I have assumed temporary command of the Enterprise following Captain Kirk’s traumatic encounter with the alien probe. Although our mission to render assistance to the endangered Skagway colony, and perhaps find a way to avert the disaster, remains paramount, I cannot help wondering what effect the probe has had on the captain’s mental state.
Spock entered sickbay, where he found McCoy waiting for him just inside the doorway. The doctor’s office preceded the examination rooms and recovery wards beyond. Spock didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “You asked for me, Doctor?”
“That’s right,” McCoy grumbled. “About time you got here.”
Spock felt a touch of impatience himself. He had been called away from other pressing duties, most notably the challenging task of saving the Skagway colony from total destruction. “If this is urgent, it might have been more efficient simply to transmit your report to the bridge.”
McCoy snorted. “I think you need to see this for yourself.”
That remains to be determined, Spock thought. He was uncertain why humans placed so much value on direct visual observations when eyewitness accounts were often notoriously inaccurate. Still, his curiosity had been piqued, and he remained concerned about Kirk’s condition. More than one hour and sixteen minutes had passed since he had placed the captain in McCoy’s care. By now, Kirk should have recovered from the nerve pinch. Spock could only wonder if he had recovered from his contact with the probe as well.
“How is your patient, Doctor?”
McCoy remained stubbornly uninformative. “Let me show you.”
The doctor led Spock to a private examination room adjacent to the primary ward. The chamber was sometimes used to quarantine patients who needed to be kept isolated from the rest of sickbay. Spock found Kirk strapped to a bed, under restraint. A diagnostic screen above the bed monitored his vital signs, which appeared to be normal for an adult human male of Kirk’s age and conditioning. Nurse Christine Chapel watched over the patient. A highly emotional woman, even by human standards, she could not conceal her anxiety, although Spock had no reason to expect this to affect her performance. She was the ship’s senior nurse, after all, and had served aboard the Enterprise since the onset of its current voyages. Kirk lay silently on the bed, his eyes closed. His fingers drummed irritably against the sheets. Spock could not immediately determine if he was conscious or not.
“How is he, Nurse?” McCoy asked.
“A bit calmer,” she reported, “but… the same.”
An unnecessarily cryptic diagnosis, Spock mused. He trusted that more concrete data would be forthcoming soon. Minus any more attempts at drama.
Their voices roused Kirk, who opened his eyes and lifted his head from the pillow. His gaze zeroed in on Spock. His fists clenched at his sides. Only the restraints holding him down kept him from jumping off the bed and perhaps engaging Spock in a physical confrontation.
This was not an encouraging sign.
“You again,” Kirk snarled. “What did you do to me before?”
Spock assumed that he was referring to the nerve pinch. “My apologies. You were resisting our efforts to assist you. It seemed necessary at the time.”
“Necessary?” Kirk challenged. “Is that what you call it?”
“This is Mr. Spock,” McCoy said, intervening. “Our first officer.”’
Spock frowned. That the doctor found it necessary to introduce him indicated that Kirk’s memory was still impaired. Don’t you know me, Jim?
Kirk regarded him warily. “And is he… human?”
“I am Vulcan,” Spock stated. “As you should be aware.”
“And why the hell should I know you’re a Vulcan, whatever that is?”
“Because you are Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and we have served together for some time.”
“Oh, God, not that again!” Kirk threw his head back, visibly agitated. “I already told the doc here. I’m not this Kirk person. I’ve never even heard the name before today.” He tugged on his bonds. “I keep telling you. You’ve got the wrong guy!”
Chapel gave Spock a sympathetic look, as though she feared that Kirk’s failure to recognize him might have hurt Spock’s feelings. Despite her considerable skills and intelligence, she had always tended to underestimate his control over his emotions. If he was being completely honest with himself, though, he did find the captain’s current behavior troubling.
He turned to McCoy for answers. “Amnesia, Doctor?”
“More than that, I’m afraid.” McCoy addressed his patient. “Tell Mr. Spock who you think you are.”
“I don’t think anything!” Kirk insisted. “I am Colonel Shaun Christopher, commander of the U.S.S. Lewis & Clark, and I demand that you return me to my ship.”
An arched eyebrow betrayed Spock’s surprise. Of all of the eventualities he had considered regarding the probe’s effect on the captain, this had not been among them.
“You see what I mean?” McCoy said.
For once, Spock was not certain what to think. He gestured to McCoy that he wished to converse in private. They moved to the other end of the cabin and lowered their voices.
“Interesting,” he observed, even as Kirk glared at them as if they were strangers. Spock consulted the doctor. “A delusion?”
“You tell me,” McCoy said. “I assume you recognize the name.”
“ My memory is unimpaired, Doctor.” Spock easily retrieved the relevant data. “Shaun Geoffrey Christopher, son of Captain John Christopher of the United States Air Force, circa the late twentieth century.”
He recalled the incident well. Exactly three years, ten months, and twenty-three days ago, the Enterprise and its crew had been accidentally transported back to Earth orbit in the year 1969. During that unplanned sojourn in the past, they had been forced to beam aboard an American jet pilot who had been in pursuit of what had then been termed an “unidentified flying object.” Captain Christopher had been a reluctant guest aboard the ship for a time, until it was discovered that he needed to be returned to his life in order to father Shaun Christopher, the future commander of Earth’s first manned mission to Saturn. Ultimately, a means was devised to beam John Christopher back to the precise moment he had been plucked from his aircraft, so that he would have no memory of his time aboard the Enterprise, which had returned to its own era shortly thereafter. Spock had given the incident little thought since.
