Moments before Buck finishes escorting the last of a group of survivors from a volcanic planet aboard a Searcher shuttle, a panicked young woman rushes into the docking bay, begging Buck to let her board. He lets her get on the ship and fights off a masked pursuer before boarding the shuttle himself; Hawk launches the shuttle immediately before further trouble can ensue. Even once the shuttle and its passengers return to the Searcher, no one is safe: a Dorian ship intercepts the Searcher and its captain demands that the woman be handed over to faces charges of murder. When Admiral Asimov refuses that demand, the Dorians ensnare the Searcher in a tractor beam and use a thermal weapon to subject the ship and its passengers to sudden extremes of temperature, extremes that Crichton predicts will be unsurvivable by human life within eight hours. Buck and Hawk tell Asimov that they do have a passenger that the Dorians – who always wear a mask in the presence of other species, allegedly to hide their hideous mutations – were already pursuing one of the shuttle’s passengers. Even with the Admiral’s defiance of the Dorian threat, some of the other survivors have decided to find and hand over the wanted woman to save their own skins.
written by Stephen McPherson
directed by Jack Arnold
music by Donald WoodsCast: Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers), Erin Gray (Colonel Wilma Deering), Thom Christopher (Hawk), Jay Garner (Admiral Asimov), Wilfred Hyde-White (Dr. Goodfellow), Felix Silla (Twiki), Jeff David (voice of Crichton), Devon Ericson (Asteria Eleefa), Denny Miller (Saurus), William Kirby Cullen (Demeter)
LogBook entry by Earl Green