Title: The Yegg

Author: Ster Julie

Series: TOS
Rating: G
Codes: Am, S (young Spock)

Archive: Yes, only where I post
Summary: How did Spock know how to pick that lock in COTEOF?

A/N: Thank you to the lads and ladies of the Sarek and Amanda Group for the lively discussions that caused my plot bunny to grow to a huge and threatening monster.

I used http://home.howstuffworks.com/combination-lock.htm for research. Neat site. Check it out!

--ooOoo--

"That toolbox was locked with a combination lock, and you opened it like a real pro."

--Edith Keeler to Spock, The City on the Edge of Forever

"Mommy?" young Spock called as he surveyed a collection of strange items displayed in the museum case. "What are these objects?"

Amanda perused the case and smiled. There was a good reason that her five year old Vulcan son was not familiar with such objects. No one felt a need to lock their possessions away back home on Vulcan.

"What does the sign say?" she prompted.

Spock stood on tiptoe to better see the sign attached to the case. "/Ahn-see-ent kahm-bin-a-tee-on lahks/," he sounded out.

"'Ancient combination locks,'" Amanda corrected gently.

"I do not know all of these words," Spock responded.

"You know what ancient means," Amanda prompted.

"It means old, Mommy," Spock announced.

Amanda smiled. "Very good. What does combination mean?"

"It means to mix more than one thing together, Mommy," Spock responded in a puzzled voice, "but what old things were mixed together to create this object, and what is its purpose?"

Amanda smiled at her precocious child's speech patterns. He was sounding like Sarek more and more each day.

"A number of moving parts were combined to make this item," she answered patiently. "That's why it's called a 'combination lock.'"

"But what's a lock, Mommy?" Spock persisted.

"Well," Amanda began, "in the old days, when people would want to keep their families and their belongings all to themselves, they would close them up tightly and put one of these objects on the door to keep others away."

"It looks so small," Spock observed. "What is its source of power?"

Amanda smiled. "Oh, son," she exclaimed, "the only source of power was the strength of the materials used in creating the lock."

"How does it work?" Spock inquired.

Amanda explained about the parts of a combination lock from what she remembered of the lock on her diary as a young girl. She had taken the small lock apart to examine its insides, but never got it to go back together and work properly after that. Amanda told Spock of the small disks, call cams, and the locking pin, the dial and the numbers one would have to remember in order to open the lock.

Spock chewed on that for a while. "And did these locks succeed in keeping others away?"

Amanda nodded. "Usually," she responded. "But there were some criminals that made a career of opening locks and taking what they wanted."

Spock's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "They would steal?"

"Yes, Spock," Amanda answered. "They would steal."

"But how could they do this?"

"Do you mean, why would they steal from others," Amanda asked her son for clarification, "or how could they open a lock without knowing the combination number?"

"How could they open it?" Spock answered.

Amanda pulled her son close and whispered conspiratorially, "Well, Spock," she began, "they would listen very closely to the sound the cams made as they tumbled around. When they heard a tiny click, they knew they had the first number. Then they would turn it the other way until the heard the second click, and so on until they heard the little bar engage. Then they knew they could open the lock and take what they wanted."

Spock studied his mother's face for a good, long time. "Mommy?" he asked. "Why do you know so much about opening locks?"

Amanda sat up as if she had been slapped. Had her own son judged her and deduced that his mother was a safecracker, a yegg, a criminal? She pulled herself up to her full height. "I had my own lock when I was a little girl," Amanda defended. "I looked up information on it from the computer, which is what you will do when we get home." She took Spock's small hand in her own. "Come along."

-

Amanda sighed later that week when primitive, homemade and fully functional combination locks began appearing on Spock's belongings. Sarek was none too pleased that he had to repeat lessons to Spock on the hospitality and openness of the Vulcan people and how locks of any kind were considered rude in proper Vulcan society.

In the meantime, young Spock learned all he could about combination locks. When Grandpa and Nana Grayson asked him what he wanted for a birthday gift, he was swift to answer, "An ancient combination lock, please," much to Amanda's chagrin.

END