Star Trek: The Rings of Time (13 page)

“Hang on, Shaun!”
the woman announced.
“We’re coming for you!”

Why did she keep calling him Shaun, whoever that was? Had she mistaken him for someone else? He looked around as much as he was able but did not spot any other astronauts drifting in the void. Where was this Shaun she was so worried about?

Old-fashioned RCS thrusters flared along the hull of the engine module, and the ship dipped toward him. Kirk wished there was some way to slow his progress to make it easier for the ship to catch up with him, but he was a victim of gravity and momentum, with no way to control his flight. He was just an object in motion, floating through space. Like one of the ice crystals in the planet’s rings.

Slowly, steadily, the ship drew nearer, eating up the meters between them. Open space doors exposed an interior cargo bay. A mechanical arm, resembling a large metal crane, swung out of the bay toward Kirk. A clamp opened at the end of the arm.

The robotic arm reached for Kirk, but he was still too far away. He extended his own arm, stretching as far as the suit would allow. His gloved fingertips grazed the metal clamps, but, maddeningly, he couldn’t get a grip on it. Or vice versa.

“Damn,” he muttered.

It dawned on him that his legs were a good deal longer than his arms. He kicked upward, stretching out his right leg. The clamp closed tightly on his foot, which was protected by a rigid white boot. Kirk winced slightly.
He prayed that whoever was operating the clamp knew just how much pressure to exert without tearing open the boot—or crushing his foot.

The arm drew him back toward the ship, feet first. It was hardly the most dignified way he had ever boarded a vessel, but he wasn’t complaining. Seven hours of air would tick away far too quickly. Better to be taken aboard an unknown ship than to suffocate in a vacuum.

He wished he knew what was waiting for him, though. Lifting his head, he spied a name emblazoned on the hull of the spaceship. Large block letters spelled it out in English:
U.S.S. Lewis & Clark.

For a second, he wondered if he was reading it right. This wasn’t the
Ares IV,
he realized. It was Colonel Shaun Christopher’s ship from the first Earth–Saturn mission. Well versed in the history of space exploration, Kirk was quite familiar with its celebrated voyage. He even had an odd bit of personal history with Colonel Christopher’s family. He had read up on the Saturn mission only a few years ago.

Saturn . . .

He leaned back and saw the huge, mustard-colored planet filling the sky below him. Its crystalline rings sparkled in the reflected light of the gas giant, whose true identity Kirk could no longer deny.

That’s not Klondike VI.
That’s really Saturn.

No wonder the woman kept hailing Shaun. Kirk suspected that the year wasn’t 2270.

Somehow, he was two hundred fifty years in the past.

2270

Space went away.

Gravity seized Shaun Christopher for the first time in months, and he collapsed onto a hard red platform. His bare hands struck the platform, and he realized with a shock that he wasn’t wearing his spacesuit anymore and was no longer floating above Saturn.

Instead, he found himself in a spacious, well-lit chamber that bore no resemblance to the familiar confines of the
Lewis & Clark
. Metallic disks the size of manhole covers were embedded in the elevated platform, which overlooked some sort of futuristic control room, complete with an instrument panel mounted on a pedestal facing the platform. Overhead spotlights or projectors were located above each of the metal disks. Shaun had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.

But he wasn’t alone.

Four unfamiliar figures faced him. A dark-haired man wearing a bright red tunic and a worried expression manned the instrument panel, assisted by an attractive young woman wearing a short red dress.
Another woman stood a meter away, her face hidden by a shimmering golden veil. An electronic tablet was tucked under her arm.

And then there was the other . . . man?

Pointed ears rose from both sides of a distinctly elfin countenance that reminded Shaun of the old
Sub-Mariner
comics he had read as a kid. The stranger wore a blue tunic bearing an unfamiliar gold insignia. He clutched what looked like a handheld Geiger counter. Cool brown eyes regarded Shaun with just a hint of dismay. He arched a sweeping eyebrow.

“Captain?” he inquired, getting Shaun’s rank wrong. “Are you hurt?”

He lowered his gadget and came toward Shaun.

