Star Trek: The Rings of Time (9 page)

“A UFO?” Zoe winked at Shaun. “What do you think, Skipper? Friends of your dad?”

Fontana look askance at Shaun. “You told her about that?” She knew what Zoe was referring to, of course. Shaun had shared that colorful bit of family history with Fontana back when they were dating. “Don’t be ridiculous,” the copilot snapped at Zoe. “There must be a sensible explanation for this.”

“Like what?” Zoe asked.

Fontana groped for a response. “Maybe the same thing that’s affecting the rings?”

Whatever that is,
Shaun thought, scowling. He wanted answers, not more mysteries. “Where is it heading, Doc?”

“It seems to be heading for . . . the north pole of the planet.”

“You mean the hexagon,” Zoe said.

“Possibly,” O’Herlihy admitted, with a distinctly pained expression. “At least, that general vicinity.”

Zoe let go of her tablet, which remained floating within reach, and rubbed her hands together gleefully. “The plot thickens.”

“Tell me about it,” Shaun said. Their carefully planned operation, meticulously worked out by NASA and its international partners, had just gone out the proverbial window.
Sacagawea,
waiting in orbit for its celestial rendezvous, had been stood up. C/2018 had ditched them, almost as though it was on a mission of its own.
Careful,
he warned himself,
you’re starting to think like Zoe.

But maybe that wasn’t entirely a bad idea. Their mission had just gotten a whole lot stranger and more exciting. Perhaps it was time to start thinking outside the box.

“Set a course for the north pole,” he instructed. “We’re going after that comet.”

Fontana stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “But that’s not part of the mission plan.”

He couldn’t blame her for being startled. NASA flights were not improvised. Every task and maneuver had been plotted out months, if not years, in advance, especially where dangerous new objectives were concerned. Hell, there had been
ten
trial runs before Apollo 11 had finally touched down on the moon. Space was no place to fly by the seat of your pants—except when something truly unpredictable happened.

“Screw the mission plan.” He switched off the automatic pilot. “We’re not robots, following a programmed script. What’s the point of sending actual flesh-and-blood humans into space if we can’t react to unexpected circumstances and take advantage of amazing new opportunities?”

“Woo-hoo!” Zoe cheered him on. “You tell ’em, Skipper.”

“Hush!” Fontana said. “The grown-ups are talking.” She gave him a worried look. “I don’t know, Shaun. Maybe we should run this by Mission Control first.”

“There’s no time for that,” Shaun said. Radio waves traveled at the speed of light through the vacuum of space, but there was still more than an hour’s time lag when it came to communicating with Earth, and that wasn’t even figuring in the bureaucracy factor. “That comet—or whatever it is—is going somewhere. I don’t want it to get away while they’re holding conferences back home.” He looked her in the eyes, struck as always by their brilliant green depths. “I don’t know about you, Alice, but I want to know what that so-called comet is.”

“You think I don’t?” She searched his face. “You really think this might be a UFO, Shaun?”

“To be honest, I don’t know what to think.” He toyed with the dog tags around his neck. “Like the doc said, we’re in unknown territory here.”

“Well, that’s the job description, isn’t it?” Fontana sighed and settled back into her seat. He recognized the determined set of her jaw. “All right. Let’s go find out what’s driving that puppy.”

Shaun turned toward O’Herlihy. This decision could have an enormous, and possibly catastrophic, effect on their careers. They could even be risking their lives. He needed to make sure his whole crew was okay with it. “Marcus?”

“You’re in charge of this mission, Colonel. It’s your call.” The scientist’s gaze remained glued to his monitors. “But personally, I would never forgive myself if we didn’t at least try to solve this mystery.”

Shaun felt the same way. “Okay, it’s decided, then.” He had never been more proud of his crew. “Keep the LIDAR locked on that comet. Track its every move.”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else.”

Zoe waved her hand in the air. “Hey, don’t I get a vote?”

“No,” Fontana said in no uncertain terms.

“Fair enough,” Zoe said with a shrug. “Although, just for the record, I think you folks are acting like real starship heroes.”

Fontana rolled her eyes. “Why don’t I find that reassuring?”

