Joe Sullivan was finding his first shore duty decidedly dull. There was little or nothing on this planet to interest an electronics engineer, and though Ensign Chekov and Misters Barnett and Dawe didn't seem to agree, he'd grown swiftly bored with the utterly Earth-like beauty of the unexplored planet, and trailed after the survey team with undisguised reluctance.

The tricorder, which it was his duty to monitor, had so far merely imitated the Enterprise's larger sensors and remained sullenly blank. No sentient life forms.

He would have preferred to land on a somewhat more bizarre planet, replete with non-humanoid aliens to catalogue and study. Now that would have been interesting. Almost anything would have been more interesting than this.

Ahead of him, Chekov had answered his communicator to the voice of Captain James Kirk.

"Report, Mr. Chekov," the voice requested.

"Still no intelligent life reading, sir," the Russian ensign replied, and glanced at Joe for confirmation. "Ve are continuing to collect soil and flora samples. So far, it appears to be a perfectly normal class M planet in the pre-sentient phase of a normal developing evolution."
 

On the Enterprise bridge, James Kirk gave the com link on the arm of his chair the same dubious look he would have given Chekov had the ensign been present. He disliked the word "normal." In his experience, nothing in space could ever be considered normal by any traditional human standard. To assume it so, in fact, was often to invite disaster.

"Very well, Mr. Chekov, " he said to the com link. "Carry on. But be careful. The appearance of normality can be deceiving. "

"Yes sir. Landing party out."

"Captain. .." Mr. Spock turned from the sciences console, where a planetary sensor display rotated on one of the miniature screens. "Something curious. I'm reading a certain ... instability ... in the genetic make-up of the plant life below. Almost as though, for lack of a better phrase, their molecular structure were not at all constant."

So much for "normality." Kirk's brow furrowed. "I don't understand," he admitted.

"Nor do I, " Spock concurred. "It is impossible by any science I know for organic matter -- or any matter -- of this magnitude to fluctuate; to in effect become something other. Yet that is what appears to be happening."

"Become something other? Become what?"

Spock shook his head. "Impossible to speculate. But it is doubtful that such fluctuation could be due to any natural process. The planetary ecology would appear to have been tampered with."

"We're still reading no intelligent life forms."

"None that our sensors can register. But--"

" --But sensors have been fooled before," Kirk finished. "Very well, Mr. Spock. Repeat your sensor scans and interior planetary scans. Let me know if you find anything suspicious."

The Vulcan nodded and returned his attention to his console.

"Lt. Uhura," Kirk said, "please advise the landing party of Mr. Spock's findings. And Mr. Sulu, give me a long-range scan. Report on any vessels in the area."

His commands were met with a chorus of "Aye aye sir."
 

Chekov received Uhura's message with mixed enthusiasm. The fluctuating molecular theory was all very interesting, but the plants around him gave no indication they might turn into bug-eyed monsters -- or anything else -- in the near future.

Joe strolled idly past the sample-collecting members of the party, distracted momentarily by an unusual configuration of cloud in the turquoise sky. It was not until he'd moved beyond the hearing of the others that the odd sensation began to overcome him -- the electric tingle of a transporter beam. Why would the Enterprise beam them back without notice?

When the suddenly-transformed universe began to reassemble itself before him, however, it was not the Enterprise around him, but a dimly-lit, rhomboid chamber with a single dais-like structure (a transporter console?) in its approximate center. Behind the structure stood a thoroughly unattractive alien who resembled nothing else so much as an oversized Terran mantis.

There was a high pitched, creeling whistle emanating from the large insect's vicinity. Joe's hand moved automatically to activate the translator that hung on a chain at his throat. The gesture was definitely a mistake.

Whistling and clicking in alarm, three new mantises materialized from the walls on either side of him, two of them seizing his arms while a third removed the translator with a deft snap of its insectoid pincers. He was similarly bereft of phaser, communicator and tricorder, then was hauled unceremoniously off the platform to be presented to the creature at the console. It whistled an interrogative, or what sounded like one.

"Please," Joe tried to explain, "give me back the translator. The translator!" His attempts to gesture toward the device were curtailed by the overzealous guards. A moment later he was dismayed to hear the alien transporter reactivate, and within seconds, Chekov, Barnett and Dawe were standing in the chamber, undergoing the same disarmament procedure he had just been subjected to.

"Vat is this?" Chekov demanded, as though Joe might have any more idea than he did. "How did ve get here?"

Joe was prevented from answering by the mantis guards' sudden insistence that he accompany them out the triangular door.