“I don’t get it,” McCoy confessed. “Why Shaun Christopher, of all people? We never even met him. Just his father.”
“A valid question,” Spock said.
While the Earth — Saturn mission of 2020 was certainly an important milestone in the history of human space exploration, he was not aware that it held any special significance to Kirk, aside from their brief acquaintance with Colonel Christopher’s father, and even that was now some years in the past. Kirk had been involved in any number of equally memorable encounters since. Why had he not fixated on, say, Zefram Cochrane, Commodore Matt Decker, or Apollo?
“I have not heard the captain speak of either Christopher recently,” Spock noted. “Have you, Doctor?”
“Can’t say that I have.” McCoy scratched his head. “Heck, if Jim was going to go off his rocker and think he was some famous historical figure, you’d think he’d fixate on Abraham Lincoln… or maybe Casanova.”
The object of their discussion grew restive. “You there!” Kirk fought in vain against his restraints. “Stop talking about me like I’m not even here. I’ve told you who I am. Now I want to know who exactly you people are and what I’m doing here!”
Spock returned to the foot of Kirk’s bed. “My apologies.” He started to call Kirk Captain but caught himself. It would not do to upset Kirk further. “I assure you, we find the present situation equally as puzzling as you do, perhaps even more so. May I ask what your last memory was before you found yourself in our transporter room?”
Kirk eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t you know that?”
“Indulge my curiosity,” Spock said calmly. “There is still much about your presence here that we do not entirely comprehend. Any data you can provide may ultimately benefit us all.”
“Hmm.” Kirk mulled it over for a few moments. “Okay. I’m not sure what your angle is, but I’ll play along. I was conducting an EVA to retrieve what appeared to be an artificial space probe of unknown origin. I had just made contact with the object when there was a sudden flash… and I found myself with you and your buddies in your so-called transporter room.” His brow furrowed. “What does that mean, anyway? Are you telling me you have some sort of teleportation device?”
“Affirmative,” Spock stated. He found Kirk’s unusual narrative intriguing, although it bore little resemblance to the actual circumstances of the captain’s injury. “You encountered the probe in space? Where precisely?”
“In orbit around Saturn, naturally.” His eyes widened in alarm. “Wait! Aren’t we there anymore?” He tried to sit up, only to be forcibly reminded of his restraints. “Where in the universe are we? Where is my ship?”
Spock chose not to answer those questions, uncertain how Kirk might react in his present state of mind. Instead, he continued his interrogation. “And you believe yourself to be in the year 202 °C.E., as reckoned by traditional Earth calendars?”
“Of course! Why shouldn’t I?”
“Why, indeed.”
Spock contemplated what he had just heard. The captain’s delusion appeared to be remarkably consistent, aside from the fact that there was no record of the real Shaun Christopher ever encountering an alien probe on his mission to Saturn centuries ago. Humanity had not made conclusive contact with another sentient species until First Contact some forty-three years later. Had Kirk interpolated the probe into his fantasy of being Colonel Christopher? Spock was not certain why Kirk should do so, but the human unconscious, as he understood it, was even more irrational and unpredictable than their surface thoughts. It might require a specialist trained in abnormal human psychology to explain the nature of this obsession fully. Spock was more concerned with how to restore the captain to himself. He wondered what might be required to dispel the delusion.
“Doctor, a word.”
He stepped away from the bed to confer with McCoy once more.
“Have you attempted to confront him with his true identity?” Spock asked. “Perhaps via the simple expedient of a mirror?”
“I considered that,” McCoy said. “But I wasn’t sure if that would make things better or worse. His mental state seems precarious enough as it is.”
Spock swiftly weighed the pros and cons. Now was no time for a protracted course of psychological treatment. “Do it,” he instructed. “The ship requires its captain.”
“I don’t know,” McCoy said hesitantly. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Your reservations are duly noted, Doctor. I will take full responsibility for any consequences.”
“I don’t care if my butt is covered,” McCoy protested. “I want to do what’s right for Jim!”
“As do I, Doctor. And the captain deserves a chance to recognize himself.”
McCoy shook his head dolefully. “All right. If you say so.” He resigned himself to the prospect. “God help me, I’m not sure what else to do.”
Antique medical instruments were displayed on the walls of sickbay. McCoy retrieved a small hand mirror from one frame. “Physicians once used mirrors like this one to determine whether patients were still breathing,” he explained, perhaps to take his mind off what they were about to attempt. He shrugged his shoulders. “At least we don’t have to worry about that, I suppose. Aside from his case of mistaken identity, he seems fit enough. Just confused and agitated.”
“Wouldn’t you be, Doctor, if you awoke thinking you were someone else? From a completely different time and place?”
“Good point.”
Spock stood back, observing carefully, while McCoy returned to Kirk’s bedside. The doctor held the mirror behind his back and conferred briefly with Nurse Chapel before speaking gently to his patient.
“Capt— I mean, Colonel, I’m going to show you something. There’s no reason to be alarmed. I just want you to look in a mirror and tell me what you see.”
“Fine,” Kirk said sullenly. “Knock yourself out.”
McCoy brought out the mirror and held it up to Kirk. Chapel stood by with a sedative, just in case.
