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182 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 1977
He [Spock] looked down and was stopped for a moment. He could not use the name. If he used the name he was certainly lost. He unlocked a hand from behind his back and closed long fingers on the bare, warm shoulder.
Surprise. And then a smile played on the still sleeping lips.
Then Spock saw the face relive the moment of astonishment, unbelief, belief. Veins stood out in ridges.
The lips formed “Spock!” Stomach muscles knotted and flung the wide shoulders up into arms which caught them. The hazel eyes snapped open.
After a moment they focused. The waking voice whispered, “Spock?” The arms closed on Spock’s shoulders.
“Shh-” Spock said [to Kirk] and held for a moment, then disentangled and eased the shoulders down, pulled up the fallen sheet. “Rest.”
“This is my Captain,” Spock said. “I require no inspection.”
“But I require it.” Omne answered.
Kirk’s eyes never left Spock, acknowledged no other presence. “And I require it,” he said. “Your faith was what I wanted. It is your certainty I need-- and my own. Use the mind-touch, Spock.”
He took Kirk’s face in his hands, not asking, this time a permission which had always been granted.
His fingers found the stylized position of the mind-touch and he cleared his own mind of the vision of the flames. He could do it now. He swept mind and body clean of the horror that must not be in the touch.
And he saw the same kind of clearing in Kirk’s face, the steadying down to quiet control, the fine courage of the willingness to open.
...And then Kirk’s hands reached to ease the shoulders and to draw him surprisingly close. “We are alone, Mr. Spock,” he said. “Quite alone. Do You Understand?” “Indeed, Captain. Quite alone.” And he made it true.
The mind-touch was a lowering of personal barriers. It did not require privacy, it nonetheless cried for it.
Spock slipped in easily at the level of warmth. He had been here before. It knew how to accept him.
Spock fought to keep the touch narrow, to move quickly up to the cooler level of consciousness. “Jim?”
My God, yes! It is yes? Spock heard the soft mind-laughter. “Hell, yes! Spock?”
“Yes. Indeed, yes!”
Laughter again, rippling like quicksilver. Where is my logical Vulcan?
Here.
Sudden catching of breath. ‘Even if-it’s not-me, Spock?”
It is you, all of you, irrespective of anything which has happened. That is my certainty, and your own. A shudder, caught and held to stillness.”
* Erroneous understandings of wolf behavior
* Second wave feminism... kinda...
* Clone angst
* Stockholm syndrome
* Kirk, Spock and Co running around dressed like cowboys/naked
* An exceptionally and undeniably alpha post-colonial giant who may or may not be part robot part fish.