Star Trek: The Original Series - 162 - Shadow of the Machine Read Online Free PDF Page B

you know what a right-hand man is, Jimmy?”
    Kirk didn’t know, so he shook his head.
    “A right-hand man is like your best pal,” Sam explained. “He goes everywhere you go, keeps you company when you’re away from home, sticks up for you against bad people.”
    “Like you and me, Sammy?” Kirk asked.
    “Yeah, just like you and me.”
    It wasn’t until the next year in school that Kirk discovered that Lil’ Sloane was in fact Lily Sloane, a woman of normal stature, who’d helped Cochrane build the Phoenix , the first warp-capable craft. He never got Sam back for that one.
    Once when they were playing in the old barn loft—only it wasn’t a loft, it was the surface of an alien planet on which Cochrane and Sloane had crash-landed—Kirk accidentally fell through a rotting rail. He tumbled down the loft stairs, crashing onto the floor below. He hit his head and broke his wrist. Sam flew down the stairs, and when he saw that his brother was hurt, he carried him all the way back down the hill and back to the house.
    They did not play in the old barn again that summer. Kirk wanted to, but Sam said no, that it was too dangerous. He said that last time they’d been lucky, and that if one of them fell out of the loft this time, someone could be killed.
    • • •
    Kirk paused by the water’s edge, at the spot where he and his brother used to swim. The old oak was still there, but the tire swing was long gone. Looking carefully, he could see the section of branch where the rope had worn the bark away. The water was low at this time of year, the flow nowhere near the raging torrent it would become once the last of the winter thaw had filled it. At the moment it was a trickle, splashing across the four big stones that formed a rough path from one side of the bank to the other.
    “Stepping-stones,” Sam had called them, although it took more than a step to get from one stone to the other, as Kirk discovered to his peril many times, when he missed his footing and fell into the water. To a seven-year-old James Kirk, the distance between each of those stones sometimes felt like the width of the Grand Canyon.
    From where he stood, Kirk had only to turn his head to the left to see the old barn standing on the hill beyond the farmstead. It was in ruins now, nothing more than a weed-choked rotting frame, with no roof and gaping, broken windows.
    “Race you,” Sam would shout over his shoulder as they tore across the fields toward the hill. “Race you, Jimmy Slowpoke. Race you!”
    Kirk sighed. He hadn’t realized it until that very moment, but the wound was still wide open. The memory of his brother’s death was still raw.
    Too many ghosts.
    • • •
    “It’s just not me, Jim, I can’t. I just can’t.”
    “Four years in the Academy. One year on a ship—and you’re done?”
    “Jim, give it a rest!” Sam shouted. “I’m done with Starfleet!”
    “Sam, all you ever talked about was exploring. How Starfleet was the perfect way to become—”
    “A famous explorer. It’s not me, Jim. Flying around in a tin can, letting someone else do all the exploration, handing me samples to study. I wanted to be out there, getting my hands dirty, doing it myself. I’m joining a scientific study to an Andorian colony, and Aurelan is joining me. We want to start a family, another thing that we can’t do in Starfleet: I’d have to leave them for months or years on end.” Sam bent down and started skipping stones across the stream.
    “Baby brother, you were born to be in Starfleet, to be a starship captain.”
    Sam turned and told him, “I just have this feeling, Jimmy, that if I don’t do it now, I might never get the chance.”
    • • •
    There was a splash in the water down to his left, and Kirk turned in time to see a momentary flash of color. It broke the surface, then was gone. A brook trout , Kirk decided. Sam and he had caught enough of them out of that stream.
    He adjusted the straps at his shoulders,