“Shaun!” Fontana shouted. “Get out of there now!”
Before he could respond, what felt like a shock wave hit him, sending him tumbling away from the probe. He struggled to regain control of his flight but found himself tossed through space like a piece of cosmic flotsam. His jets failed to arrest his headlong flight.
Damn! he thought. Maybe we should have used the robot arm after all…
And then it was over. The light subsided, and the shock wave moved past him. Testing the controls, he managed to come to a halt thirty meters away from the probe. Gasping, he sucked down precious oxygen. His heart pounded in his chest.
Fontana yelled in his ears. “Shaun! Talk to me! Are you all right?”
“I think so.” He conducted a quick visual inspection of his suit but didn’t spot any burns or punctures. No vapor seemed to be escaping into the vacuum. All gauges read green. He patted himself just to be safe. “Just a little shaken up, that’s all.” He could still see the energy bursts pulsing in his memory. An afterimage of a shining hexagon lingered in his vision. “What just happened there?”
“Beats me,” O’Herlihy confessed. “I can’t make head or tail of these readings. And I’m not sure I ever will. All I know is that the probe directed some sort of incredibly powerful electromagnetic discharge at the planet, and you were nearly caught in the line of fire.”
Shaun remembered the shock wave that had sent him hurtling through space. “What about the ship? Was there any damage?”
“Not that I can determine,” O’Herlihy reported. “ There was some momentary turbulence but nothing we couldn’t withstand. You don’t need to worry about us, Shaun. We’re fine.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“We can exchange status reports later,” Fontana said impatiently. “You need to get back to the ship, Shaun, pronto. This was a mistake. That thing, whatever it is, is too dangerous.”
The colonel knew she had to be kicking herself for agreeing to this operation in the first place, but how could they have anticipated the probe firing on the planet like that? Satisfied that he was still in one piece, he turned himself around to see what the probe was up to now.
The enigmatic device appeared to have gone dormant again. It had stopped blasting at Saturn and was just hovering above the north pole once more. His eyes widened behind his visor as he gazed at the planet. Was it just his imagination, or was the ailing hexagon looking more like its old self again? All six sides seemed to be spreading outward, as though heading back toward their original positions, while the swirling vortex within the hexagon appeared to be brighter and more energetic than before.
“How—?” he murmured. Had the probe done that?
“Please, Shaun,” Fontana urged him. “Turn around and come back. We don’t know what that thing could do next.”
He knew he should listen to her, but he wasn’t ready to give up on the probe yet. If anything, what he had just witnessed made him even more eager to retrieve the probe if possible. Any technology that could affect storm patterns from space was too valuable to be left behind. He needed at least to get a closer look at it.
“I’m sorry, Fontana,” he said. “I’m going in for another pass.”
“Shaun, wait! Don’t be crazy! It’s not safe!”
The panic in her voice tugged at his heart, but he fired his jets anyway. He knew she might never forgive him, but he didn’t have any choice. This was bigger than any of them. He needed to find out more.
“I’ll be okay.” He hoped that wasn’t just wishful thinking. “I think maybe the worst is over.”
O’Herlihy didn’t try to talk him out of it. “We don’t know that, Shaun. Be careful.”
“Copy that.”
Ignoring Fontana’s heartfelt protests, Christopher warily returned to the probe. His fingers hovered over the jet controls, ready to execute a hasty retreat if the unpredictable artifact acted up again. Moving slowly, he came within arm’s reach of the probe. The beam from his helmet light fell on the probe’s metallic casing. This close, he was able to make out what appeared to be bizarre hieroglyphics embossed on the hull. The exotic symbols resembled no language, ancient or otherwise, that he was familiar with. Then again, he was no linguist.
“Are you seeing this?” he asked the others. In theory, the camera in his helmet was transmitting the images back to the ship.
“Yes, Shaun,” O’Herlihy responded, audibly awed. “It’s fantastic. This may be our first true glimpse of an alien language.”
Not counting that classified Ferengi hardware back at Area 51, Shaun thought. He was suddenly very glad that he had not headed back to the ship right away. These images alone were worth the risk he was taking, not to mention their entire voyage. “What about you, Fontana? You getting this, too?”
