PART THREE

1964

ONE

“Hey, Mike!  You still got that hare-brained notion to go up to Lake Tahoe and scout out tomorrow’s shoot?”

The man who portrayed Little Joe Cartwright stared out of the tight cramped location space he laughingly called his dressing room at the mountain of a man blocking the light that might have made it possible for him to find his shirt.  He was bare-chested, having just shed the last remnants of the man he pretended to be most days of the week.  Little Joe lay in a heap of tan, brown, and green clothes discarded on the floor.

“Wardrobe lady’s gonna have your head, short shanks, if you leave those there.”

The wardrobe lady was nearly as old as his grandmother.  “Maybe I’ll give her a roll in them, just to mollify her,” he said, his face and voice deadpan.

“If you aren’t the orneriest little cuss ever to come to Hollywood,” his friend and co-worker sighed.  Then with a wink the big man added, “And I do mean ‘little’.”

It was a long-standing joke between them – the difference in their stature.  Dan stood six foot four to his five foot nine and at 300 pounds, outweighed him by about the weight of a gorilla.

“Yeah, but I got size where it counts,” he replied.

Dan stared at him and then burst into laughter.  As he did, a tall dark figure paused behind him.

“Are you two still at it?” Pernell asked..

“Just some unscripted fun between brothers,” Dan remarked.  “Want to join in?”

The man who portrayed their older brother Adam shook his head.  “Heading home. I advise you two do so as well.”

Dan looked at him.  “Mike wants to take a look at the shoot area at Incline Village for tomorrow.”

The other man frowned. “Whatever for?  It’s trees and grass.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who has to take a spill in those trees and on that grass,” he protested.  “I want to check it out.  The last fall I did I nearly broke my collar bone.”

Pernell’s eyebrows rose. “You could let the stunt men do their job, Mike.  It’s what they get paid for.”

They didn’t understand.  Either of them.  He didn’t just want to act.  He wanted to do it all, experience it all – understand it all.

Michael Landon’s lips curled in one of his most devilish smiles.  “And I get paid to look handsome and make the ladies swoon.  No better way to do that than to fall off a horse and suffer.  I want to make sure I do it right.”

Pernell was perusing his script.  He waved his hand as he walked away.  “It’s your neck,” he sighed.

“You do take a lot of risks, Mike,” Dan said quietly.  “You sure you want to do your own stunt work?”

It was hard to explain.  He didn’t want to do it, he had to.  There was something in him that drove him to succeed, to prove himself.  He snorted as he closed his dressing room door.

In that way, he was much like the youngest Cartwright he portrayed.

Shinnying into his leather jacket, which he wore over a tan shirt and a pair of jeans, he turned and looked at Dan.  “Look, you don’t have to come with me.  Lynn’s away with the kids.  I have nothing else to do.  Dolphia’s at home waiting on you.”

“I don’t want you going out there alone.  It’s way out on the lot, another fifty miles or so.  Something might happen.”

Mike made a face and waved his hands in the air while singing the theme to the Twilight Zone.  “You’re right.  A spaceship is going to land and little green men are going to abduct me and take me away with them into outer space.”  He laughed.  “You worry too much.”

Dan circled his shoulders with his arm.  He cocked his head and favored him with a smile.

“That’s what big brothers are for.”

It took about an hour and  a half to drive the dusty roads and was dusk by the time they arrived.  As usual it took the big man more time to get out of the car than the spunky little fellow who played his kid brother.  Mike was a dynamo.  He was energy personified and was driven by a need to be accepted and approved of that he figured stemmed from his terrible childhood.  Sometimes it made him want to knock some sense into that thick curly-brown head of his.  Other times, well, it made him want to cry.  He had his own kids.  He couldn’t imagine treating them the way Mike had been treated.

It was a wonder he’d come through the years of mental and physical abuse without turning into some sort of a monster himself.

They were going to shoot an outdoor scene the next day, where Little Joe came riding in and was shot off his horse.  Mike had to fall and roll to a stop. Of course, he insisted on doing it himself.  At first the producers had balked at him taking on more and more stunt work – they were worried about that handsome face that had women all across the world swooning getting damaged – but he’d talked them into it and soon had been fighting and falling with the best of the men who made it their profession.  The grips had erected a facade of the house nearby as another scene they were going to shoot tomorrow had Joe stumbling up to the house and dropping to the ground before they ran out and found him.  It was funny, seeing the Cartwright’s ranch house sitting there where it might really have been, the false front looking all too real in the meager light.

Closing the car door behind him, he followed his fellow actor and friend to the field.  Mike was walking it, looking at the ground, kneeling every now and then to check a rock or odd bit of raised up ground.

“So what do you think?” he asked as he halted nearby.

“Looks good,” he said, rising to his feet.  “No rocks so far.”

“Only in your head.”

Mike looked up at him and then he laughed – that laugh that engaged any and everyone who heard it and made them laugh with him.  It was almost a giggle, but not quite.  Sometimes it reminded him of the nicker of the high-spirited horses that were such a part of his current world.

