And a Child Shall Lead Them

And a Child Shall Lead Them was a comic book story published by Gold Key Comics in 1978. It was the 13th of 22 stories drawn by Alden McWilliams and the 5th of 10 stories written by George Kashdan.

Publisher's description[edit | edit source]

Teaser summary: Unaware of the massive wealth they possessed, the asteroid’s inhabitants were easy prey for those who would lure and exploit them! For their primitive brains could not comprehend they had been tempted into annihilation! It should have ended with the arrival of the USS Enterprise… but, instead, that changed the threat from slow destruction into sudden death!

Summary[edit | edit source]

This summary is taken, with permission, from the Star Trek Comics Checklist
If you can contribute another summary, feel free to add it in this summary's place.

The Enterprise breaks up a black market mining operation on a primitive world led by a child.

References[edit | edit source]

Appendices[edit | edit source]

Background[edit | edit source]

The two Leonardo shuttlecraft were named for famed inventor and artist Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo was wrecked in the middle of the story, only to be replaced with a brand new Leonardo just a few hours later. Either the engineering department could fabricate shuttles extremely quickly, or a replacement craft was standing by to be christened Leonardo. Both shuttles used the registry NCC-1701/7, the same as Galileo. That was either an oversight, or possibly the name Galileo was not being used as the name of an Enterprise shuttlecraft at that particular time.
It was not explained why a black market existed for tri-faxichologenic acid, a medicine which showed promise as a universal antibiotic. It was either extremely rare or had other biological effects.
While referred to as an asteroid, the planetary body in this story was a dwarf planet — although that classification did not exist when the story was written in 1978. It was large enough that gravity formed it into a sphere, had its own atmosphere, had relatively normal surface gravity, and supported the evolution of plants and animals in class M conditions. None of these were properties of asteroids.
Nyota Uhura had one line on the bridge. Christine Chapel was seen working in the Enterprise’s medical lab but had no dialogue.
Criminal Pete Flamm’s name was on the nose as a deceitful "flim-flam man".