It took several minutes to calculate an intercept course based on the comet’s current trajectory. They would have to leave
Sacagawea
behind. The probe’s thrusters had been intended for only minor course corrections; they lacked the power for this sort of chase. Shaun would have to be careful not to expend too much of the
Lewis & Clark
’s own engine power on this unplanned expedition. Mission Control would have a cow when they found out about it.

It will be worth it,
Shaun thought,
if we can make contact with a genuine UFO.

“Everybody strap yourself in,” he advised the crew and the stowaway. Zoe took a seat at the computer station next to O’Herlihy. She tapped out a few
last notes on her tablet before stowing it away for safekeeping. “We’re hitting the gas.”

“Tally-ho,” Fontana said drily.

Shaun fired up the thrusters and initiated a controlled burn to accelerate the ship in the direction of the probe. The nose of the command module tilted as he altered the angle of their orbit to bring them into the same plane as their quarry. The
Lewis & Clark
climbed toward Saturn’s north pole. The planet’s axial tilt worked in their favor, as did the fact that Saturn was somewhat squashed in shape, being wider around the middle than from top to bottom, but because of the sheer size of the gas giant, it still took two-plus hours before they finally found themselves gazing down at the top of the planet.

“Whoa!” Zoe exclaimed. “What happened to the hexagon?”

Shaun was wondering the same thing. The celebrated six-sided vortex, which had been unchanged for decades, was visibly diminished. Its borders had contracted, so that it appeared to have shrunk in size by at least a third, and its color had faded, too, making it somewhat harder to make out against the planet’s turbulent yellow atmosphere. It almost looked as though the vortex was gradually shrinking away.

But was that even possible?

“Marcus?”

“I see it,” O’Herlihy replied tersely. “And no, our eyes are not deceiving us. The vortex has noticeably
decreased in both size and intensity, almost thirty-two percent since the last time we analyzed it.”

“Why didn’t we notice this before?” Shaun asked.

O’Herlihy shrugged. “We weren’t looking for it, and there’s been a lot of Saturn, including its various rings and moons. Plus, it appears that the rate of the shrinkage has increased exponentially with the approach of the comet.”

Shaun didn’t like this. The hexagon, the rings, the comet—nothing was acting as it was supposed to. He supposed it could be seen as a lucky break that the
Lewis & Clark
had arrived in time to witness these astounding developments, but it didn’t feel that way. He was starting to wish they had gone to Mars instead.

“What about the comet?” Fontana asked. “Where is it now?”

O’Herlihy consulted the LIDAR. “Oh, my God. You’re not going to believe this.”

At this point, Shaun was ready to accept just about anything short of a flock of winged unicorns. “Try me.”

“It’s come to a dead stop nine hundred kilometers above the planet’s north pole.” Zoe started to open her mouth, but O’Herlihy beat her to the punch. “Yes, directly above the hexagon.”

“I don’t understand,” Fontana said. “How does a comet come to a stop?”

“You tell me,” the scientist said, sounding somewhat overwhelmed by the unexplainable phenomena he had been confronted with recently. “But the comet is definitely
parked in a stationary position above the pole. Not an easy feat to pull off, by the way, even for a satellite.”

Shaun knew what he meant. Geosynchronous orbits were easier to maintain above a planet’s equator, where the satellite’s orbit could be matched to the planet’s rotation. A satellite would have to be able to modify its orbit continuously to “hover” in place above the pole. Back on Earth, solar sails had been employed to attempt this, with mixed results. Shaun had no idea how a comet could do it—unless it wasn’t really a comet.

“I’m bringing us in closer,” he said. “I want to see that thing with my own eyes.”

Operating the thrusters manually, he cruised a kilometer above the comet. Because the ship was in an inverted position, with its belly facing away from the planet, they were able to gaze up at the “comet” as it hovered hundreds of kilometers above the anemic hexagon.

C/2018 floated like a hot-air balloon beneath them. To Shaun’s surprise, it was glowing much more brightly than before. Its misty coma expanded as jets of vapor steamed off the comet’s frozen nucleus, which appeared to be dissolving before their eyes.

“Huh?” Zoe said. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”

“No,” O’Herlihy said, sounding torn between dismay and wonder. “Not this far out from the sun. Granted, Saturn also radiates its own heat but not enough to melt a comet like that!”

