“The responsibility of those of us who come out from Earth is to come in peace, to spread the best of mankind among the other races of the stars. Those who seek to pervert this responsibility, to profiteer from the contact between races, to fill their own pockets at the expense of understanding and brotherhood, serve a devil that has no name. Richard Beckwith, by the evidence of this court-martial you have been proved guilty of fomenting insurrection on a less-advanced planet, of luring unsophisticated aliens into the vilest sort of narcotics addiction, of smuggling contraband and of murder in cold blood. The sentence of this court, by the articles of any justice applicable to these crimes, is that you be carried to the nearest uninhabited planet—for we would not sully the soil of a settled world by the imposition of your body—and there be put to death in the manner proscribed by the articles of punishment under which this ship goes to space. Do you have anything to say to this court?”

Beckwith smiles. “I’ve always wanted to end this jaunt with a quiet, elegant life. What could be more elegant than an entire planet for my graveyard.”

And as we HOLD ON Beckwith, we FADE OUT.

ACT ONE:

FADE IN the bulk of the Enterprise hanging above the silver-gray ball of a lost planet far out in the heart of The Coalsack. Kirk speaking: “Ship’s Log, star-date 3134.8. At last we have found a desolate mote in the emptiest reaches of nowhere between galaxies. Astrogators call it The Coalsack for stars are few and far between. We have found one such star, without a name, labeled merely with a number. And circling that dying sun is but a single planet. My men have seen it and turned their faces away. Most of the viewports have been made opaque; they don’t want to even think about a world so lost, so lonely, that it is only serviceable as an execution chamber for a creature not even worth calling a man. I am taking Spock and two other officers, and a firing squad of twelve men down.”

They transport down to the surface of the dead world. It is a featureless ball of silver-gray mists and cold. They wear insulation suits and breatherpaks. But when they are down, and about to commence the execution, one of the techs in the group announces there is radiation from over the horizon. Kirk is troubled: the protocols of the ship’s articles postulate a courtesy of not executing criminals aspace, on an inhabited world. They must check it out before they can dispose of Beckwith.