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Kirk: slave, McCoy: murdered, Spock: outlaw - in a universe gone mad

A univers where worlds are ruled by neo-Nazi dictators... A universe that immunizes children to the wholesale slaughter of their parents... A universe where the slightest though unleashes total terror...

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and the crew of the Starship Enterprise enter the darkest dimensions of existence - on their newest exploration of unknown worlds.

Although James Blish was credited as the adapter for the TV series episode stories for Star Trek 1 through Star Trek 11, in Jeff Ayers' Voyages of the Imagination it is acknowledged that after Star Trek 7 or Star Trek 8, the stories were ghost-written by Blish's wife, J. A. Lawrence, and her mother, without the knowledge of editor Frederik Pohl. Star Trek 12, published after the death of Blish in July 1975, was credited to both Blish and Lawrence.

This is a novel in three parts: "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd" are novelizations of Star Trek The Original Series TV episodes, and "The Business, as Usual, During Altercations" is a new novella written by J.A. Lawrence for this book.

In "Mudd's Women", the USS Enterprise chases an unregistered starship, a small class J cargo vessel. Fleeing, the ship approaches an asteroid belt with a Schiller Rating of 35. The small ship's peril increases further when its desperate speed causes its engines to overheat. The Enterprise rescues the pilot - who turns out to be a con man named Harry Mudd trafficking in mail-order brides.

In "I, Mudd", a crewman hijacks the Enterprise and diverts it to a planet 4 days away. Upon arrival at their altered destination, Captain Kirk and the crew discover that Harry Mudd is now ruler of a planet of androids. After capturing the Enterprise, Mudd imprisons Kirk in an attempt at revenge, intending to replace him with an android duplicate which Mudd can control.

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.

republished as Mudd's Enterprise by Bantam Spectra in 1994