“It’s amazing,” she conceded. “You’re making history.”
The unearthly hieroglyphics called out to him. He couldn’t resist the urge to touch them. His fingers drummed impatiently. He reached out for the probe. A gloved hand made contact with the unknown.
A blinding white flash caught him by surprise.
“Shaun!” Fontana cried out.
Ten
One minute, James Kirk was standing in the transporter room aboard the Enterprise. The next, he found himself floating in space. An environmental suit, bulkier and more cumbersome than the Starfleet-issue suits he was accustomed to, protected him from the vacuum. Kirk blinked in surprise. His eyes watered from the brilliant white flash that had transported him there, and, without thinking, he reached to wipe them. A gloved hand bumped into the gold-tinted visor of a spacesuit helmet. His own breathing echoed in his ears.
What the devil?
He glanced around, trying to orient himself. The north pole of Klondike VI appeared to be thousands of kilometers below him, if below meant anything in zero g. Or was it Klondike VI? The color wasn’t right, more mustard yellow than violet as before. And the furious hexagonal vortex at the pole looked much as it once had, not shrunken and pallid as in the most recent recordings. If Kirk didn’t know better, he’d swear he was drifting above Saturn instead. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Saturn was months away, in a completely different sector.
The only familiar object in view was the probe, but even that seemed to have changed in an instant. The battered relic now looked much newer and less weathered than it had only seconds ago. He could see the alien hieroglyphics more clearly now; the gleaming bronze casing was no longer charred and pitted. The turquoise ring glowed more brightly than before. Additional lights flickered across its circuitry.
Kirk’s fingers tingled beneath his gloves. He recalled touching the probe right before he found himself here, along with the mysterious relic, which was also not on the transporter pad where it belonged. Had the probe transported them both outside the Enterprise somehow? It seemed so, but Kirk was still confused. Why had the probe reacted this way? And where had this clumsy spacesuit come from?
He was anxious to get back to his ship and get some answers. Come on, Scotty, he thought impatiently. Beam me back aboard.
But as long moments passed and he remained adrift in the void, Kirk began to fear that something was amiss on his ship. Had the transporters been damaged by the alien energies unleashed by the probe? And what about the rest of the ship? And his crew?
Blast it, he thought. Somebody open a frequency and talk to me!
He glared at the probe, knowing that it was somehow responsible for his predicament. He kept his distance, reluctant to touch it again. The glowing propulsion ring flared up brighter and started spinning faster than ever. Kirk could tell that something was happening.
The probe rotated in space, turning its dish arrays away from the planet. Kirk felt a surge of energy all the way through his spacesuit. All at once, the probe accelerated away from him at incredible speed. He watched in amazement as it left orbit and disappeared into space in a heartbeat. At the rate it was going, Kirk estimated that it would be out of the solar system in a matter of hours, if not minutes.
Heading home?
Kirk didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed by the probe’s abrupt departure. Even though the probe had brought nothing but trouble so far, he hoped it hadn’t taken Skagway’s last chance with it. They had never found out what it was doing there — besides transporting him into space.
“Shaun!” A frantic voice addressed him via the headphones inside his helmet. “Oh, my God, Shaun! Are you okay?”
Kirk didn’t recognize the woman’s voice. It didn’t sound at all like Uhura, or Qat Zaldana, for that matter. And why was she calling him Shaun? Had she gotten the wrong frequency?
“Kirk here,” he answered. “Who is this?”
“What’s that?” the voice responded. Static garbled the transmission. “I’m not reading you.”
Where was the transmission coming from? The Enterprise? Skagway? A rescue shuttle? Kirk hoped for the shuttle.
“Who is this?” he repeated. “Identify yourself.”
“Shaun? Can you hear me?”
Kirk tried to look for the Enterprise, only to discover that his helmet severely restricted his field of vision. Maneuvering in a vacuum, without anything solid to hold on to, made turning around problematic, but he bent backward at the knees until it looked as if he was competing in some kind of zero-g limbo competition and was able to gaze up and behind him. His jaw dropped.