They were given separate "quarters" off a long, nondescript corridor. And though Joe took note that his accommodations were in fact somewhat roomier than his nook aboard the Enterprise, the door was nevertheless locked, and he had quickly exhausted all the obvious means of escape. All right then. He'd look for unobvious means. Any electronics engineer worth his Starfleet pay ought to be able to figure this out. Besides, an old cliche' that he fervently hoped were true said that there was a way out of any cell. All you had to do was find it...
 

Soon after losing contact with the landing party, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Lt. Sulu had set out in the shuttle Galileo for the patrol's last reported location planetside.

"I have several 'unstable' readings, Captain," Spock reported. The tiny shuttle, entering the planet's ionosphere, was meeting turbulence. "Severe atmospheric disturbances," Spock read from the sensors.

"A storm?"

"Negative. A complete change of planetary molecular structure. The atmosphere itself has converted from oxygen-nitrogen to methane and ammonia. An inhospitable mixture, to say the least."

"Ammonia?" Kirk echoed. "Life scan, Mr. Spock. Any sign of the landing party? "

Spock hesitated, then shook his head. "Negative."

"T'hey were equipped with portable environmental shields," McCoy pointed out. "There's a good chance they could still be alive."

With almost herculean force, something caught and rolled the Galileo. While the occupants fought to stay in their seats, restraints notwithstanding, Spock struggled with the shuttle's controls until the small craft was righted. Moments later, they had touched down with a final, desultory thud.

"Mr. Spock, " McCoy grumbled, "that was definitely not one of your better landings."

The Vulcan science officer ignored him, intent on lowering Calileo's triplet viewports. Where mere minutes before, green grass, trees and flowers had grown, there now resided nothing but deadly swirls of coral-colored haze.

"Captain, " Spock said, "the shuttle cannot remain under these conditions for long without suffering structural damage."

"Nor can we," Kirk agreed. "But if the shore party is still alive, why aren't they registering on our sensors?"

"Sensor shielding," Spock theorized.

Sulu shook his head, "But that would imply some form of native intelligent life."

"Yes," McCoy said grimly. "It would. And it might also explain why the atmosphere was fields and flowers one minute and ammonia clouds the next."

Spock arched an eyebrow. "How so, Doctor?"

"Fly paper, Mr. Spock. Fly paper."

Kirk forestalled the Vulcan officer's retort with an order, "Environmental suits, gentlemen. Let's go find our survey team."

The problem, of course, was where to look. The unreliability of their sensor equipment made splitting up impractical; they remained together. Yet this way, moving blind, Kirk feared they had little hope of finding anything.

"This is the team's last known position," Spock said after they had walked a short distance from the shuttle. His entire form, including the tricorder he held in front of him, was encased in the orange glow of his protective shield.

"Any readings at all?" Kirk asked.

"Something puzzling." The Vulcan first officer studied the humming instrument in his hand for several moments. "An expansive area just beneath us which registers nothing where planetary strata ought to be."

"The sensor shield?"

"So it would appear."

"Fine, " Kirk peered through the melon-hued clouds at his feet. "How do we get in?"

He had no sooner asked the question than a quartet of insectoids stepped out of the mist, leveling what could only be weapons at each of them.

McCoy sent Kirk a sour glance. "You had to ask."
 

What had once been a light panel in Joe Sullivan's "holding cell" now hung from the ceiling, a pitiful, electronic corpse of its former self. With two of its cannibalized wires, he had connected a second lighting panel to the handle of the locked door. The final connection had to be made in the dark, but he had no trouble with it. When the light switch was thrown, a loud, angry buzzing accompanied the sparks that flew from the metal knob. Seconds later, the door popped obligingly open.

They hadn't made an electronic door lock yet that couldn't be short circuited.. .

The very first adjoining room that he'd examined had been as deserted as the outer corridor. Odd that there were no guards ...

The room, apparently some sort of research lab, was ill used and dusty. But in addition to a great deal of long-neglected, unfamiliar equipment, it contained one of the landing party's tricorders. His hasty search revealed none of the other devices that had been taken from them, but the tricorder was a start.  He could use it to locate the others, for one thing.

Wondering where all the mantises had gone, he turned the tricorder on sensor mode and began scanning for his shipmates, reflecting as he did so that tricorders, in a pinch, could also be rewired to unscramble electronic door locks.
 

Drone Xiphx was ecstatic to have found four more captives on the surface of Kre-ur.

"There may yet be more," he told the queen as the new arrivals were disarmed on the beaming dais. "Perhaps an entire nest of them."

His enthusiasm was justifiable. After all, with the nourishment they would obtain from these creatures, the future of the Kiza was assured. Their queen would be fertile again.

"Let us hope so," she told him, answering his earlier statement. "Go and transform the surface once again to its long ago semblance. We may yet lure others."

"At once, my queen." Xiphx went to do her bidding. He left behind him, in the chamber, the four Kiza who besides himself comprised all that remained of his once-great race.
 