This proved a wise precaution. A look of utter shock and horror came over Kirk’s face as he spied his reflection in the glass. The blood drained from his features, so that he looked as white as a mugato. His jaw dropped.
“Nooo!” he wailed. “That’s not me!” He tried to reach for his face, but his arms were still strapped down. “My face! What have you done to it?” He thrashed wildly against his bonds and stared down at his body, which was still clad in the uniform of a Starfleet captain. He didn’t seem to recognize his own hands or clothing. “Oh, my God! What have you done to me!”
His face was contorted. His eyes bulged from their sockets. Veins stood out against his neck. Spittle flew from his lips. He averted his eyes, unwilling to look at the mirror anymore.
“That’s not me! I’m Shaun Christopher! Shaun Christopher, I tell you!”
“Nurse!” McCoy barked. “Sedative!”
“Yes, Doctor!”
She handed him the hypospray, and he placed it against Kirk’s jugular. A hiss signaled the release of the drug. Kirk’s eyelids drooped, and he sagged against the bed. His straining limbs fell still.
“Damn,” McCoy muttered. “I was afraid of that.”
“It was worth the attempt, Doctor,” Spock stated. “If nothing else, we have demonstrated the considerable depth of the captain’s delusion.”
“He sounded so convinced,” Chapel said. “So terrified. For a moment there, I almost believed him.” A pensive look came over her face. “You don’t think…” She paused, as though hesitant to complete her thought. “Is it possible he’s telling the truth?”
McCoy scoffed. “That Jim Kirk is actually possessed by a dead American astronaut from more than two hundred years ago? That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it, Doctor?” Spock gave Chapel’s query due consideration. “Upon reflection, have we not encountered similar phenomena in the past? Consider that incident involving Dr. Janice Lester or perhaps our experiences with the disembodied alien intelligences we made contact with on the planet Arret.”
On that latter occasion, both he and Kirk and a third crew member had allowed their bodies to be temporarily occupied by the bodiless survivors of an extinct civilization — with nearly irrevocable results. Spock was also acquainted with various ancient Vulcan legends that spoke of the transference of minds between two or more individuals. It was said that in ages past, even the very katra —or living spirit — of an individual could be imparted to another.
And, sometimes, back again.
“Well, I suppose it is possible,” McCoy conceded. “Lord knows we’ve run into stranger things these past few years… maybe.” He shook his head. “But still, Shaun Christopher? He’s not some bizarre alien entity or superintelligence. He died hundreds of years ago on Earth. What would his mind be doing out here, centuries later?”
Spock considered the possibilities. “The captain, speaking as Colonel Christopher, told of encountering the probe during his celebrated mission to Saturn. If this event actually occurred and was omitted from the historical record, then it is conceivable that the real Shaun Christopher’s consciousness was somehow stored or duplicated in the probe’s memory banks until the captain came into contact with it earlier today.”
“Maybe, possibly,” McCoy groused. “But that’s a heck of a leap, Spock. How can we know for sure this isn’t just some wild theory?”
“There is a way to be certain, Doctor. One way or another.”
Understanding dawned in McCoy’s eyes. “A mind-meld?”
“Precisely. It may be our best means of determining the true nature of the captain’s condition.”
McCoy nodded. To Spock’s surprise, the doctor did not automatically attempt to dissuade him. “Well, I suppose it has worked before,” he said grudgingly. “But how can we be sure that you won’t be affected by whatever has unhinged Jim’s mind?” He indulged in a bit of mordant humor. “I don’t want to end up with two confused twenty-first-century astronauts on my hands.”
“I will endeavor to avoid being caught in the captain’s delusion, if that is indeed what it is.” McCoy’s concerns were not without merit, but Spock felt confident that he could navigate Kirk’s disturbed psyche safely. “As you just stated, Doctor, I have done this before.”
“Don’t remind me.” McCoy stepped away from the bed. “You planning to do this now?”
“I see no need for delay,” Spock said. “Although Lieutenant Sulu is an able officer, it is best that I return to the bridge as soon as possible. The Skagway colony remains in jeopardy, and an effective solution has yet to be found.”
Chapel looked on worriedly. She prepared another hypospray. “Do you need us to revive him, Mr. Spock?”
“That will not be necessary, Nurse. I require only a few moments of mental preparation and perhaps a degree of privacy.”
Despite his assurances to McCoy, a mind-meld was never to be entered into lightly. The lowering of one’s psychic barriers to achieve telepathic communion with another was a profoundly intimate — and often shattering — experience. One he had no desire to share with an audience.
To his credit, McCoy seemed to grasp this. “That will be all, Christine,” he said softly. “I can take it from here.”
“All right, Doctor.” She retreated from the ward, glancing back over her shoulder as she did so. Concern and compassion were evident in her voice. “Be careful, Mr. Spock. I hope you find the captain.”
“That is my hope as well,” Spock said.
McCoy remained behind. Spock did not object. It was only logical to have a physician overseeing the meld in the event that unexpected complications arose. They could not fully predict the effect the meld might have on their patient — or on Spock himself.
“Please do not interfere, Doctor,” he instructed. “Unless you deem it absolutely imperative.”
“Just get on with it.” A shiver ran down McCoy’s body. “This whole thing always gives me the creeps.”
Spock recalled that McCoy had once been subjected to a forced mind-meld by an alternate-universe version of Spock himself. It was small wonder that McCoy regarded such invasions with distaste.
“If it is any consolation, Doctor, I would also avoid this if I could.”
