A freak shuttlecraft accident - and suddenly Captain Kirk and most of his senior officers find themselves adrift in space, with no hope of rescue, no hope of repairing their craft, or restoring communications - with nothing, in short but time on their hands. Time enough for each to tell the story of the Kobayashi Maru - the Starfleet Academy test given to command cadets. Nominally a tactical exercise, the Kobayashi Maru is in fact a test of character revealed in the choices each man makes