“You ready to go then?”

“Almost.  I want to check the ground near the house facade as well.  Why don’t you get back in the car?” he suggested as he rose and pulled his jacket close about his throat.  “No point in both of us freezing to death.”

It was Autumn and the nights were turning cold.  “Okay.  But don’t be long.”

“Oh, right,” Mike grinned, “gotta watch out for those little green men.”  He rolled his eyes.  “I’m sure they’ll let me send a postcard when we get to Alpha Centauri.”

“Why don’t you just shut up and do what you’re going to do so we can get home?” he grumbled.

Mike waved.  “Be there in a minute.”

It was the last Dan saw of him.

As the man with the curly brown hair tramped the uneven ground of the Incline Village location, headed for the false front of the Cartwright’s home, all sorts of things were flying through his head.  He missed his wife and his kids.  They’d gone off to visit with Lynn’s family and left him alone to rattle around in their empty house.  He didn’t like being alone.  It left him too much time to think.  Though the demons of his past had been imprisoned by the man he’d become, they still rattled at the bars of his childhood prison and shrieked to be set free.   He knew he was hotheaded, and impatient, and that he played too hard and drank too much.  Lynn was trying to change him and he welcomed it, though sometimes he felt it wasn’t fair to her.  In some ways she had to be the mother he had never had and that bothered him.  He’d done that with Dodie and it hadn’t worked.

It was going to work with Lynn.

As he arrived at the facade, Mike turned and looked back toward the car.  He could hear the radio blasting away and see Dan rocking inside.  It made him smile.  They were close, all of them, even if Pernell – well, he was a good choice for Adam.  Pernell could be aloof and at times a bit of a pain, but they still had some great times.

After casting around, looking at the ground, he headed for the false front door.  Acting was a funny profession.  You had to see it all in your head, you had to believe it.  There were times when he thought, if he opened that door at just the right time, Little Joe Cartwright might be there waiting for him.  Crossing to it, he put his hand on the knob and laughed as he began to open it.

The laughter died when a man stepped out of the shadows beside him.

Falling back, he asked, “Who?  Who are you?”

The man was lean, with dark hair and dark intense eyes.  He was dressed like one of their extras in a tattered long black duster and other worn Western clothes.  Extending a trembling hand, he said, “You must come with me.”

Mike fell back.  He held up his hands even as he glanced toward the car to see if Dan had taken note.  “Whoa.  I’m not going anywhere with you.”  He squinted, sizing the other man up and recognizing his symptoms from personal experience.  “Friend, you look like you need to go home and sleep it off.”

“I have not partaken of any fermented or distilled liquids.”  The man’s voice was flat, his words spoken as if he were reading from a freshly produced script.  “The threat is real.  You must come with me, Joseph Cartwright.”

“Joe?  Hey, man, I’m not Joe.  My name is –”

The man gripped his arm with unexpectedly strong fingers and for the first time he felt real fear.  Struggling against him, Mike turned to call out to Dan.

It was then he felt fingers on his shoulder.

“It is for your own good,” the stranger said.

And everything went black.

“I tell you, he was there one minute and gone the next!” Dan Blocker declared.  He’d not gone to the police since he wasn’t entirely sure Mike wasn’t just pranking him.  Instead, he’d driven to Lorne’s house to get the older man’s take on things.

Lorne seemed to be considering everything he had told him.  “It does seem a little out of character.  I mean, Mike can be a prankster, but his pranks are seldom hurtful.”

Dan nodded his head.  “I can’t really imagine him taking off on foot either.  You don’t think, well….  There are crazy people out there.  You know, most fans are great, but there are some….”

“I’m sure he’s all right.  After all, this is reality and not a television show.  I’d give it until morning.  See if he shows for work.”  Lorne snorted.  “You know that kid.  He could have had a car hidden in the trees.”

Dan nodded.  And then a shy smile lifted the corner of his lips.  “I wonder what Ben and Hoss Cartwright would do if Little Joe just up and disappeared like that right from under their noses?”

Lorne smiled.  “There’s no need to wonder.  They’d ride out with guns blazing.”

“It’s something, isn’t it?  What David wants to show – four men, loving each other, protecting each other, and without worrying about what anyone thinks.”

“It’s something our country needs desperately right now.  It only takes a look at the paper, or a half hour watching the news.”  Behind Lorne, on the television screen, yet another riot was breaking out.  He shook his head.  “Sometimes I wonder if we will survive as a nation.”

Dan was silent a minute. “You think old Ben Cartwright would wonder?”

Lorne’s dark eyes fastened on his.  “Thank you, Dan.”

The big man headed for the door.  When he’d reached it and had his hand on the knob, he turned back and said, “You know, I do feel like Hoss.  I’m just busting to see that little scamp show up in the morning.  But when I do, I’m like to break his neck.”

He left to the sound of Lorne’s laughter.

Wherever he was, it was cold.  And dark.

Dark without stars or light.

Dark, like the inside of a cave.