He took a moment to brace himself. Time-honored meditative techniques, passed down for generations, prepared his mind for the task at hand. He put aside any fears or misgivings; it would not do to sabotage the meld by clinging instinctively to his mental defenses. To carry out the meld, he had to make himself more vulnerable than any human could possibly imagine.
I have no choice, he reminded himself. I must do this — for the ship and the mission.
And for Jim.
He leaned over Kirk. Using both hands, he splayed his fingers against the sides of Kirk’s face. It was a delicate touch, barely grazing the skin, but sufficient to anchor the neural connection. Kirk’s flesh was cool to the touch compared with his own. Spock closed his eyes and concentrated on achieving the meld.
“My mind to your mind,” he intoned. “My thoughts to your thoughts.”
A minor tremor threatened his resolve as their individual minds began to blur together, but he took a deep breath and pushed past his natural impulse to protect his own identity. He had melded with Kirk before, on several occasions, so he reached out for the familiar signposts he had come to expect. Boyhood memories in Iowa. His proud parents, George and Winona. Older brother Sam. The massacre on Tarsus IV. Starfleet Academy. Carol Marcus. Ruth. The U.S.S. Republic. The attack on the Farragut. The launch of the Enterprise under his command. Gary Mitchell, his eyes glowing like pulsars. Sam Kirk’s death on Deneva. Klingons. Romulans. Edith Keeler. Miramanee…
But instead, he found himself lost in an unfamiliar psychic landscape. Strange memories that had nothing to do with James Tiberius Kirk flooded his mind:
Earth, more than two centuries ago. Smoggy skies. Automobiles clogging endless highways. Television. Video games. High school. Making Eagle Scout. His first car. College. Marrying Debbie Lauderdale. Babies being born, then growing up right before his eyes. Kevin. Katie. Rory. Air Force training, just like Dad. Area 51. The DY-100. Shannon O’Donnell. NASA. The divorce. Docking with the Lewis & Clark. Months in zero gravity. Fontana. O’Herlihy. A stowaway? Saturn looming in the distance, growing nearer by the day. The probe, floating in space. His hand reaching out to touch it—
A blinding flash lit up Spock’s synapses. The shock jolted him from the meld, and he staggered backward, reeling from the sudden dislocation. For a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure who or where he was. Foreign memories and emotions fogged his mind.
“Fontana,” he murmured. “Alice…”
“Spock!” McCoy rushed toward him. “What is it? Are you all right?”
“A moment, Doctor. Please.”
Spock struggled to regain his composure and sense of self. He placed a hand against a wall to steady himself. The borrowed memories began to recede. Years of mental discipline and training restored order to his thoughts.
I am Spock, son of Sarek and Amanda. My mind is my own.
“Talk to me, Spock!” McCoy pleaded. He took hold of Spock’s arm. “What happened?”
“Forgive me, Doctor.” He straightened and stepped away from the wall. He politely but firmly removed his arm from McCoy’s grip. “The meld was broken abruptly, and the transition back to myself was rather more jarring than I would have preferred.”
McCoy examined Spock with a palm-sized medical scanner. “Well, you seem to be more or less normal. Your blood pressure, heart rate, and neural activity are a bit elevated, even for a Vulcan, but they seem to be dropping back to their usual freakish levels.” He lowered the scanner. “So, what did you find in there? What’s wrong with Jim?”
The anachronistic memories lingered at the back of Spock’s mind. The evidence was irrefutable; there could be only one conclusion. He turned toward their unconscious patient, who twitched and murmured in his sleep. The man’s fingers drummed restlessly.
“That, Doctor, is not James T. Kirk.”
McCoy gaped in astonishment, but the truth had to be faced.
“Despite all outward appearances, that is Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher.”
“I can’t believe it,” McCoy murmured. He sank into the chair in his office, still trying to process the astounding diagnosis Spock had just delivered. He had no reason to doubt Spock; the Vulcan usually had his precious facts in order. It was just a lot to take in. “This is insane.”
Spock remained standing, seemingly unshaken by his discovery. “At least we now know that the captain is not insane,” he pointed out. “Merely… dispossessed.”
That was small comfort.
“Dammit, Spock,” McCoy cursed. “I’m a doctor, not an exorcist. What are we supposed to do now?” An urgent question came to mind. “What about Jim? Is he still in there somewhere? Beneath Shaun Christopher’s memories?”
“Negative,” Spock said. “I regret to say that I found no traces of the captain’s consciousness still remaining within his body. His mind appears to be entirely absent.”
“Good God,” McCoy said. “You don’t think it’s been… erased?”
The thought that all of Jim Kirk’s personality and life experiences — everything that had made him who he was — might have been wiped away forever filled McCoy with despair. It would be the same as if their friend had been vaporized by a Klingon disruptor. He would be gone for good.
“Or perhaps merely displaced,” Spock suggested. “It could be that Colonel Christopher’s memories were not simply copied into the captain’s brain. There might have been a two-way transference instead.”
“Across time?” McCoy’s mind boggled at the notion. “Is that even possible?”
“There are always possibilities, Doctor. Some are simply more probable than others.”
McCoy wanted to believe him but had his doubts. “But isn’t it more likely that the probe simply replaced Jim’s mind with a copy of Shaun Christopher’s? I mean, I hate to be the one citing logic here, but what about Occam’s Razor? Isn’t that a simpler and more plausible explanation than assuming that Jim and Shaun somehow switched minds over a span of centuries — and umpteen light-years to boot? What makes you think Jim’s mind is still around… somewhere?”
