Troublesome Minds - Star Trek: The Original Series

Dave Galanter

Pocket Books

2009

384 páginas

12h 48m

ISBN-10: 1439101558

While exploring the unmapped frontier, the Starship Enterprise responds to a distress call from an unknown ship. Captain James T. Kirk turns first contact into a threat of interstellar war -- by saving the life of a man left to die by his own people. Berlis, colony leader of a telepathic race calling themselves the Isitri, claims not to know why those from his homeworld want him dead. Kirk wants to believe him, but it matters little since the damage is already done: the Enterprise can neither leave the stranger to die nor turn him over to those who would kill him without trial. A fragile being, Berlis seems harmless and perhaps even believes himself to be. But his people say he cannot live among them: his telepathy is so strong they lose their wills to his. Self-defense leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy of disaster when he acts to keep his people from imposing their death sentence. The same fear that forces the Isitri to murder one of their own drives the neighboring Odib to genocide, for every time an "alpha mind" dominates the Isitri, the Odib pay the price in their own blood. With Spock becoming erratic under Berlis' thrall, and the Isitri begging Kirk to allow them to destroy the man who threatens their waking existence, all seems lost when Berlis makes his way back to Isitra, and an entire world falls to his whims. As the Isitri now ready their fleet to protect Berlis from an Odib onslaught, Kirk must either find a way to wrench billions from the grip of one man, or be responsible for the destruction of two planets.