The Enterprise was nowhere to be seen. In its place was an antique spacecraft only a fraction of its size, cruising in orbit several hundred meters away. The relic was composed of four large steel modules linked together in a chain. A pair of rectangular wings, extending from the rear propulsion unit, supported a series of solar panels designed to capture the distant sunlight while the ship was in orbit. Kirk immediately recognized the anachronistic vessel as an old, pre-warp ship of the sort used by human astronauts to explore Earth’s own solar system back in the twenty-first century. A spaceship, not a starship.
He didn’t understand. Ships like this were moth-balled centuries ago, at least on Earth. They were the stuff of history tapes and museum exhibits. But this ship looked brand-new and operational. What was it doing way out there in the Klondike system?
All at once, he thought of the Ares IV. That ship, one of the early Mars expeditions, had been lost in space more than two hundred years ago, when it had been swallowed up by an unexplained subspace anomaly. Was it possible that the ship had somehow ended up here, practically on the other side of the quadrant?
Maybe, he thought. Certainly, Khan’s ship, the Botany Bay, had ended up far from home, and that had been an even earlier model of spacecraft, equipped with only crude, atomic-powered engines. The Ares IV, or some other twenty-first-century spacecraft, could have conceivably traveled just as far.
But that didn’t explain what had happened to the Enterprise.
His own ship had vanished just as inexplicably as his spacesuit had appeared. A thought occurred to him, and he tilted his head forward to look down (up?) at himself. Upon closer inspection, his spacesuit was revealed to be as much a museum relic as the ship orbiting nearby. A hard white carapace protected his upper body. Cooling water seemed to course through tubes close to his skin. An old-fashioned microphone was mounted inside the helmet in front of his mouth. Fans and pumps churned within the breathing apparatus. The entire outfit was astonishingly stiff and bulky compared with a modern EVA suit. He would have been only slightly more surprised to find himself wearing a suit of chain mail.
Unwelcome questions pushed themselves into his brain.
Where am I? When am I?
“Shaun!” the voice shouted over the static. “You’re drifting away! Use your jets!”
Jets? Kirk couldn’t feel the weight of a thruster pack on his back, but he assumed it was there. He glanced down and spotted a pair of hand-operated controls jutting out on either side of his waist. Fortunately, the controls didn’t appear all that different from those on the more advanced thruster suits he was used to. He guessed he could figure them out. There were really only three basic movements to master: yaw, pitch, and roll. He just needed to learn which toggle did which.
Maybe the one on the right was for basic propulsion?
“Message received.” He hoped the woman could hear him. “Activating thrusters now.”
He pressed the toggle forward slightly.
Nothing happened.
Kirk scowled inside the helmet and tried operating the other controls but with equally futile results. The thrusters refused to fire. Leaning back, he confirmed that he was indeed drifting away from the antique spaceship.
“Shaun!” the woman repeated. She clearly seemed to be hailing him from the old ship. “Use your jets!”
“I’m trying! They’re not working!”
“What’s that?” she shouted. “You’re breaking up!”
Never mind, Kirk thought. In desperation, he smacked the controls with his hand, but they remained unresponsive. He recalled the blinding energy surge that had transported him there in the first place. Had the flash shorted out the thruster controls and perhaps the helmet’s communications equipment, too? That might explain why the woman on the mystery ship couldn’t seem to hear him.
The planet spun slowly beneath him. He seemed to be drifting toward it, although it was hard to tell. The sheer size of the gas giant, relative to himself, dwarfed any minor changes in his perspective. It would be a while before he could perceive it getting larger, but it already seemed intimidating enough. The fierce hexagonal vortex waited for him, even though he knew he would be long dead before he came within thousands of kilometers of it. He was doomed to burn up in its atmosphere, provided his oxygen supply lasted that long, which was doubtful. How much air could this primitive suit carry, anyway? Glancing around, he spotted a head-up display inside his helmet. Judging from an illuminated gauge, he still had about seven hours left.
It didn’t seem like enough.
Why don’t they just beam me aboard? he wondered briefly, then realized his mistake. If that old-school spaceship was actually what it appeared to be, it was unlikely to be equipped with a transporter. Earth-based vessels had not really started beaming people aboard until the historic voyages of Jonathan Archer, by which time ships like this one were already obsolete. Chances were, it probably didn’t have any shuttles, either. Where would they put them?
“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.
Eleven
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.
Twelve
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.