He wrinkled his nose.  Maybe that was it.  He was in a cave.  He could smell the earth and feel the dampness seeping through his trousers.

What was he doing in a cave?   He’d been scouting out the wooded clearing where he was going to take a fall…

Michael drew in a sharp breath of air.  He remembered.

He’d been kidnapped!

“You must remain still,” someone said.

He felt like a little kid, waiting on the bogey man to jump out.  His heart was pounding and his breath came in short, soft gasps.

“Where am I?”

“You are safe.”

Mike’s brown brows danced toward the unruly curls layering his forehead.  “Safe?  How can I be safe?” he asked, his voice rising with his temper.  “You kidnapped me!”

“You must modulate your tone.  If you do not do so, I shall be forced to render you silent once again.”

He swallowed over his fear – and dropped his voice.  “Why?”

“I am familiar with your boisterous personality and tendency toward quick unexpected motion.  In our current circumstances, neither would be wise to exercise.”

He frowned.  How come his kidnapper sounded like a Harvard don?

“Who are you?” he asked quietly.  “Why did you take me?  Why are we here?”

“Are you attempting to outstrip your earlier record for the number of inquiries it is possible to make within the space of a sixty second period?”

Was that…a smile he heard in that question?

“As to your second query,” the man went on, “I am attempting to protect you from outside forces which wish you harm.  As to why we are here – in this cave – I….”  He stopped.  Michael heard a sharp intact of breath.  “…I have to…must…keep you safe.  This was the only approximate locale I could find.”

He waited.  “And my first question?”

There was a pause.  As if the man was truly confused.  “You do not know me?”

“I can’t see you!” he spat back.

He heard the man rise.  Heard him walk across the cave floor and felt him at his side.  A moment later a light appeared.  He blinked it away at first it hurt his eyes so much, but then a few seconds later looked up and into the man’s face.

Michael gasped.

He’d found his little green man.

James T. Kirk found solid ground suddenly under his feet.  He glanced around, noting the inky night sky with its crystal clear stars and the tall whispering Ponderosa pines and sighed.  He was more than ready to get back to the steady sure method of transport he was used to – and to cease traveling through time.  This was the last stop.  Well, he hoped it was the last stop.

The Guardian said it was.

Sometimes he had a hard time remembering what time he was or had been in.  While he hadn’t joined Spock one his initial trip to eighteen-seventy six, he’d been to eighteen-sixty four, back to twenty-two-sixty-eight, then to eighteen-seventy-six, finally arriving here, on Earth, in nineteen-sixty-four.  He’d been surprised when the Guardian’s images had run past the lives and deaths of the Cartwrights and their children and continued right on up to the same time period he had visited with Major John Christopher.  He’d been even more surprised to find that – in one of those inexplicable eddies of time – the idea and ideals of the Cartwrights had transcended time and still existed in a TV show, of all things, depicting their extraordinary lives. The producer, a man named Dortort, must have read the historical record and fashioned the show on what information and antique photos he found there.  The images the Guardian showed him were remarkable.  The resemblance of the cast members to the actual men was uncanny.  Oh, they were not nearly so rugged or, in reality, weather-beaten and worn as the actual Cartwright clan, but – if one didn’t know better – they could easily be mistaken one for the other.

Kirk sighed again and then scowled.  It was getting to be a habit.

Unfortunately, at the moment, Spock wasn’t capable of knowing which was which.

The blond man ran a hand over his face.  The last image the Guardian had shown him – one that had altered the historical record – was of a newspaper detailing the kidnapping and death of one of the lead characters on Bonanza.  The bright young star with so much potential had mysteriously vanished from a shooting location one night and been found the next morning at the bottom of a cliff near Lake Tahoe.

It was Michael Landon, who played Little Joe.

While Landon’s passing did not change the historical timeline in large ways, it seemed to in small ones that were significant.  Apparently the man, when older, had been a force for good.  Also apparent was his love of ladies so like the character he portrayed.  Kirk smiled.  Nine kids!  Not all of them biologically his, but all of them reared with his unique idea of what a man or woman’s place was in the world.  Those kids and their kids had contributed after his untimely death from cancer at age 54.

They had contributed a lot.

Kirk drew a breath and then turned to the kit he carried.  This time, Prime Directive be damned, he’d brought a phaser, a communicator, and a tricorder altered to work on radio waves.  He also had a pack McCoy had supplied him with that contained medical equipment, including bandages and other items plus the remedy for Spock’s madness.  It was the same as the inoculation against the time manipulator’s venom that Bones had injected him with before he left.  It rendered the poison harmless.

The Guardian had set him down the day before the body was discovered, which meant he had less than twenty-four hours to find Spock and the actor and somehow convince his out-of-his-mind Vulcan friend that Michael Landon wasn’t Little Joe Cartwright – that he’d already saved Cartwright back in eighteen-seventy-six  and he should let the actor go.

The fact that Landon’s broken body had been found at the bottom of a cliff suggested that his death had been an accident.  They’d discussed it in the briefing room before he went down to Gateway and the others had agreed.  Like the real man who’d inspired his character, Landon was reputed to be quick-tempered and a bit reckless.  The fall suggested Spock was holding the young man somewhere high in the hills, maybe in a cave.  Something had happened.  Something that had made him fall.