“A feeling, Doctor.” Spock grimaced, as though the admission pained him. “I cannot put it into words precisely, but what I sensed just now did not feel like a copy of Shaun Christopher’s memories but rather his actual living consciousness, somehow displaced in time and space. Which suggests that the same might have occurred to the captain’s mind.”
“A ‘feeling,’ you say.” McCoy couldn’t help being amused. “Look at us. I’m the one talking logic, and you’re relying on some vague impression you can’t really explain.” He snickered at the sheer irony of the moment. “Somebody check on Tartarus Prime. I think it may have frozen over.”
“Mind-melds do not lend themselves to spoken vocabulary,” Spock replied, perhaps a tad defensively, “let alone your own unsophisticated human languages. I believe my reasoning is perfectly sound, given my observations during the course of the meld.”
“Uh-huh.” McCoy didn’t buy it. “Sounds more like wishful thinking to me. Not that I blame you. Anything’s better than thinking that Jim’s mind is lost for good.” He settled back into his chair and crossed his arms. “All right, then. Let’s run with that theory. What now? Where do you think Jim is?”
“If my hypothesis is correct,” Spock said, “then the captain’s mind may now occupy Shaun Christopher’s body, during the Saturn mission approximately two hundred fifty years ago.”
“Then let’s go find him!” McCoy urged. He seized on Spock’s theory as their last, best hope of getting Jim Kirk back. Hope flared inside him for the first time since Spock had revealed that Jim’s mind was truly absent. If there was even a chance that they could save Jim, they had to take it. “Saturn is a ways from here, but if we hurry at maximum warp, we can be there in a matter of weeks. And we’ve traveled back to that era before. More than once, actually. Jim’s probably wondering what’s keeping us!”
Of course, even if they did somehow miraculously locate Kirk’s mind in the past, they would still have to put it back into his body where it belonged, but McCoy was inclined to cross that bridge when they came to it. Another mind-mind, perhaps, or that alien machine Janice Lester had discovered. There had to be a way to put Jim back together.
We just have to find him first.
“Easier said than done, Doctor,” Spock observed. “While I appreciate your sense of urgency, the situation here in the Klondike system must take priority. We cannot abandon the Skagway colony to go searching the past for our lost captain.”
McCoy refused to accept that. “But what about Jim? He could be trapped in the past, waiting for us to rescue him!”
“If he is in the past, Doctor, then there is no hurry. Whatever might have become of the captain occurred centuries ago. Our present duty remains before us. Perhaps later, if and when the crisis here is resolved, we can follow up on my hypothesis.”
McCoy seethed in frustration. He knew from personal experience what it was like to be marooned in the past with little hope of rescue. How could Spock be so cool and analytical about the situation? “This is Jim we’re talking about!”
“I am fully aware of that, Doctor.” Spock’s voice held a hint of regret, although one probably had to know him well to hear it. “But I also know that the captain would want us to carry out our duties in his absence and not sacrifice the Skagway colony on the basis of a… supposition.”
“I know.” The hell of it was, Spock was absolutely right. McCoy’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He felt as though his hopes had been raised, only to be crushed beneath the combined weight of logic and duty. “That’s what Jim would want, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Nor do I,” Spock admitted.
Sighing, McCoy nodded at the private exam room beyond. “In the meantime, what am I supposed to do with our misplaced friend there? It looks like he’s not going anywhere.”
“For the time being,” Spock advised, “it is probably best that we share the particulars of the captain’s condition with only select members of the crew. I suggest we keep Colonel Christopher confined to quarantine and limit any contact with him. As far as the rest of the crew and any civilians are concerned, the captain is simply recovering from his injuries — under doctor’s orders.”
McCoy didn’t have a better idea. “And what exactly do I tell my patient?”
“As little as possible,” Spock stated gravely. “If we do hope someday to return him to his own place in history, we must limit his exposure to the future — as we did with his father.”
McCoy nodded. “And just how long do you think we can keep him in the dark?”
“Long enough, Doctor. I hope, long enough.”
Fourteen
Kirk examined his new face in a mirror. Only a couple of days had passed since he had found himself in Shaun Christopher’s body, and he was still getting used to it. He wondered if he ever would.
Oddly familiar blue eyes stared back at him. Shaun resembled his father, whom Kirk had met just a few years ago, although, paradoxically, Shaun was noticeably older than Captain John Christopher. Gray hair infiltrated his temples, and decades of experience had added both creases and character to his features. Kirk calculated that Shaun was probably in his early fifties, although it was hard to tell. People in the past tended to age faster than the humans of his era, where the life expectancy was considerably longer. Although he was in excellent shape for a man his age, Shaun’s body was still older than Kirk would have preferred. He felt as if he had aged thirty years overnight.
Not quite as bad as that time on Gamma Hydra IV but disturbing nonetheless.
The crew’s personal quarters were on the upper deck of the habitat module, above the gym and the infirmary. He had been relieved to discover that NASA had been thoughtful enough to provide each of the astronauts with his or her own private compartment, probably not a bad idea on a flight of this duration. The small, rather monastic cell was only a fraction of the size of his stateroom back on the Enterprise, but that was made up for in part by making use of the walls and ceiling as well. A personal grooming area, complete with mirror, occupied one corner. A sleeping bag was tethered to a wall. A narrow corridor connected the compartments. Kirk kept his door open. He didn’t want to appear to be hiding.