Shaun stared at the comet, which was shrinking like an ice cube on a hot summer day. Its icy core seemed to be subliming directly from solid to gas, skipping the liquid state. Billowing clouds of vapor poured off the nucleus. Solar winds blew the gas back into the comet’s tail, which was wrapping around the planet below before dissipating into the vacuum. He had never seen anything like it.

“What’s happening, Doc?”

“Give me a second!” the harried scientist replied. He recalibrated their equipment, directing all of their sensory apparatus, including the trans-spectral imager, at the fuming comet. “I’m at my wit’s end here. None of this makes any sense!”

Join the club,
Shaun thought. He’d had more jolts on this voyage than in the rest of his NASA career combined, up to and including the disappearance of the DY-100. “Hold it together, Marcus. Just think of all the history we’re making. We’re discovering stuff that nobody ever dreamed of before.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Fontana said. She snuck her hand across the helm to squeeze his. “Count on you to see the upside.”

He smiled back at her. “Astronauts have to be optimists. Who else would blast themselves into space?”

“As long as we keep one foot on the ground,” she said. “Figuratively speaking.”

“You do a pretty good job of that. That’s why we make such a good team.”

Was that a hint of a blush on her cheeks? “Nice of you to say so,” she said, “but if we get abducted by aliens, it’s all your fault.”

She said it lightly, but Shaun knew she was right. If there was some extraterrestrial intelligence directing C/2018, there was no way of telling how it might react to their presence. There was no guarantee that first contacts had to be peaceful.
Just ask H. G. Wells,
he thought.
Or Montezuma.

Steam continued to pour off the comet, which had already shed most of its mass, so that it was now smaller than the
Lewis & Clark
. A bright blue glow emanated from the nucleus, visible even through the thick clouds of vapor surrounding the core. The comet’s tail extended beyond the curve of Saturn, almost like another ring.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Zoe murmured. She grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

Shaun watched as the comet dissolved into mist. What was causing it to sublime like that? Surely not the heat of the planet.

“Marcus?”

“It’s heating up from within,” the scientist reported, “as though there’s some sort of internal heat source beneath the ice.”

Zoe stared at him. “You mean, it’s defrosting itself?”

“That would be one interpretation,” O’Herlihy conceded. “Although I probably would have phrased it differently.”

“That’s why I’m a journalist and you’re an academic.”
She peered at what remained of the comet. “What do you think is under all that ice and fog?”

“I don’t know,” Shaun said, “but it looks like we’re about to find out.”

The coma surrounding the nucleus was sucked into the comet’s tail, exposing a shrinking chunk of ice that appeared to be no more than ten meters across. The glow seemed to be coming from beneath the icy crust, just as O’Herlihy had determined. Shaun wondered if the melting was taking place on purpose now that the “comet” had reached its destination. That seemed as plausible an explanation as any.

The last of the ice began to steam away. “Look!” Fontana said, pointing excitedly at the window. “You see that?”

Shaun saw. The icy crust had nearly misted away in spots, exposing patches of polished bronze plating. A glowing turquoise ring could be glimpsed beneath a frosty glaze.

A stunned hush fell over the flight deck. All present grasped the astonishing implications of what they were seeing. Even Zoe seemed rendered speechless.

“Okay,” Fontana said finally. “That’s no comet.”

“No,” Shaun realized. “That’s a probe.”

2270

“A probe?”

“So it appears, Captain,” Spock reported. “Of alien design and origin.”

Kirk strode onto the bridge, having been alerted to a change in the comet’s status. By ship’s time, it was after two in the morning. The ship’s corridor had been dimmed to simulate nighttime. The captain was gratified to see that his senior officers were already in place on the bridge. He dropped into his chair and peered at the viewer.

The probe, seen moving across the system under its own power, was shaped roughly like an hourglass, with wide concave dishes at both ends. Its dented bronze casing reflected the light from Klondike VI. A glowing turquoise ring orbited the neck of the hourglass. Kirk wondered if the spinning blue halo was the propulsion unit. Multicolored lights flickered along bands of instrumentation and sensors. The hourglass was oriented sideways on the screen. It was hard to judge its speed against the backdrop of the planet.