Something he had to stop.

Kirk glanced about, making sure he was alone, and then opened the tricorder and scanned the area, looking for a non-human signature.

There were two.

“So what are you going to do with me?”

The light was gone and they were in the dark again.  It was easier that way.  Looking at the man who held him had been like watching an episode of Outer Limits.  Odd.  Unnerving.

Frightening.

“I will…protect you.”

“You keep sayin that.  What do I need protected from?”   Other than you, he thought.

“Theron…he…  He is still out there.”

He’d mentioned that name before.  “Who’s Theron?”

There was the sound of boots turning sharply on dirt.  So he was standing.  “I…do not understand.”

Mike rolled his eyes.  That made two of them!  Still, slowly, his fear of anything happening to him was fading.  It was obvious the man wasn’t right in the head.  Maybe he was a fan who had escaped from a mental institute.

“I don’t know who Theron is,” he said, keeping his tone even.  “I don’t know you and I don’t know why you think you have to protect me.  The only one threatening me is you.”

Again, a pause.  “I do not threaten.  I…guard.  It is…my duty.”

That was a new wrinkle.  “Are you army or something?”

“Federation,” he said as if that explained it all.

“Okay.”  Mike sucked in air.  “How about a name?  What’s your name?”

“You do not recall it?”

It came out slowly in a sigh.  “No.  No, I don’t.”  After a second he asked, “How about you do something for me.”

“Yes?”

“You tell me my name.”

The man shifted again, almost as if he was uneasy.

“You do not know who you are?”

“Yes, I know who I am,” he huffed.  “I want you to tell me who you think I am.”

“You are the man upon whom the future world depends,” his kidnapper said, his voice even but his words reviving those fears, “you are Joseph Francis Cartwright of the Ponderosa and it is my mission to save you – whether you desire it or not.”

TWO

It was morning and Mike was a no-show.

Dan sighed.  He’d consulted with Lorne the moment they knew and then with David and they’d decided it was time to call in the police.  The Paramount brass refused.  While squad cars should have been flying onto the lot, their sirens wailing, the soundstage was instead deadly still.  The big guys said they had to make sure it wasn’t one of Mike’s pranks first and then, if it wasn’t, get their shit together before calling it in.  ‘You know, Dan’, they’d said, ‘once the press knows that Little Joe Cartwright has gone missing, they’ll descend like vultures and it will be all over the news’.  They hadn’t been able to get hold of Lynn yet, or any of Mike’s relatives so he kind of agreed. Still, something had to be done.

His friend was missing.

Work had shut down for the day and the producers had told them all to go home.  The three of them had hung around to see if there was anything they could do.  Lorne had just gone for his coat.  As he joined them, with it dangling off his arm, he sighed.

“It’s like something out of one of the episodes.  It doesn’t seem real.”

Dan ran a hand over his bald pate and exchanged a glance with the older man.  He could see it in Lorne’s eyes as well.  They might only pretend to be kin, but in the ways that counted, they were.   The four of them were close.  They cared deeply about each other.

And just like the Cartwrights they felt a need to protect their own.

As Pernell joined them, he remarked, “It doesn’t seem right.”

“What’s that?” Lorne asked.

The dark-haired man’s lips twisted in that determined smile he used to such advantage as the oldest Cartwright son.  “If they won’t do it.  We need to do it ourselves,” he said quietly, expressing it for the rest of them.

Ten minutes later, after some debate, they headed for Incline Village.

Mike stirred and opened his eyes, only then realizing he’d fallen asleep.  He stretched and looked for the other man.  When he did, he realized there was a bare bit of light showing off in the distance.  He decided it must be where the opening into the cave was.  He’d been in enough of them while filming to recognize that the kidnapper hadn’t brought him in too deep.  With his eyes grown so used to the dark that the pale light was like an open lantern, he was able to discern the size and shape of the man who was holding him.  He was a lean fellow, probably six feet or over, with shaggy dark hair and a ragged beard.  He was dressed as a Wild West doctor or maybe a gunslinger in a tattered black suit with a long duster.  His abductor moved with a wild restless energy, pacing back and forth before the cave maw, muttering to himself.

It almost sounded like he was working equations.

Shifting, Michael repositioned himself more comfortably against the cavern wall.  He was cold and aching and really hungry.

He watched the man another minute or so and then called out.  “What’s for breakfast?”

The stranger halted and turned toward him.  “I had forgotten your need for immediate sustenance.  I will endeavor to locate something suitable.”

Sustenance?  There he went again.

“I’ll come with you,” he said, starting to rise.

“That would not be…prudent.  You must remain here.”

Michael stifled a sigh.  Then he had a thought.  This man believed him to be Little Joe.  There was no way Ben Cartwright’s youngest son would accept that.

“Like Hell I will!” he shot back.  “I’m coming with you.”

