, using all caution, why Timshel has quarantined itself for two years. And rescue, if possible, the two agents first assigned to this mission. Or, if they are dead, find out who is responsible, and, if possible, bring them to justice.' "

Kirk rose from the table and turned to watch the star-streaks of otherspace beyond the conference-room window.

"A very good friend," McCoy added.

"All the more reason why the person sent to Timshel should not be you," Spock said. "I should be the one to go."

Kirk turned back to the others and smiled briefly. "You would hardly do for an undercover agent," he said. "There are no Vulcans on Timshel."

"Disguise is possible," Spock said. "If two agents have not returned, the situation may be more dangerous than anyone suspects. It is only logical that someone other than you should assume the risk."

"I am uniquely equipped," Kirk said. "I spent almost three months on Timshel. I will be able to determine what has changed since my last stay on the planet. Moreover, while I was there I was befriended by a Timshel scientist named Marouk. I feel certain he will provide shelter and maybe the information we need."

"And how are we going to transport someone to the surface without revealing the ship?" McCoy asked.

"Leave that to the engineering department," Scotty said.

"Gladly," McCoy said, "but, Jim, there's one thing you haven't told us: What was in the one report Dannie got out?"

"Only that everything seemed normal, everyone in the city was working hard, and only one aspect seemed unusual."

"And what was that?" Uhura asked.

"Every adult was wearing a wide bracelet with a large, artificial ruby in the middle. She included a picture. Computer, show the bracelet on the screen." A silver bracelet with a red, translucent stone appeared on the forward screen and slowly rotated through several simulated dimensions. "That's new since my time, and it may mean something."

"It means," Uhura said, "that you have an opportunity to take something with you that may give you an edge."

"I see what you mean," Kirk said. "We arrive tomorrow. Can you put something together in less than twenty-four hours?"

"You can count on it," Uhura said.

"And you, Scotty, can you come up with a means of concealing the ship's presence from Timshel observers and instruments?"

Scotty nodded grimly.

"Then let's get about it."

McCoy followed Kirk back to his quarters. He picked up a holographic cube on Kirk's desk. In it a young woman seemed almost alive as McCoy turned it. When he pressed a stud on its base, the woman's lips parted and a woman's voice said, "Soon, darling -- and then forever."

"Dannie gone," McCoy said. "That's hard to take, Jim. Are you sure that won't affect your judgment?"

"You know me better than that," Kirk said. A faraway expression softened his face with old memories. "Anyway, it was all a dream. Starship captains are married to their ships; it's foolish to think they can have wives, sweethearts."

"You're human, too, Jim. You can't simply ignore the fate of someone you care about."

Kirk shook himself and refocused on his immediate task. "The best thing I can do for Dannie is to behave professionally. Look at it this way: Even if Marouk is part of whatever has happened, and we can't discount that possibility, my concern for Dannie will seem like motive enough for my arrival."

"He doesn't know you're coming."

Kirk shook his head. "There's no way to get word to him, but he's a brilliant man and a good friend. He'll be surprised, perhaps, but he'll understand why I'm there."

Kirk turned and left the room while a melancholy McCoy rotated the holographic cube in his hands. The voice of the young woman, captured in all her beauty like a moment of time frozen within a block of clear ice, repeated: "Soon, darling -- and then forever."

Copyright © 1990 by Paramount Pictures