I am Captain Kirk. We're visiting a utopian farm colony on a frontier planet. I beam up to the ship--an emergency call. When I return I find chaos. A mysterious "Führer" has taken control of the minds of the colonists--and my crew. Scotty goes mad and tries to smash my head in with a log so big he can barely handle it. We struggle up a woodpile--I get on top and choke him with a piece of firewood, tears half blinding me as I scream "I don't want to hurt you!" He howls, strains, but can't raise his club to hit me from beneath. I knock him out and run.

I head for the guest cabins where the crew should be. They are here--in a way. The women are all dressed up in sexy ridiculous costumes--one, in a flashy flowered oriental nightgown lies on the floor staring entranced at the ceiling. The women whine like kids. Are they drugged? Say they're "oppressed under the new order"--but all they do is flirt and kiss up to the men who hang around drooling and showing off. They're acting like whores and johns at some surreal party, not a starship crew. Not MY crew!

What's he done to them? Why? No answers from the bombed-out simpering officers. Bones offers me a mint julep.

"Where is he?" I scream in frustration. The dreaming woman on the floor murmurs "...South...Grove..."

I go after him alone, outraged, obsessed. Stop him? Punish him? Kill him? I don't know--but I have to act on the rage I feel for what he's done. I feel as stubborn and singleminded as Morgon of Hed. Remembering him, I leap into the air, arms spread. They burst into raptor's wings. In eagle form I hunt him, south, across the planet. Far past the edge of the colony, I find clearings, then fields, cottages, towns--this world has natives! And we never knew... I circle a schoolyard, letting the hot air from the playground lift me, while I look for clues among the tiny figures below. They seem very human.

I swoop low, and find to my surprise that they don't fear me or attack me (a huge wild thing after all) as Earth kids might. I perch, let them stroke me. They chatter, call friends to come see the beautiful hawk.

I listen--and overhear "The Führer should see this" and "I think he's watching from the window in the South Wing" of the school. I shriek a war cry and dive through the open school door, zooming up halls and stairs, smashing windows and splintering locked doors with single blows of my wings. Empty rooms. But he was here, I sense it. He couldn't take over my mind, but he tried; and there's a thread between us now. I will use that.

Perched on a warm window sill, crunching my talons absentmindedly into the old rotten wood, I scan the great city looming to the south, reflected in a broad inlet. I have a quick vision of him--see him in a penthouse suite, by a window like mine, looking up from his papers, staring across the miles. Does he sense me, too? I drop from the sill and head for the city's highrise heart.

The towers are so tall--thousands of feet--I can't fly straight up to them. Rather than gain altitude in the city where a hawk would stand out, I loop out over the water, miles, to the craggy tip of a ruin on an islet. A lighthouse once? I perch and rest. Some view! From here, the city itself looks like wild crag formations, or a ruin. Maybe it is--this could be a Sea of Time. I hope it's a city again when I return! I watch the shadows on those cliffs and gather my strength.

The sun is setting. It's time to go.

I dive off the tower, and suddenly a blast of fear freezes me--I'm falling! I'm going to die here! I try to change back into an eagle, but can't. I scream as the rocks come up--and hear an eagle shriek. I can't change 'cause I still am one! Instinctively I grab the wind and pull out, skimming the rocks and waves at deafening speed. The water is intense midnight blue, undulating. I weave beween lumbering mountains of water. I've forgotten about gaining altitude, delirious with Now. I whip through a bunch of fishing boats. The city lights are nearing; they remind me of my purpose. Suddenly one jumps from the skyline into my face! Foglamp on a fishing boat dead ahead--no time to turn--I must be going a hundred--the only way to stop is--HIT THE WATER! BAM!

Cold. I feel bruised all over. I don't know if I'm hawk or human.

Lights and voices. Motors. People look down on me from the boat on one side and a dinghy on the other. Hands pull at me. I panic, try to wrestle free. I become a huge salmon and try to dive. They brush at my scales with their hands, amazed, not believing I'm real. One grabs my dorsal fin, starts to hoist me into the boat, and I change again, into a THING all claws and snarling teeth. Even now I have to say to myself "I have the right to bite them to escape." Can I do it? But my looks are enough; they drop me in horror and watch uneasily as I dive under their boat and far away. At the surface, hidden by night, I heave back into hawk form and glide into the city. I'm deep in the skyscraper canyons, not high up where I planned, but I'm too tired to care.

I hunt, and rise slowly on the updrafts... And then something happens. I must have blacked out, for I find a old cop is leaning over me asking kindly "Who knocked you out? Don't move--I'll call the ambulance." I say "Wha--?" " They hit you a good one--could be concussion. Your wallet's gone. They took a shot at you--look. Lucky it wasn't a couple inches over." He fingers my dark blue wool coat. There's a bullethole in the lapel. No blood.

He steps around the corner. I try to think. Someone must have shot at me as a hawk, hit my wingfeathers--that would be the coat in this form. I fell... I stand--my arms feel okay. I climb up behind a billboard above the first shop and transform, just as the cop comes back. He stares up as I lurch away over the street lights. Will he connect the huge bird of prey with his lost mugging victim? He didn't seem the type to believe such things, but I can't be sure. The Führer may soon have warning. I must be doubly careful now. And I am so tired.

I need a refuge! I seek a friend... a six year old child, David, who is me in another existence. Sense him on the city's edge... I stand at the door in child form myself, looking into their suburban kitchen as he and his mom walk in with the groceries... FOOD!

David looks up and sees a wet shivering crazy-eyed thin blond kid with a bullet hole in his sweatshirt, and recognizes me anyway. He lets me in, convinces his reluctant mom I'm a school friend--I have a wild animal stare that scares her. I can't talk at first. He gives me strawberries, Yoplait, jack cheese and potatoes--what he finds in the first bag. I know nothing about cooking, and try to put big raw potato hunks in the frying pan, where David is trying to melt cheese on some hash browns. David cuts up the hunks into makeshift french fries and cooks them too. He feeds me by hand. For a moment he changes shape himself, into a middle aged man, a future self, and says "These are junk food, but you'll like them. When you grow up you'll know how to cook and eat better." I'm an eagle now, wobbling on a chairback--I can't even hold shape. David washes berries for me and I eat them. He is a true friend.

I wake in a bed. Early morning. Cold out, and bright. Songbirds. The others aren't awake yet. I slip out the door and grow my wings. I feel more hawk than human, now. Only my quest is left. I fly around the city, ultramodern yet somehow rounded, worn, fossillike--the perspective from the lighthouse seems to be creeping in. I see the city's future ruins, slightly, in its busy present. I reach the downtown pinnacles and hunt. I sleep days, under cover. At night I hover, peer through windows, looking for the Führer, the staring man who somehow hurt me and took my crew way back when I was Captain Kirk. I circle and look and beat my wings to aching exhaustion, but still I haven't found him. I don't know what to do with him when I do find him. Why did he take their minds? And I'm still searching...