Mudd's Angels

Short story adaptations of two Star Trek: The Original Series episodes and one original novella. Thirteenth collection in the series.

Contents

 * Introduction: Lawrence discusses James Blish's death and her decision to finish the series.
 * Prologue: Captain Kirk explains how Mudd's Angels came to be written.
 * Mudd's Women: A 35 page adaptation of.
 * I, Mudd: A 37 page adaptation of.
 * The Business, as Usual, During Altercations: A 98 page novella in 8 chapters.

Summary
In "The Business, as Usual, During Altercations," on stardate 6273.6 the Enterprise is ordered to discover the reason for a sudden shortage of dilithium. The crew discovers that all the dilithium has been bought from its suppliers by a variety of companies, all headquartered on the planet Liticia. Trouble looms when Chekov realizes that Liticia is actually Mudd, the android planet where they left Harry Mudd. They arrive at Liticia to find that Mudd has been trading female androids to the miners for their dilithium. When he learns that Mudd has just fled Liticia with the dilithium, Kirk orders the Enterprise in pursuit. Mudd's ship and the Enterprise both pass through the galactic barrier, which throws them both 165,000 light years away to the neighborhood of a variable star in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. The energy output from the star interacts with the dilithium in both ships, causing it to expand in time with the star's energy cycle. Kirk orders the Enterprise's dilithium jettisoned, but Mudd's has to abandon his ship before it is consumed by its dilithium cargo. The expansion of Mudd's dilithium causes the stars in the Lesser Cloud to explode, sending the Enterprise back into the Milky Way Galaxy several weeks in the past, on stardate 6013.0. Instead of being duplicated, both Mudd and the Enterprise vanish from their former locations at that time, leaving only the Enterprise from the future. After averting the impending dilithium shortage, the Enterprise returns to Liticia to find that, following Mudd's disappearance, the androids have formed their own government. The androids place Mudd on trial for a list of offenses that takes two days to recite. Mudd is found guilty of only one charge, operating a starship without a license, and is sentenced to exile from the galaxy.

Background Information

 * Lawrence's novella is one of three different, mutually exclusive sequels to the two TOS episodes above. The first was the TAS episode  which was adapted by Alan Dean Foster for Star Trek Log 3.  The third was Jerry Oltion's  novel Mudd in Your Eye.
 * The Spectra reprint saw the collection retitled as Mudd's Enterprise.
 * Bob Larkin did the artwork for the original Bantam release, Alister Pearson for the Titan Books reprint, and Kazuhiko Sano provided cover art for the Spectra reprint.

External link


Die falschen Engel