The Enterprise receives a message from the city which mentions a madman's threat to the city. Kirk and Spock beam to the surface to investigate the meaning of the garbled message and they are stunned by the sight of devastation. They meet and talk with Governor Tula Yorker. He tells of how a few weeks ago they received threats from a man that demanded they leave the planet or die. The Enterprise then gets a threatening message from the man who says he'll send his meteors to destroy them too if they don't leave immediately.

   Scotty uses sophisticated equipment in engineering to trace the signal to within a massive meteor in the center of the meteor swarm near Parynda IV. Kirk, Spock and Scotty take a shuttlecraft to investigate how a single man could control the meteors. They are contacted by a man calling himself Tyranneous. Tyranneous uses his incredible mind powers to move the shuttlecraft below the surface to the interior of the hollow planetoid that he uses as a base of operations.

   Tyranneous says he deserves to rule Parynda IV by virtue of his powerful telekinetic mind powers. He tells them that he can't control all the people - so he chose to drive them out. Scott lunges at Tyranneous and is paralyzed in place. To punish him, Tyranneous commands Scott to take the shuttlecraft back to the Enterprise and destroy the starship. Spock uses a Vulcan mind block, a variation of a mind meld, to subdue the maniacal Tyranneous. Spock then uses Tyranneous's mind to guide the meteors to take them to the Enterprise. When they arrive back at the Enterprise, they call Uhura and are beamed aboard. Tyranneous is placed in custody and security officer Tanka is contacted. They all rendezvous in engineering and are able to stop Scotty before he carries out Tyranneous's command to wreck the ship.

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This story appeared in the following packages:

Record 15

Record 22

Notes:

• This story featured a narrator for some parts.
• No read-a-long comic book was ever produced to accompany this story.
• Ensign Chekov was mentioned in this story, but was not heard.
• In this story, Mr. Scott turns command of the bridge over to McCoy, even though the doctor is not qualified for that post.
• Kirk, Spock and Scotty use a shuttlecraft in this story.
• Scotty tells Spock that he has been flying shuttles since Spock was a wee lad. Scotty was born in 2222, and he is thus only eight years older than Spock, so it is unlikely that Scott was flying shuttles at the age of 11 or 12.
• Spock uses a so-called Vulcan mind lock, a technique which does not read minds, but locks them and controls them.
• The narrator refers to Spock as Kirk's "first mate."
• This story is the rarest of the eleven, since it only appeared on two records.

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The STAR TREK story records were produced by Peter Pan Records, and Power Records a Division of Peter Pan Industries.

Email: cdanhauser@yahoo.com