"This new script, Relics, deals with a man who's afraid to die. I don't want to give out any more, because it's a work-in-progress. Well, I'm afraid to die, as I told you, so I'm dealing with that in a script. Because of age and my history that becomes an increasingly important question, and the next project I'm working on also contains those questions--of life and death and what happens. And I'm doing it in some of these books."

The books to which he refers are the Star Trek novels he's been co-writing since 1995 with Los Angeles-based writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. Though Captain Kirk was killed off in the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations--he fell off some rocks, a most ignoble demise--he lives on in the novels Shatner writes for his romanticized alter ego, most of which are sequels to old original series episodes or pick up after the events of Generations. Shatner does not hide his reasons for writing these books: They sell to the fans and fetishists for whom Kirk is more than character. But they also represent a bizarro type of literature; imagine if Jennifer Aniston began writing Rachel books after Friends finishes its run next year.

This month, Pocket Books will publish Shatner's seventh Kirk novel, Captain's Peril, the start of a trilogy in which the aging hero becomes involved with a younger woman and deals with the death of a loved one--a recurring theme in his novels, as common as punctuation. "We're paying for his therapy," says Mark Altman. "It's cathartic for him." Shatner would not disagree.

"Well, I've had Captain Kirk use my life," he says. "I've invested some of the main events in my life in Captain Kirk and played with them. I've taken what's happened in my life and tried to have ideal solutions. He does more heroic things. He's not subject to the whims and laws of human nature like I am, so he does a better job of conducting his life, but still he has the problems."

Which brings us, inevitably, to the oldest question one can ask of Shatner: Does he miss Captain Kirk? Or does he just miss the idealized Bill Shatner--the hero, not just the actor cashing the paycheck? Does he like going where he has gone before? He considers it for a second.

"I don't know whether I miss playing the part like one would miss a loved one," he says, speaking slowly. "What I do miss is that the part was, on occasion, extremely well-written, and not only that, but I also had a voice in the writing of it. I had an element of creative power without any of the responsibility." He laughs. "And I miss the impertinence of Captain Kirk. If there were roles written for me that were of a different character, now that I have gotten older and am a different character, I would be just as happy."

For a while, his interviewer starts down some long, windy road about how Shatner sees Kirk as a surrogate, as a perfect vehicle through which he can tell his own story. He stops his interrogator midblather. His tone shifts, from friendly to formal. He reminds that, above all, he's a businessman. Nimoy's the artist, the photographer--Spock's shooting nude studies these days, how illogical. Shatner's the pragmatist, the seller of things. His enterprises are business ventures, not a set on a soundstage.

"There's something you're forgetting," he reminds as he drags the deep conversation back to the shallow end. "These books are pre-sold, so I don't have to go to an editor and sell an idea and do all the things writers have to do to get a book published. This is a marriage of convenience as well."

Then his tone quickly shifts again. His voice softens.

"But having said that, it's also a joyful marriage," he says. "I enjoy getting down with this character who leads a life that I lead--who's somewhat peripatetic, who is a lover of life and seeker of mysteries."

For the longest time, he and Nimoy loathed being identified with their characters: Nimoy wrote I Am Not Spock; Shatner went on Saturday Night Live and told a nation to "get a life." But now, they embrace their counterparts; they protect them. They have, at long last, become them.