Star Trek The Original Series - 48 - Vulcan's Glory by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780671742911
Publisher: Star Trek
Published: 1991-03-15T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

PIKE WOKE TO A DAWN that was a soft glow on the horizon, rapidly spreading to a golden flood of sunshine. He made himself a cold breakfast of ship’s rations and water as he sat on the sand and watched Areta’s sun rise. From this point until he returned to the ship, he would have to eat as the people around him ate. Finishing the rations, he collapsed the personal tent and folded it neatly into his possessions bag. The tribe of nomads should be less than two kilometers south of him now, and he began to walk in that direction.

The desert wind that had blown most of the night had dropped to a whisper, and the sand lay still on the gentle dunes that dominated the landscape in this area. It had been a stroke of good luck that the first time Pike had beamed down and approached the tribe led by Shinsei Farnah, he had appeared striding out of the midst of a desert sand devil, a swirl of sand whipped up by the swiftly changing winds running [131] ahead of a storm. The great nomad leader, Sadar-es, had come to the tribes in exactly the same manner, and Farnah’s people had welcomed Pike generously because of the coincidence. Sadar-es had been a loner, something of a hermit, but either intuitive or learned enough to foresee the gathering trouble among the people of the planet that meant a catastrophic war. He had preached everywhere he went that the coming war would destroy them if they stayed close to the cities. The original tribespeople had then been little more than scattered individuals and groups who preferred to live off the land in the rural areas of their world, the rough equivalent of farmers and ranchers. More and more people had come to listen to Sadar-es as he spoke eloquently about the shadow of death that hung over Areta when the great powers that ruled the planet finally clashed in the war that would inevitably come. Many left the cities and embraced the philosophy the desert hermit preached. Before the final conflict descended on Areta, Sadar-es had led his followers deep into the desert fastnesses, where they had molded themselves into the nomad life now followed by their descendants. After the holocaust, Sadar-es had stayed with his people until they formed themselves into the eight tribal units that survived to the present. He saw them begin to organize their tribal government and taught them everything he had known of desert survival. He was calculated to be in his eighty-first year when he had abruptly taken up his possessions bag and water container and disappeared into the wilderness, never to be seen again.

The two cities that survived, Sendai and Andasia, had had leaders who also believed in the message [132] Sadar-es had preached, but they had no wish to give up their cities. Instead, they had begun to build down, burrowing into the bedrock beneath their cities and creating a safe shelter there.

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