Stardate 2713.5: The Enterprise receives a distress call and arrives at a planet that is an exact duplicate of Earth! A landing party beams down and finds a town that has apparently been abandoned long ago. But then they are attacked by a disfigured humanoid boy that soon dies of an unknown disease. The only other inhabitants of the planet seem to be children, of whom only a teenage girl named Miri trusts the strangers. It soon becomes evident that the landing party is suffering from the same disease that killed the boy. Actually, on the planet a life prolongation program created a virus that killed the complete adult population 300 years ago and left only the children, whose aging was extremely slowed down. But every child entering puberty contracts the disease likewise. With only few days left, McCoy and Spock work on a cure, but they can't test the vaccine because they would need the ship's computer to determine the right dose, and the children have taken away their communicators and kidnapped Yeoman Rand. Miri agrees to lead Captain Kirk to the other children, and he can finally convince them to release Rand and hand out the devices. In the meantime, however, McCoy has injected himself a dose of the vaccine, which successfully removes his blemishes.

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