Unable to comply.

KIRK

Explain.

VOICE OF TRICORDER

(filter)

Circuits damaged in seventh level intensity. Only partial data available. You were warned.

KIRK

(resignedly)

Proceed.

There is tortured clicking and whirring from the machine. Then, amidst static, it speaks.

VOICE OF TRICORDER

(filter)

Blue. The burning sun. The key.

It clicks and hums and then quits entirely. Spock hands the dead unit to Kirk. Kirk hefts it with frustration.

KIRK

That takes care of that. Wasn’t the blue, the sun, wasn’t it what the Guardian said, something like that? Did you make any sense out of it?

SPOCK

A description, perhaps. It was no help before we came through the Vortex, and it is not much help now.

Kirk holds out the tricorder.

KIRK

Can you repair it?

SPOCK

Dubious, Captain. The transistor has not been invented yet; nor the printed circuit; nor the mnemonic(pronounced nee-mon-ic) memory cube; nor—

KIRK

You made your point, Mr. Spock.

SPOCK

But, as always, sir, I can try.

Kirk chuckles and hands it to Spock.

KIRK

I’m going out to get a job today.

SPOCK

Perhaps I should do the same.

KIRK

Forget it. I need you working on that tricorder, so we can get a fix on how long it’ll be before Beckwith arrives.

(beat)

Besides, it’s too risky.

The Janitor emerges from the entrance to the basement.

JANITOR

What’s too risky…?

KIRK

Uh, nothing…his going out for a job…

JANITOR

Listen, these days, everybody’s on the dodge. Least thing’ll get a man pinched. Saw some Bo just last week got thrown in the pokey for tryin’ to steal bread an’ macaroni for his kids.

(beat)

What’d the Chinee do?

KIRK

Some, uh, friends of his are in trouble.

As he says this we

62 INSERT SHOT—TRANSPORTER ROOM ON ENTERPRISE

NOTE: this is intended as a shock-value shot, only a few frames in duration, almost subliminal in nature. It should be there, hold a scant beat, and be gone. Longer will be confusing. It is intended to link the Old Earth action with the imperativeness, the sense of moment, of action in the future. A jab in the eye, not a punch in the mouth.

The beleaguered Enterprise patrol as one of the crewmen wrenches open the door and Yeoman Rand fires a phaser through the instant-open hatch, at the Renegades, and the hatch—with its tell-tale burned spots—is thrust closed immediately by hand. The action takes place in only three or four beats and we

CUT BACK TO:

63 SAME AS 61 PRECISELY

as though we haven’t lost a beat in the conversation, as though we have seen through the eyes of thought of Kirk or Spock, to the urgency of what they must do.

KIRK

Uh…he can work around here…he needn’t go out to work…

But the Janitor is hearing the objection.

JANITOR

Leave it t’me. I got a job down the street he can fill…