Logs Nine and Ten

SPACE. THE FINAL FRONTIER . . . these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Celebrate Star Trek's thirtieth anniversary with the original mission logs chronicling some of the crew's most bizarre missions and strangest encounters with alien races across the galaxy . . . where no man has gone before. BEM It seems like a simple request. The Pandronians have petitioned to send a representative to observe a Federation crew carrying out a survey mission. So Commander Ari bn Bem joins Captain Kirk to evaluate aboriginal life forms of undetermined intelligence and accomplishments on planet Delta Theta Three. There, the trouble begins with an omniscient entity. Then disaster summons Bem to his home planet, with the Enterprise ordered to assist him in every way. The shocking theft of a priceless treasure threatens to reduce Pandronian civilization to anarchy--and bring the crew of the Enterprise to the brink of disaster. SLAVER WEAPON A billion years ago Slavers ruled the galaxy, but all that remains of their once awesome empire is concentrated in extraordinary cubes known as stasis boxes. Now the Enterprise must transport a stasis box containing the ultimate weapon, a war computer/handgun with settings that fire nuclear explosions. But the Kzin--violent, ferocious, catlike creatures--crave the weapon that will make the galaxy a smorgasbord for their insatiable appetites. With ruthless cunning they lure the unsuspecting starship to an icy planet, where a cataclysmic fate awaits them--and the universe.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Science Fiction, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.