Stubble dotted his cheek as he attempted to shave in zero gravity, which was trickier than he had anticipated. He carefully applied a dollop of water, procured from a wall dispenser, to his face, then squeezed a little NASA-approved shaving cream from a small tin-foil packet. In theory, the mixture would cling to his whiskers without floating away and would also stick to the razor blade. He would have to keep wiping the blade clean and roll up the hand towel to keep the shorn whiskers from getting loose. He started work on his chin but accidentally dislodged a tiny blob of shaving cream.
“Damn.” He chased after the blob with the towel. Starfleet zero-g drills had seldom focused on matters of personal grooming and hygiene.
“Having trouble?”
Zoe Querez floated into his quarters without waiting for an invitation. She executed a midair flip so that they were oriented in the same direction. Her slender fingers snagged the elusive blob, then wiped it on her shorts. She had no quarters of her own, he had learned, but was spending more and more time outside the brig. Nobody really had time to babysit her anymore.
“A little.” He handed her the towel so she could wipe off her suit. “Thanks for the assist, Ms. Querez.”
Even though he had since learned who she was, he remained dumbfounded by her presence on the ship. So far, the Lewis & Clark ’s mission was playing out very differently from what he recalled from the history tapes. A stowaway? A briefly glimpsed alien probe? None of that was in the official accounts of the mission, let alone history as he knew it. Which just made his current predicament all the more challenging. How was he supposed to avoid changing the past when that past wasn’t what he thought it was?
All he could do was try to get through this mission without blowing his cover, then find some way to send a message to the future. Perhaps a letter in a safe-deposit box, to be delivered to McCoy at an appropriate date hundreds of years from now? Or a time capsule built to survive World War III? Or, better yet, an old-fashioned radio message directed to where a starbase would be two hundred fifty years from now? In theory, his SOS would arrive at just about the right time for Starfleet to receive it.
Granted, the brass increasingly frowned on unnecessary trips to the past, for fear of wreaking havoc with the timeline, but surely they would grant the Enterprise some leeway in this case. He hoped that Spock and the others would come looking for him. Then maybe they could deal with the little matter of putting his mind back into his own body!
In the meantime, he had to keep pretending to be Shaun.
“What’s with this ‘Ms. Querez’ stuff?” Zoe asked. “We’re not on a first-name basis anymore?”
Oops, Kirk thought. “Sorry. Just a little distracted.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” She hooked her foot into a wall loop to keep from drifting around the chamber. Her striking brown eyes inspected his unshaven face. “Maybe you should just let it grow out. A little stubble looks good on you.”
“Thanks,” Kirk said. “But given the length of this cruise, I need to shave sometimes or end up looking like Rip Van Winkle.” Except that Rip woke up in the future, he thought, and I’m stuck two centuries in the past.
“Good point,” she agreed. “Probably not a great look for you. Why hide that rugged, Right Stuff mug of yours?”
Kirk raised an eyebrow. Was she flirting with him?
Despite his unusual circumstances, he couldn’t help being intrigued. Zoe was an attractive woman. And he was going to be stuck on this slow-moving spacecraft for weeks to come…
But how would Shaun react to her overtures? Was he married, engaged, or otherwise attached? Not for the first time, he wished he had access to the Enterprise ’s computer banks. Back on his own ship, he could have called up all of the particulars on Shaun in a moment. By contrast, the Lewis & Clark was too far away from Earth even to have access to — what did they call it these days? The Interweb?
“I tried growing a beard one summer,” he divulged, assuming that revelation was harmless enough. What human male hadn’t stopped shaving at some point? “It was not a universal success.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” She reached for the razor. “Here, let me help.”
Taking the razor from his hand, she leaned in closer, and he caught a whiff of a delicate fragrance. She deftly shaved his cheeks and chin with a gentle touch. His two-day-old shadow was quickly transferred to the razor blade and from there to the towel. Not a single stray whisker escaped into the closed environment of the ship. When she was finished, she paused to admire her work. “Yeah, that’s more like it.”
Kirk checked himself out in the mirror. He liked what he saw.
“I have to agree. Thanks.” He rubbed his chin, which was now as smooth as a Deltan’s cranium. She hadn’t nicked him once. “Where did an intrepid journalist-slash-stowaway learn to use a razor like that?”
“Hello?” She smirked at him. “Have you seen my legs?” She wiped the razor clean and handed it back to him. She gave him a sly look. “Maybe you can return the favor someday.”
Kirk grinned. “I think I’d like that.”
“Ahem.” Fontana appeared in the doorway. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Not at all,” Zoe replied, completely unruffled. “How can we help you, astronaut?”
Fontana ignored her and spoke directly to Kirk instead. “Daily mission briefing in five minutes, remember?” She scowled at Zoe. “If you’re not too busy.”
“Right,” Kirk said. “The briefing.” He was still learning the ship’s routine. “Thanks for the reminder. Guess I’m still a bit foggy from that zap the other day.”
He wondered how much longer he could milk that excuse. Certainly, it was plausible enough. Powerful electric shocks were known to cause memory loss. Should he take advantage of that angle more, or would that risk affecting the mission in a significant way? He wouldn’t want to get Shaun relieved of command on grounds of partial amnesia or suspected brain damage. That might have a serious impact on history.
