and beside it another store with a sign that says FREE SOUP and a smaller sign with an arrow that says FORM A LINE. In front of these two shops there is a small group of men. They are in a line, and though we can only see six or seven shabby men in caps and shapeless coats outside on the sidewalk, the way they are queued up, with the line disappearing into the soup kitchen, we know there are many more in the crowd. On a soapbox between the two stores, a tall, wild-eyed man with a typical moustache of the time, dressed in the same shabby garb, wearing a frayed “newsboy’s cap,” holding an American flag on a pole, is haranguing the crowd. The penniless men listen to the ORATOR, who is slowly inciting them to riot, as we SEE the sudden materialization of Kirk and Spock at the rear of the crowd. Kirk faces the Orator, but Spock is turned the other way, as though they had come through time turned-about.

48 CLOSE ON KIRK & SPOCK

as they look around, startled and disoriented. They find each other, and there is wonder in their eyes. Not till this moment have they believed what the act of time-travel was really like. Now they turn to the Orator as he howls.

ORATOR

What kind of a country is this, where men have to stand in bread lines just to fill their bellies? I’ll tell you what kind! A country run by the foreigners! All the scum we let in to take the food from our mouths, all the alien filth that pollutes our fine country. Here we are, skilled workers, and they want us to sign up for CCC camps. Civilian Conservation Corps, men—is that what we’re gonna do? Work like coolies inna fields while these swine who can’t even speak our language take the—

He CONTINUES UNDER as we CLOSE on Kirk and Spock. Spock looks at Kirk with disbelief.

SPOCK

Is this the heritage Earthmen brag about? This sickness?

KIRK

(disgusted)

This is what it’s taken us five hundred years to crawl up from.

49 REVERSE ANGLE—ORATOR’S POV

as he sees Spock in the rear of the crowd. The fanaticism of his harangue is suddenly halted. He rises on tip-toe and suddenly points a finger.

ORATOR

There! There’s one! There’s one of them foreign trouble-makers. Whyn’t we show him how we like his kind!

The crowd turns almost in a body, and there is a definite MURMUR THRU THE CROWD as they see Spock—an obvious alien though they have no idea how alien—who looks around uneasily. Kirk edges away with his phaser leveled, and we wonder for a beat if Kirk is possibly deserting his companion.

ORATOR

(hysterically)

They’re the ones sending this country deeper into the Depression! They’re the ones that want your babies to die with swollen bellies, they’re the ones!