Drone Zurys delivered the creatures' alien weapons and devices to his monarch. "Do you wish these four also preserved for study, my queen?"

"I think not. We may study those we took earlier. These four I think you may prepare for kra-tze-ta.

Drone Zurys' mandibles performed the Kiza equivalent of a smile. "At once, my queen."
 

Like the four humans captured before them, Kirk and his party were helpless, without the translators, to either communicate with or understand the aliens. What their captors intended for them, however, became all too horribly clear when they were led into an adjoining, larger chamber.

"What in the name of God...?"

McCoy's question was not met with an immediate answer. The chamber walls now surrounding them were lined with corpses. Hundreds of corpses of many varying species, some known to them, others not -- and several of them were unmistakably human. Webbed in lacy, cocoon-like shrouds, they stood in hollow niches in the wall; a legion of silent, husk-dry sentinels.

"What is it?" Sulu's voice echoed as they were separately herded into unoccupied niches and secured there. "Some sort of tomb?"

"I think not, lieutenant," Spock replied. "More likely... a dining room."

McCoy glared at the Vulcan. "A what?"

"Observe the condition of the bodies, Doctor. They resemble the victims of many insects which take sustenance by draining their--"

"Spock," McCoy interrupted. "Just once . . . just once I wish to hell you wouldn't be so damned observant."
 

The entrance of the queen mantis curtailed Kirk's intended response to their argument. Her three attendants, who were shortly joined by a fourth, guided her to the niche where Sulu was tied.

Slowly, her powerful mandibles parted, making way for her unfurling tongue to snake toward the lieutenant and sink its numbing, barb-tipped point into the flesh of his neck.

Sulu screamed ...

And far above them, the ceiling lights suddenly flickered, dimmed and went out.

The queen recoiled in fury from her intended meal. Spinning in the blackness, she followed her drones toward the power access panel at one end of the chamber, creening at them to repair this accursed malfunction so that the kra-tze-ta might continue uninterrupted.

Of all the maddening times for such a thing to happen! At the very point of her preparation to dine. The thought made her shiver with rage. She had not dined in many months. This meal would be resplendent indeed. Her body would swell with the nourishment, which she would regurgitate to the fawning drones, who would then mate with her, fertilizing the eggs that would already be growing in her abdomen. She grew dizzy with the anticipation.

"Hurry!" she urged them, angrily nipping at their heels with her pincers. "Repair this impertinent malfunction at once! The kra -tze -ta must not be interrupted!!"

She was pressing upon the hindmost legs of the one called Zurys, urging him to hurry, urging them all to hurry, when something bright and fiery erupted from the access panel.

Power coursed through the four drone bodies, making them stiffen and jerk to its macabre death dance. It reached the queen before she could release the leg of Zurys.

She felt the terrible heat of the electrocution. But her scream was not one of pain. It was a scream of mourning, for the passing of her kind.
 

The Galileo rested now amidst an artificially reconstructed field of wild flowers.

"I could issue you a reprimand, you know, " Kirk said to Joe as they helped a groggy Sulu into the shuttle. "For wandering from your party and inviting capture by hostile forces. But under the circumstances ... I may recommend the lot of you for commendations."

Joe and Chekov exchanged smiles.

"With special thanks to Mr. Scott," Chekov added.

Kirk blinked. "Oh? How is that?"

"Well, " Joe laughed. "He taught me how to short circuit a power system. Any power system."

"Thank great Zeus for that," McCoy said, settling into his shuttle seat. "If Starfleet is feeling extra charitable, maybe they'll see fit to immortalize you by christening this this little rock in the middle of nowhere 'Joe's Planet.'"

"A study of the molecular-conversion process and equipment may prove quite invaluable," Spock interjected. "A pity we could not also preserve living members of of the species that created it. If our preliminary examination of the underground chambers is any indication, their race was once quite numerous."

"Spock," McCoy grumbled, "sometimes I think you'd mourn the passing of the Devil himself."

"Indeed, doctor? Your xenophobia notwithstanding, all life forms, no matter how repulsive you may find them, maintain the primary right of survival. These insectoids, for example, were exhibiting behavior patterns which were in every way perfectly attuned to their natures. The queen of the species, as in many Terran insect colonies, cannot reproduce without first, as it were, gorging herself. I have in fact noted that even humans have been known to prey upon --"

"Mr. Spock?" The interruption came, sleepily, from Sulu, who sat propped against the shuttle wall with the wound at his throat freshly bandaged. "If you don't mind, " he said squeamishly, "I'd really rather not discuss it."

The Vulcan fell silent, wondering, as he frequently did, why humans were so incredibly touchy.

Galileo's engines warmed for her journey home.
 
 
 
 

***The End***