“No problem,” Fontana said, her tone softening. She eyed him with obvious concern before finally acknowledging Zoe’s presence. “If you could give us a few minutes.”
It was not a request.
“Sure. Whatever.” Zoe shrugged. “I need to brainstorm my next blog, anyway, not that I’m going to be able to post it anytime soon.” She rolled her eyes. “You’d think a spaceship this high-tech would have free Wi-Fi, at least.” She winked at Kirk as she glided out the door. “Don’t forget. You owe me.”
Fontana watched to make sure the other woman left. Her feet claimed the loop Zoe had been using before. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“What was that all about?”
“Nothing,” Kirk said, unclear if he was fibbing or not. “She was just helping me shave.”
“Since when do you need help with something like that?”
Careful, Kirk thought. He wasn’t sure what Fontana’s problem was. Did she simply disapprove of him socializing with the stowaway, or was it more than that? Once again, he wished he knew more about Shaun’s personal life. How was he going to fake this for the rest of the voyage? He didn’t know enough about who he was supposed to be.
“I was just being polite,” he assured her. “After all, the four of us are going to be in close quarters for a long time. We might as well try to get along.”
“I suppose,” she said doubtfully. She peered the way Zoe had gone. “But I still don’t trust her. She doesn’t belong here.”
Kirk couldn’t disagree. “You can say that again.”
That seemed to mollify her. “I’m sorry. I know I must sound like a stereotypical jealous ex, but…” Her eyes moistened, and she drew nearer. “Oh, Shaun. I thought I was never going to see you again.”
Her face was only inches away from his. Her lips parted expectantly.
Kirk didn’t know how Shaun would respond. “Fontana… Alice…”
“I know, I know.” She seemed to take his hesitation in stride. “We both agreed that it was a bad idea, that our careers — and the mission — took priority, but that was before I watched you drifting off into space. I almost lost you, Shaun.”
Kirk stalled. “I’m sorry to put you through that.”
“It just got me thinking, you know.” Her eyes entreated him. “Did we make a mistake, Shaun? Are we wasting precious time?”
Time is definitely an issue here, Kirk thought. The oddity of his situation was not lost on him. Had he really traveled two centuries into the past to find himself in the middle of a complicated love triangle? And the devil of it was, he had no idea which, if either, woman he — or, rather, Shaun — was supposed to end up with.
Good thing McCoy isn’t around to see this. He’d never let me hear the end of it.
The video-com buzzed.
“Paging Christopher and Fontana.” O’Herlihy’s voice interrupted the awkward moment. His face skyped onto the miniature video screen. “What’s keeping you two?”
Kirk tried to conceal his relief. “We should probably get going.” Fontana looked disappointed and maybe even a little hurt. He gave her a smile to ease the sting. “We can… talk more later.”
If Zoe didn’t get to him first.
“Roger that.” She gave him a funny look, as if something wasn’t quite right, before hitting the speaker button on the comm. “Hold on to your horses, Marcus. We’ll be right there.”
Kirk hoped that she would chalk up his reticence to ordinary human misunderstandings and relationship issues. That would certainly be the most likely explanation as far as she was concerned. How could she possibly guess the truth?
He could barely believe it himself!
“Don’t forget your lucky dog tags,” she reminded him.
“What? Oh, right.” The metal tags, which had apparently once belonged to Shaun’s father, were tethered to a hook. Kirk wondered if they were the same tags John Christopher had worn when he was beamed aboard the Enterprise. He placed them around his neck. “Can’t forget these.”
“You never did before,” she said.
The briefing took place on the ship’s flight deck, since the Lewis & Clark lacked the space for a separate conference room. Kirk couldn’t help comparing it with the bridge of the Enterprise. Like the rest of the ship, it seemed remarkably cramped and primitive by comparison. There wasn’t even a yeoman to serve coffee.
“There you are,” O’Herlihy said as Kirk and Fontana arrived. He had the copilot’s seat turned toward the back of the module. “Dare I ask what was keeping you?”
Kirk sighed inside. Did everyone on this ship know more about Shaun’s private life than he did?
Probably.
“Nothing that you need to know about.” Fontana adopted a light tone that was probably at odds with her true feelings about what had just happened. She took a place on the ceiling, where she could keep an eye on the two men. “Don’t be a dirty old man.”
“Occupational hazard,” O’Herlihy quipped, not unlike McCoy. “Just ask my wife.”
“Sorry for the delay, Doctor.” Kirk settled into the pilot’s seat. He guessed that was Shaun Christopher’s usual spot. “My fault. I guess I’m not exactly at the top of my game.”
“Don’t apologize,” O’Herlihy said. “If we were back on Earth, you’d already be on medical leave, if not under observation twenty-four/seven.”
Yes, Kirk decided. He definitely reminds me of Bones.
“We have a job to do, Doctor. I intend to do it.”
He had already started covertly studying the ship’s operations manuals. The technology was remarkably simple by twenty-third-century standards. Scotty would have been appalled by the unsophisticated systems and engineering. Why, they were still getting by on a first-generation impulse drive. Zefram Cochrane hadn’t even been born yet.
If nothing else, Kirk reflected, he had been given a front-row seat to space history in the making. The Lewis & Clark was a covered wagon compared with the Enterprise, which just made its crew’s dedication and courage all the more impressive. Fontana and O’Herlihy, not to mention Christopher, were true pioneers, venturing out into the unforgiving void with nothing but a crude titanium hull to protect them. They had no deflectors, no phasers, no photon torpedoes, no transporters. Not even artificial gravity or universal translators.
