【官小存档】
Seventy-eight years after history reported him dead, James T. Kirk’s journey had come to an end.He was going home.
For the final time.
On a mountain slope, far above the simple cairn o frocks that was Kirk g grave, a lone figure stood in meditative silence, a sentinel keeping jaithful watch.
His elegant black robes shifted in the twilight breeze of Veridian III. Their intricate embroidery spelled out the timeless principles of logic in metallic threads and Vulcan script.
Those principles shimmered in the dying light of sunset.The sentinel’s gaze remained fixed on the battered Starfleet emblem that rested on the grave. In his expression, there was no betrayal oJ’ emotion, until his meditations were at an end and proper decorum had been observed.
Then a single tear welled up in the corner of his eye.
Ambassador Spock didn’t fight it.That battle between his two halves—Vulcan and human— had been fought and won decades ago.
Three weeks before this day, Spock had never known of this planer’s existence. Yet now he knew he wouM never be free of it.For history now recorded that it was on this world that James T. Kirk had reappeared,only to die again.
Spock’s secondgrieving for his friend was far, far worse than the first had ever been.What logic couM there be in that?
Far below Spock, the setting sun drew long shadows from the modest pile of rocks he watched over. In the air above those shadows, five points of light sparkled to life.Spock looked on as the transporter beams resolved into five Starfleet ofiScers.One he knew—William Riker, late of the Starship Enterprise. Elsewhere on this planet, lhat vessel’s shattered wreckage was being dismantled and removed by a team of Starfleet engineers under Riker~ command. In accordance with the Prime Directire, no trace of advanced technology could remain behind. Should the future inhabitants of Veridian III~ sister planet land here, they would discover nothing. Not even Kirk g body.
The four others with Riker formed the honor guard that would travel with Spock back to Earth, for Kirk~ oJficial interment. A hero funeral.
For all that Kirk had meant to the Federation, that honor seemed trivial to Spoek. Yet what more could be done to assuage the sorrow of those Kirk had touched when his spirit had fled?
Spock had passed through that last veil himself But because of Kirk, he had returned.
“You wouM do the same forme,” Kirk had told him, long ago on the summit of Mount Seleya, when Spock had been reborn.Now the tear grew in Spock’s eye because he knew he could not. Though against all logic, he desired nothing else.At least, he knew, Kirk had not faced whatever lay beyond his moment of death unaware of its coming.
Spock knew his friend had confronted his fate and reconciled himself to it, in that timebetween Kirk g return Jkom Khitomer and the launching of the new Enterprise which had sealed his fate.Spock took comfort from that knowledge. He found it to be most logical.
On the horizon, Veridian set and the stars shone forth from the gathering dark. The day at last was done.The honor guard waited at attention by the grave. If all proceeded according to schedule, at this moment, far overhead, a starship wouM be shifting orbits, preparing to lock her transporter on the remains beneath the stones.
There couM be no Mount Seleya in Kirk’s future. Logic, therefore, directed Spock to seek solace not in what might lie ahead, but in what had gone before.
The tear slipped down his cheek. Spock watched it fall to the dust of this world. Swallowed as if it had never existed.
Except in his memories.So to his memories now he turned, to the.final adventure and the revelations of those last days he had spent with his friend.When the journey of James 7: Kirk had been ending
——but was not yet over…