"Sleeping beauty," Omne said. "You may perform the awakening--in the traditional manner, if you like"

"Now, my replica. I do not know how well the Commander knew your predecessor, although Captain Kirk was legend for being well known on short acquaintance. However, Commander Spock has certainly shared ship and shore leave for many years. Hardships, injuries, dangers, gym workouts. He must know the Captain very well. Every contour. Every scar. Every injury. There is a half-healed one on your leg. You will therefore stand up and display that identity and perfection."

Omne grinned. "Good! That also I wanted to learn. Yes, I'll have you, fighting—and I want that. You will learn to acknowledge me as your natural master. You'll learn to bend your stiff neck. You will be my final hostage against Spock, and he against you." He moved closer. "You are on your knees, but not to me. You will kneel and bow and beg for Spock."

Kirk smiled without amusement. "Only to be reminded that you are not a man of honor?"

"Perhaps," Omne said smoothly, "but with the certainty that you will see him die if you don't."

Kirk rose to his knees without a word, finding his face too close to the big man, but arching back a little and bowing his head. "I beg for Spock," he said easily, stressing the ease.

The gloved hands clenched into his hair, jerking his head up, pulling his chest against the corded thighs, his face almost against the great body.

Omne's face was the face of the wolf, the beast—the face of jungle and night. "Now beg for yourself. I am alpha here, and you will—now—yield."

One big hand twisted his head down and forward and the other ran down the back of his neck, feeling it cord and crackle with the resistance.

"Yield," the low voice snarled. "Let it happen."

The gloved hands dropped to the gunbelt and slowly drew it off, drew the heavy leather strap through the loop of the holster, tossed the holstered gun carelessly aside to a couch—stressing no need to use it, no need to fear that it could be used against its owner.

Omne doubled the black strap and cracked the doubled end into a gloved palm with a sound like the snap of doom.

So that was how it would begin, Kirk thought, feeling the dryness in his throat and refusing to swallow.

But Omne smiled, the smile reaching the black eyes, underlining all of the possibilities. Then he tossed the belt after the gun. "No," he said. "That does not belong to the jungle." He began to strip off the black gloves. "Nothing which does not will touch you, and you will wish that it had been that simple. He tossed the gloves after the belt, flexing the massive, muscled, long-fingered hands. "Have you ever cried, Captain, since you were a child?"

"No," Kirk said, somehow wanting this man to know it. When Edith died, Miramanee—no, worse than cried, possibly, but no. Other times— No.

Omne nodded. "Men don't cry, Captain. Curious how widespread the necessity of that lesson is."

"Necessity? Or error?"

"Both," Omne said. "The alpha male must protect, defend, cannot afford to cry. The jungle knows, but we must learn. We must choose when we choose the hard path. It is harder for us because we can cry."

Even Vulcans can, Kirk thought. And why not? But was that it? Was it the alpha choice? Was that why he never had, never could? "Doesn't matter," he said aloud. "We choose what we choose."

"The choice can be broken," Omne said, "for—any man."

"For you," Kirk said with sudden certainty.

"Once," Omne answered, the black eyes clearing to the final depth again. "And now—for you."

"Not by this. I choose."

Omne shook his head. "Oh, no. You could bear to choose to cry, as you could choose to beg—for Spock, for your choice, for others. Not for yourself. There will be no choice here. You will cry—for yourself—like a child, like a woman, and not be able to stop, and know that you have broken."

"No," Kirk said flatly—and then felt the unbidden amendment coming. "Not if I can help it."

Omne laughed. "That is the point, Captain. There is the point beyond help or endurance. You will cry—and then you will beg. You will know the real right of the man who can best you and master you."

We talk for a while longer--some of the questions which we also asked Gene. But one of them leads Bill to describe to Leonard the themes of our novel The Price of the Phoenix which Bill read in manuscript before it was published. Now he says, talking the STAR TREK movie, bogged in script problems, that the novel should be the movie: "Would make a hell of a movie". It would be, he says, a chance for the two of them to play something no two actors have played before--a deeper level of friendship which Leonard has just described as "I shall do neither".

Once when we were having lunch with Bill [Shatner] and Leonard [Nimoy], Bill had read our then forthcoming novel The Price of the Phoenix in manuscript. Bill told Leonard, ‘I don’t know why Paramount is still looking for a script. Their novel, The Price of the Phoenix, should be the script for the Star Trek movie. It would give us a chance to play things no two actors have ever played before.’ It was not to be, and we did not put Price forward for that purpose. We considered that it was Gene’s movie to write, and that probably, despite ongoing conflicts, it would ultimately be Gene’s. But what Bill envisioned if Price were the script would have been fascinating.