“Stay away from me!” Shaun blurted. He scrambled backward, frantic to get away. Gravity weighed him down; he wasn’t used to it anymore. His limbs felt like lead. He banged into a solid metallic object resting behind him. Startled, he stared at the charred lump of machinery; it took him a second to recognize the probe, which looked much older and more damaged than it had only seconds ago. He didn’t understand what was happening. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

“Captain?” the pointy-eared stranger repeated. He let go of his device, which hung from a strap over his shoulder. “You appear disoriented.”

“What’s happened, Mr. Spock?” the man at the control panel said. A pronounced brogue betrayed his Scottish roots. “What’s wrong with the captain?”

“Page Dr. McCoy,” the man named Spock ordered briskly, as though he was in command. “Tell him to report to the transporter room at once.”

Transporter room?
Shaun glanced around in confusion.
What the hell does that mean?

“Where am I?” he demanded again. “What is this place?”

“You seem to have suffered a severe neurological shock,” Spock attempted to explain. “You require medical assistance.”

He reached out for Shaun.

“Don’t touch me!”

Until he found out what this was all about, he wasn’t going anywhere with anyone, let alone somebody who looked almost more devil than human. Back on Earth, he would have dismissed the man’s tapered ears as just some sort of eccentric body modification, like tattoos or piercings, but out here in space, millions of miles from home, more alarming possibilities leaped to mind.

He reached instinctively for his father’s dog tags, only to remember that Fontana had them now. He couldn’t help recalling that UFO his dad had spotted and his own experiences at Area 51. Dr. Jeff Carlson, the head of the DY-100 project, had given Shaun a firsthand account of the notorious Roswell incident back in ’47. Shaun stared at Spock with mixed fear and wonder.

Was this . . . a Ferengi?

Dr. Carlson had always said they had large ears, Shaun recalled, but what was a Ferengi doing out here by Saturn . . . with a Scotsman, of all people?

Oh my God,
Shaun thought.
Have I been abducted?

Nightmarish images of invasive biological probes and experiments flashed through his brain. He had always thought such stories were merely the stuff of cheesy sci-fi movies and supermarket tabloids, but now he wasn’t so sure. How else to explain any of this?

“Please, Captain,” Spock said. He gazed down at Shaun, while making no sudden moves. “Let me assist you.”

Why did they keep calling him Captain? Did Earth ranks confuse them?

“I don’t understand!” he protested. “This is insane!”

“It was the probe,” the veiled woman stated. “There was an unexpected energy discharge. Please, let us help you.”

She approached him from the left. Was she an alien, too, beneath the veil? Did she have three eyes or fangs? Was she even truly a woman?

“Keep back!” he shouted again. “All of you! You’re not getting near me until you tell me where I am!”

He searched frantically for an escape route. Adrenaline gave him the strength to lurch to his feet, but the gravity still threw him off. He tottered unsteadily. Spock rushed forward to catch him, taking hold of Shaun under his shoulders. Shaun tried to break free, but his limbs were too heavy, and Spock
was surprisingly strong. Despite the stranger’s lean physique, his grip felt like iron. More proof that the man wasn’t human?

“My apologies, Captain,” Spock said. “But I fear you are not yourself.”

His fingers pinched Shaun’s neck . . . and everything went black.

The captain went limp in Spock’s arms. He carefully lowered Kirk onto the transporter pad and scanned him with his tricorder. The device could not examine the captain as thoroughly as a specialized medical tricorder, but it reported that Kirk’s vital signs were within acceptable ranges for a human. There was no obvious internal bleeding or burns, although Spock counted on Dr. McCoy to conduct a more comprehensive analysis. He hoped that Kirk had not suffered any lasting brain damage or memory loss.

That would be unfortunate,
Spock thought.
For the mission and for Jim.

“What’s wrong with him?” Mr. Scott asked again. He abandoned the transporter controls to join Spock by the captain. “Is he going to be all right?”

“That remains to be determined,” Spock said. “But it would be illogical to assume the worst.”

Qat Zaldana crowded between them. “It was like he didn’t even know who you were,” she observed. “What did the probe do to him?”

An excellent question,
Spock thought, but it
occurred to him that it might be best if she was not present at the moment. If the captain had been seriously incapacitated, that was information that perhaps should not be shared with civilians—or the colonists down on Skagway.