The stranger shifted again.  He shook his head.  “I cannot protect you.”

“How’s leavin’ me here alone gonna protect me better?” he countered, easily falling into Joe’s manner of speech.  “What are you gonna do?  Tie me up?  Leave me here alone?  That’s just like making a can out of me to sit on a fence and be shot!”

He felt bad.  Obviously the man had mental problems.  He didn’t like playing with him like this, but then, what else did he have to work with?

“Your logic..is…impeccable.”

His brows popped.

That was the first time anyone had ever told him that.

“We will…go together,” the stranger said, “but you must make a vow to remain close to me and not endeavor to escape.  There is…danger.”

Yeah, there was.  And he knew who it was coming from.

Crossing his fingers behind his back, he replied.

“You got my word.”

Kirk had been walking for some time and he still had, perhaps, a half hour before he would reach the area with the alien signatures.  With the tricorder working on radio waves, the information he could access was limited  He guessed one of them was Spock, but the other – so readily identified in the twenty-third century – was just a non-human blip in this one.  It could be anything from Orion to Klingon.

Or maybe another of the Originators.

He didn’t think Theron had a partner, but then it was impossible to know.   Whoever it was had come back in time so that limited the field.

Another ten minutes walk brought the blond man to the base of a high hill.  A narrow natural stair wound up its side.  At the top there was rock – a lot of it – and some of it jutting out over the land below.  Going with the intuitive feeling he had, that this was ‘it’, James T. Kirk anchored the tricorder over his shoulder, flipped the machine to his back, and began to climb.

“This is the last place you saw him?”

Dan nodded.  “Sure is.”  The other two followed him.  “Right over here by the house facade.”

“The ground’s dry,” Lorne said.  “See if you can find any prints.”

Pernell was already crouching.  Suddenly he looked up and laughed.  “You know, we’re acting like we know what we’re doing.”

Dan laughed too.  “Well, that’s what we are, isn’t it?  Actors?”

The black-haired man nodded.  “I guess something has to have rubbed off after six years in the saddle.”

“Do you see anything?” their TV pa asked, bringing them back to the business at hand.

Pernell stood up and dusted off his pants.  “There are prints.  Two sets besides Dan’s.  One long and narrow, the other the same, but smaller.”

“Like short-shanks might leave?” the big man asked, the worry ringing even in his own ears.

“Um-hm.”

“We should call the police.”

Both he and Pernell turned and looked at Lorne.  “There’s nothing to tell them yet,” Pernell said.  “These could have been made by anyone.”

“Or by Michael and his…kidnapper.”  The older man sighed.  “Let’s face it.  We’re tampering with evidence here.”

Dan pursed his lips and blew out a sigh.  “I know what you’re saying is right, here.”  He touched his head.  Then his heart.  “But this isn’t hearing it.  I….  I feel responsible.  I just gotta keep looking.”

Pernell nodded.  “You know, many’s the days I’ve wanted to shake some sense into that kid and I’ll admit I’ve had a few where I wished ‘Pa’ would send Little Joe off to college.”  He grinned and then sobered quickly.  “But I agree with Dan.  I just…feel responsible for him somehow.”

The older man looked from one of the them to the other.  “Older heads should prevail, but it seems younger ones shall.  All right.  We’ll follow the tracks.  Just be sure you don’t disturb anything.”

Dan nodded.  There was only one thing he was going to ‘disturb’.

That was the head of the man who done kidnapped his little brother.

Mike had been nearly blinded when they left the cave.  In fact, he was still blinking away tears and that made his vision fuzzy.  It was early in the morning and this high up a mist clung to the land.  It made their passage treacherous, but also provided him with what he needed – cover to make an escape attempt.  At the moment he was trailing close behind the man who had taken him.  There wasn’t much up here, but they’d managed  to find a few roots and berries and the like.  Enough at least to keep his stomach from growling.  A cool mountain spring had provided a drink to wash them down.  If he’d had Lynn and the kids with him, it would have been a beautiful day.

As it was, it was filled with uncertainty.

He thought he knew where they were and it was not too far from the location site.  Instead of moving out, the kidnapper had moved up into the hills.  They’d talked about using this area once for outside shots, but it had proven too much for the heavy equipment to manage.  There was a cliff here…somewhere…..

Somewhere in the mist.

As they stopped and the man who held him bent to the ground once again, Michael said, “You still haven’t told me your name.”

The man stood and turned, some greens in his hand.  “And you still have not remembered?”

He thought hard.  It had to be someone ‘Joe’ would know and not him.  Thinking furiously, he filed through his memories of past episodes but nothing stood out.  There was no long lean, slightly greenish-skinned, black-haired man in a battered imitation of a Doc Holliday suit.

He pursed his lips and shook his head.  “Sorry.  No.”

“Perhaps the blow to the head you took while you were being held in the mine.”

So….a mining episode.  “Were you in ‘The Henry Comstock Story’?” he asked, hopeful.

There it was again – the inward breath but no audible sigh.  “My name is Spock.”

His brown brows danced.  “Like…Doctor Spock?”

The kidnapper’s near-black eyes fixed on him.  “I endeavor to leave those things medical to the ship’s physician.  Simply Spock.”

So his name was Spock.  He was very unusual looking.  He’d caught a glimpse of the tips of his ears and they were…pointed.  His brows slashed upward like an incline and his hair, well, it was black, but it was so black it was almost blue.

And he was a…sailor?

Bending, he worked haphazardly at gathering more of the greens.  “So where’s home, Spock?”

Again that look.  “It would be better if I did not say.”

“Not from around here, eh?” he snorted.

“No.”

Squinting his eyes, hoping to see through the mist, the brown-haired man nodded toward a plot of grass a few yards away that was thick with it.  “I think I see some more over there.”

Spock nodded absently and looked away.   “Please endeavor to remain some ways back from the cliff’s edge.”

So it was here.  The cliff and the natural stair he remembered leading down it.

Somewhere.

Energized by the discovery, Mike tossed off a quick ‘will do’ and then moved into the mist, feeling just a twinge of guilt for doing precisely what he’d promised he would not.  It was obvious Spock took him at his word as he had given him pretty free range since they’d left the cave.  As the mist swallowed him, Mike’s pace slowed.  He tried to feel his way with his feet, but it wasn’t easy.  That was another bit of experience he had, from filming ‘Between Heaven and Earth.’   He hadn’t done the tricky stuff, but he’d been high enough to reinforce his more than healthy respect for heights.

He grinned.  That’s what a real man called ‘fear’.

Moving forward, carefully, he held his hands out before his face like he’d been taught to do by the blind teacher in another episode where Joe had lost his sight.[1]  It really did help and kept him from bumping into branches and other things sticking out into his path.  Just as he heard Spock call his name – well, Joe’s name – he ran into something rough that did not give way.  He frowned as his fingers explored it.  It felt like mesh – metal mesh – with some sort of thickly-woven cloth beneath.  Maybe it was a tree with really weird bark.  Or maybe….

Maybe it was someone with a gun.

Michael fell back as a figure stepped out of the mist.  He was a tall man and looked by his bone structure to be part Native American.   His skin was tanned, his hair and eyes dark.  He was wearing some sort of a uniform with a gray duster thrown over it.

“Who…who are you?” he stammered.

“I am Ba’Or of the House of Kahnrah.  You and your companion have made our shame complete.”  A sneer lifted his lip as he brandished the weapon.

“Now I will make you no more.”

Dan stood with his head tilted as far back as it would go, looking up at  the high ridge that jutted out of the side of the rocky hill before them.

“What do you guys think?” he asked.

Pernell’s hazel eyes followed his.  “I think we’re nuts.”

He pointed to the ground.  “The trail leads right to here and then disappears.”

They’d long ago forgotten about guarding the integrity of the signs they followed.  They’d hit a patch of ground where the footsteps were so clear it would have been hard not to have spotted them.   If someone had taken Mike they weren’t doing anything to hide their tracks.

Which was a worry in itself.

Lorne had joined him.  He was looking up too, shielding his eyes against the rising sun that was beginning to burn the mist off.

“If I remember right, Michael is afraid of heights.”

They’d all watched him when they filmed that show about Little Joe and Eagle’s Nest.[2]  True to the character he portrayed, Mike had stubbornly climbed a heck of a lot farther up the rocky ridge that day than a man with that kind of phobia should.

“If someone took him, he’d have had little choice.  Fear or not,” Pernell said quietly.

“Wait a minute,” Dan said, squinting into the rising light that made the mist glow even as it evaporated.  He pointed.  “Up there!   I saw something move.”

As they often did in the show, the three formed a line and stood together looking up.

“There’s a man climbing!” Lorne declared.

“Above that.  Look!”  Excitement laced with fear colored Pernell’s baritone lifting it to a medium tenor.  “Near the edge of the cliff!”

Dan took a step back and angled his neck.  “Damn!” he cursed.  “I think those are Mike’s boots and he’s right on the edge!”

Jim Kirk stood with his back pressed against the rocky wall of the narrow winding stair that cut into the mountainside.  He’d been just about to emerge on top when the sound of voices directly above his head stopped him and dropped him down out of sight.  Two of them he didn’t recognize, but he knew the third.  He’d know that cultured, seemingly unruffled voice anywhere.

It was Spock.

At least the Vulcan wasn’t raving like the last time he’d seen him back in eighteen-seventy-six just after Theron had injected the full load of venom from one of the time manipulators into him.  Kirk closed his eyes briefly in order to dismiss the vision of his stoic, self-controlled first officer writhing in the grass, screaming like a lunatic.  Bones has said that once the poison was in his system it would slowly become a norm.  Due to his Vulcan physiology, it wouldn’t kill him, but it would slowly and quietly drive him insane.  The antidote he carried would halt its progress.

Bones didn’t know if they could fully reverse the effects.  The odds, he said, didn’t look good.