“Lieutenant Mascali, please escort our guest back to her quarters.” He turned to Qat Zaldana before she could protest. “My apologies, but I’m afraid our examination of the probe will have to wait. The captain requires our full attention now.”

“Of course.” She backed away from the fallen captain. “I don’t want to get in the way.” She turned her veiled face toward Mascali. “There’s no need to accompany me. I can find my own way. Stay with your captain.”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Spock said. “And I must ask that you keep what you have just witnessed to yourself.”

He did not want wild rumors undermining the crew’s morale.

She nodded. “Understood. My thoughts are with your captain.”

She exited the transporter room. Spock appreciated her swift departure. That was one fewer factor to complicate his computations.

“Maintain a safe distance from the probe,” he warned Scott and Mascali. “We do not need any more casualties on our hands.”

“Aye, that’s for certain,” the engineer agreed.

Stepping away from Kirk’s supine form, Spock scanned the probe with the tricorder. He detected no energy readings; the device now appeared to be completely inert. The ring around its equator had slowed to a stop and was no longer glowing. The flickering lights on its surface had gone dark. Key circuits and components now read as burned-out. Had the discharge that had shocked the captain expended the last of its energy? It appeared so, but Spock was not inclined to take chances.

“Have the probe transported to a secure force-shielded location,” he instructed Scott. “Take all necessary precautions.”

“That I’ll do,” Scott assured him. “And a few unnecessary ones as well.”

The doors
whoosh
ed open, and McCoy rushed into the chamber, clutching his medkit. His eyes widened at the sight of Kirk lying unconscious on the platform. “Good Lord! Is that Jim? What in God’s name happened here?”

Spock succinctly described the incident, omitting any irrelevant details or speculation.

“Dammit,” McCoy muttered. He glared angrily at the probe before kneeling beside Kirk. “We should have left that wretched thing alone.”

That was not a viable option,
Spock thought, although he allowed the doctor his emotional outburst, which did not seem unwarranted under the circumstances. Confident that Kirk was in good hands,
he headed for the exit. “Attend to your patient, Doctor, and keep me informed of his condition.”

McCoy looked up in surprise. “And where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I am needed on the bridge,” Spock reminded him. “With the captain unwell, I must assume command and continue to carry out our mission. Skagway remains in jeopardy, and a solution has yet to be found.” He paused to consider the probe. “And our most promising lead has proven to be more problematic than anticipated.”

“You can say that again!” McCoy said.

“To do so would be redundant, Doctor, and time is running out. For Skagway and its imperiled population.”

The Vulcan wondered how he was going to explain the captain’s condition to Governor Dawson.

2020

The cargo bay of the
Lewis & Clark
was much smaller than the storage facilities back on the
Enterprise.
A primitive-looking probe waited to be launched from the historic spaceship. The crude devices were definitely of twenty-first-century origin; Kirk remembered seeing models of them at the Smithsonian and Starfleet museums. The equipment bore antiquated NASA logos.

They looked brand-new.

Kirk couldn’t deny it any longer. Unless this was some sort of elaborate hoax, like the mock
Enterprise
that the rulers of Gideon had tried to trick him with a few years back, he was really aboard the very first Earth–Saturn probe, launched from Cape Canaveral way back in 2020, some two hundred fifty years ago.

Had the alien probe actually sent him back in time, not to mention space? But how and why?

The space doors sealed behind him, cutting him off from the vacuum outside. He floated across the cargo bay, struck by the lack of artificial gravity. He had taken part in zero-g emergency drills and exercises,
of course, but it still felt odd to be aboard a spaceship that couldn’t generate its own gravity. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to navigate across a chamber like this, relying on his own momentum to carry him across open spaces. Grab rails along the walls, floor, and ceiling allowed him to control his flight. His spacesuit felt bulky and cumbersome.

An airlock sealed the bay from the rest of the ship. Its outer door slid open, and he drifted inside. Anxious faces stared at him through a small rectangular window in the sealed door at the opposite end of the airlock. The faces belonged to a handsome red-haired woman and an older man with a beard and a grave expression. He searched his memory for their names.