Before going to Gateway Kirk had met with the Starfleet top brass and explained things as well as he  could.  They’d reluctantly recalled the warrant for Spock’s arrest and rescinded almost all of the charges against him, though there were still a few minor ones he was going to have to face.

Anyhow, he had sent the new first officer packing, odds or not.

Now, as he clung to the cliff-face and listened, he tried to imagine who was there besides Spock and the missing actor.  Whoever it was, was no doubt the one giving off the other alien signature.   He’d wracked his brains and the only possibility he could come up with was the other Klingon – Brewer or Ba’Or – the one who had been ordered along with Drax to assist Curran Theron.  Ba’Or had had run as the explosives went off.  That was the act of a coward, something the Klingon could not admit and hope to go home to anything other than being put on kitchen duty or sent out to hunt prickle mice.

For a Klingon warrior there could be no greater disgrace than to have been outsmarted by humans and a Vulcan.

Shifting slightly, Kirk looked up the ridge and was rewarded by pebbles striking him in the face.  As the blond man pulled back to avoid the rest of the shower, he cursed.

A set of boots dangled, almost off the edge, and they didn’t look like anything out of a shop on Qo’noS.

“Come closer, Vulcan, and he dies!” Ba’Or roared.

Spock blinked.  He didn’t know what was wrong.  It was as if his thought processes as well as the body they drove were impaired.   He had seen the Klingon step close to Joseph Cartwright, watched as they came face to face and Ba’Or reached out, but he had failed to move.  Failed to take action.

Now it was too late.

Ba’Or’s gloved hand encircled the throat of Ben Cartwright’s youngest son as Theron’s had before, increasing pressure as he spoke.  Joseph was not quite dangling, but his feet barely brushed the ground and his fingers were working frantically at the Klingon’s hand in an attempt to dislodge it.  Logic dictated this was futile.  His human strength could not prevail.  Therefore….

Therefore….

“Why do you stand and do nothing, Vulcan?  Do you wish to watch him die?”

Joe’s eyes rolled his way and then rolled back up into his head as his body went slack.

He had less than three minutes.

“How is the honor of the House Kahnrah served by the death of a human male who has not been faced in battle?” Spock demanded, breathing and thinking hard, doing his best to employ Vulcan mind disciplines to overcome the chaos and fatigue that sought to drag him down into a pool of disorder and confusion.  “You have his throat.  Do you intend to crush it?  What are human bones to you?  It would be like battling a racht.  Only a weakling would threaten a worm who has no bones.”  He paused.  “Again where is your honor, Ba’Or of Kahnrah?”  The Vulcan moved haltingly forward.  “This man is my maqoch.[3]  What is done to him is done to me.”

Ba’Or did not release Joe, but he lowered him until the young man’s feet touched the ground.  “You will die for him?”

Determination shone from his near-black eyes.  “I will die for him.”

Ba’Or stared at him for several heartbeats and then threw his head back and roared.  Seconds later his fingers opened and Joseph Cartwright slid to the ground unconscious.

Kirk held his breath.  From what McCoy told him, Spock was in no shape to take on a lightweight prize fighter, let alone a Klingon warrior in his prime.

He had to do something.

Looking up again, the blond man spotted the same pair of boots hanging just over the edge of the cliff, only they were horizontal this time.  He climbed up a few feet and dared to look over the edge.  Spock was backing up, retreating before Ba’Or.  Did his friend know he was here?  Or was his first officer simply trying to put as much space between the fallen actor and his would-be-assassin as he could?   With an eye to the pair, Kirk reached up and caught the young man around the hips and began to draw him down.  The ledge was narrow, so it took some maneuvering, but finally he had him and propped his unconscious form against the rocks.  Making sure he was well anchored before doing so, Kirk began to ascend once again.

He had to save Spock.

“What’s happening?” Lorne called softly from the ground.  Like Ben Cartwright was so many times, he’d been left to watch as his television sons climbed the narrow ledge, ascending into danger to see if it was indeed their actor ‘brother’ whose boots had been hanging off the side of the high cliff.   He’d been able to keep track of Pernell and Dan for the first few minutes, but then the trees had shifted to the outside of the path and they’d vanished behind a screen of green leaves.  He wanted to call out to them again, but they all knew stealth was imperative.  If it was Mike – and if someone had taken him – then his life could be in danger.

Lorne snorted.  The next time he portrayed Ben Cartwright impatiently waiting on word of one of his missing boys, he’s have a lot of resource material to call on!

A minute later he saw Pernell’s dark head break above the tree line.  Dan was close behind him.  They were moving.  Then they stopped.  Then they went down and out of sight.

Lorne’s white eyebrows met in the middle.  “Damn!” he said at last.

And began to climb.

Kirk had shifted into a covering of leaves at the top of the ridge.  He watched as Spock and the Klingon began to circle one another.  Due to the Vulcan’s shaming of him, Ba’Or would feel it necessary to kill Spock with his bare hands.

That gave him an advantage.

Silently opening the kit he wore, Kirk pulled out his phaser.  He set it to high stun and then moved, circling around in order to end up to the aft side of Spock where he’d have a clearer shot.  His friend was moving slowly, almost as if in a dream.  There was none of the panther-like grace he had come to associate with the Vulcan – nothing to suggest the speed and agility he knew Spock was capable of.  His friend was too thin.  He was unkempt, valleys of a sickly green surrounded his once keen eyes, and his skin was the color of paste.

And still Spock was going to fight.  Still, he was going to fulfill his mission to save Joe Cartwright – to save him – even if it killed him.

Once in place Kirk looked for an opportunity to fire.

Spock was breathing hard; a physical reaction he had only rare acquaintance with and found most unpleasant.  The resulting lack of oxygen drove a green mist before his eyes, altering both his mental and physical state, rendering him weak and unable to think clearly.  His dark eyes sought the man he had to protect even as he took another step back, intent on drawing the Klingon away from his intended victim.

His victim….

His….

Spock’s gaze dropped to the matted grass near the cliff’s edge.  It was empty.

He faltered.

He’d been there.  Someone had been there.

Joe?

Jim….

“So, you surrender Vulcan.  You are wise,” Ba’Or snarled as he advanced.  “Death will come more quickly that way.”

Spock blinked and staggered back, his eyes riveted the that empty space of ground.  He had a mission.  There was a mission.

What was his mission?

Jim.  It had been to save Jim.  But first, he had to save….

“Joe?”  It came out as a strangled gasp.

The Klingon was mere feet away.  He held no weapon.  He needed none.  He had removed his gloves and his scarred fingers were reaching out, flexing, seeking tender bones to crush.

Ba’Or almost had him when the Klingon halted.  Suspicion lit his feral eyes.  With the look of an animal scenting danger, he pivoted on his heel.

A second later he turned back with a roar.  “What have you done with him, Vulcan?”

The equation was flawed as the question.   He had done nothing.

Nothing.

 Why had he done nothing?  Why couldn’t he remember what he was to have done?

What he had done….

Spock’s near-black eyes lit with real fear.

Something was desperately wrong with his mind.

Ba’Or remained still for several beats of Spock’s Vulcan heart, staring at him, and then the Klingon warrior launched himself forward with the power and strength of a desert sehlat, a death cry on his lips.  Spock braced himself for the impact.

It never came.

Instead there was a high-pitched whine.  Spock saw the Klingon’s eyes widen with surprise.  Then, suddenly, dawn broke over the forested land, bathing them both in a rich red glow.

As he fell, Spock had an errant thought.

His mother should have been here.

She so loved the sunrise.

“Dan!  Dan!” Pernell called.  “Here!”

The big man’s head came up.  “What have you got?”

“Mike!  I’ve got Mike!”

Those were just about the sweetest words he’d ever though he heard.  Hastening to follow, Dan called out, “Where?”

“On the trail.  Just above you.”  There was  pause.  “He’s unconscious.”

Unconscious? 

“Dan?” their TV father’s voice called.  “Dan, what did Pernell say?”

He turned and saw Lorne’s white head advancing up the trail.  “He’s got Mike!” he called down.

That head looked like the hind end of a white-tailed deer  it was coming up so fast.

Turning back Dan started his own climb again.  It took less than a minute before he nearly stumbled over Pernell, who was kneeling in the middle of the path.  He had his hand out and was gently tapping Mike’s cheek.

“Mike?  Michael!  Can you hear me?”

His voice was shaking.  Dan wondered why.  Then he noticed the red marks on Mike’s throat.

“Good God!” he heard Lorne exclaim behind him.

Pernell was looking up at him.  “Do you think we should move him?”

Dan wasn’t sure why everyone was looking to him, but they were.   “Can you tell if anything is broken?”

The black-haired man shook his head.  “I don’t think so.  I checked.”

The big man drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

“Then you just get out of my way and I’ll see what I can do about getting little brother somewhere safe.”

Lorne had already begun his descent.  Pernell, with an eye to the edge of the path, slipped past him and did the same.  Stepping over Mike’s silent form, the big man moved to the other side and then knelt and gently lifted him and laid his still form across one shoulder.  Then, as if carrying a precious Ming urn, he began his descent.

About halfway down a sound stopped him.  A funny sound that had no place in the wilderness.  It was a high-pitched whine that grated on the nerves, something like a tornado siren.  Dan looked up and for just a second there was a flash of light that hurt his eyes.

Then it was gone.

“Dan!  Are you coming?  We can hear sirens.  The studio must have called the police!” Pernell shouted.

As he arrived at the bottom and laid Mike on the ground, he heard Lorne make a ‘tsk-ing’ noise with his tongue.

“What’s that?” the big man asked even as he gently touched his television brother’s cheek.

“Nothing.”

Mike was starting to stir.  Those green eyes were just next to opening.  It looked like he was going to be all right.

Lorne didn’t miss it.  He shook his head and then, in spite of everything, laughed.

“Now what on God’s green earth do you find funny?” Pernell demanded.

“I was just thinking about the ratings,” the older man said.  “This adventure would have blown them through the roof!”