I need to appreciate this opportunity, he thought. Not take it for granted.
“All right, then,” O’Herlihy said. “Let’s get down to business.” He leafed through a stack of printouts. “We’ve received the latest updates from Mission Control. Seems they’re keeping a tight lid on any info about that probe, and they expect us to do the same.”
“So, they’re keeping the whole thing quiet,” Fontana said. “Just like they did about our unwanted guest earlier.”
Kirk observed that Zoe had not been invited to the briefing. No surprise there. He wondered what the enticing stowaway was up to at that moment. Just working on her “blog,” whatever that was?
“Exactly. They don’t want to stir up any more controversy about this mission, especially since we didn’t manage to retrieve the probe.” O’Herlihy clucked in regret. “A pity it zipped away like that. Just think of all we could have learned from it!”
Don’t worry, Kirk thought. We’ll run into it again — two hundred and fifty years from now.
“It’s completely gone?” Fontana asked. “There’s no sign of it?”
O’Herlihy shook his head. “LIDAR tracked it to the edge of the solar system before losing it. Hubble has lost sight of it, too. It’s long gone.”
Kirk frowned. He hoped that they hadn’t also lost their best chance of putting him back where he belonged, both physically and temporally. He remembered how battered and decrepit the probe had appeared in his time. What if the future version of the probe was too damaged to reverse whatever it had done the first time?
Is it already en route to Klondike VI, he wondered, or does it have other errands to attend to first? Maybe some other gas giants to observe?
“I wonder where it came from,” Fontana said. “And what it was doing here.”
“We may never know,” O’Herlihy said sadly. “In the meantime, however, NASA wants us to continue with our mission and complete our observations of Saturn and its moons. And, Lord, is there plenty to observe.”
“Such as?” Kirk asked.
“Take a look at this.” O’Herlihy relocated to one of the auxiliary terminals and called up an image on a monitor. Kirk and Fontana looked over his shoulder. “These are our latest photos of Saturn’s north pole, taken during our last pass.”
The famous hexagonal vortex looked just the way Kirk remembered it from the future, spread vibrantly for thousands of kilometers atop the planet. It looked just like the travel photos and calendar shots he had seen his entire life, not to mention his own personal memories.
“It’s back to normal,” he realized. “Just like before.”
“That’s right,” the scientist confirmed. “What’s more, I’ve been running an analysis of the rings. They’ve also stabilized. The vast majority of the ring matter has already fallen back into its usual formations.”
“Just in the last day or so?” Fontana stared at the monitor. She voiced the thought they were probably all thinking. “Was it the probe? Did it do something?”
“Possibly. Probably.” O’Herlihy scratched his beard. “There were those energy pulses right before you ran into difficulty, Shaun. As nearly as I can tell, the pulses were directed at the planet’s north pole, right into the heart of the vortex.”
Kirk pondered the scientist’s report. “What kind of energy, Doctor?”
“I’m not sure,” O’Herlihy admitted. “Possibly a stream of charged particles or directed plasma waves. Like a laser, almost.”
Or a phaser? Kirk wondered. Actual phasers would not be developed by Earth science for at least two centuries. Had the probe fired some variety of phaser at Saturn? Spock had not detected any defensive systems aboard the probe, but perhaps its phaser banks operated on different principles and were not recognized by the Enterprise ’s sensors. Or maybe the beams were simply a previously unknown type of directed energy. In either case, they would be beyond O’Herlihy’s experience.
“So, the beams rebooted the hexagon somehow?” Fontana speculated, apparently more interested in their function than their nature. “Which stabilized the rings? That’s fantastic!”
But not unheard of, Kirk thought. He recalled the alien hieroglyphics on the probe and that obelisk back on Miramanee’s world. Once activated, the obelisk had projected a powerful deflector beam that had kept the planet from being struck by an oncoming asteroid. Was it possible that the probe had been designed to serve a similar purpose, fixing Saturn’s deteriorating rings? Or, more likely, resetting some other mechanism hidden somewhere deep within the mysterious hexagon?
“You may be on to something,” he told Fontana. “Perhaps the probe was here to repair Saturn’s rings.”
“And it left once it completed its mission?” Marcus seized on the idea, visibly fascinated. “But who sent the probe? And what interest would they have in maintaining Saturn’s rings?”
Good questions, Kirk thought. He wished he could tell O’Herlihy and Fontana more about the Preservers, not that there was much to tell. The ancient aliens were a mystery even in his own time. Had they anticipated humanity colonizing this solar system in the future and wanted to keep Saturn and its moons stabilized for Earth’s benefit? Or did they have another motive for fixing the ringed giant? Perhaps they simply wanted to preserve one of the sector’s natural wonders for conservation or aesthetic reasons. It would be funny, he mused, if the Preservers ultimately turned out to be some sort of cosmic park service.
“Shaun,” O’Herlihy asked him, “you were out there when those pulses fired. What did you see before the probe shocked you?”
You mean, what did Christopher see, Kirk thought, before I set up shop in his body. In truth, his last memory before finding himself in orbit was of touching the probe in the Enterprise ’s transporter room. He hadn’t seen the pulses O’Herlihy was talking about.
“To be honest, it’s all kind of a blur,” he said. “Sorry.”
Marcus sighed. He sounded disappointed but not too surprised. “I was afraid of that. A little traumatic short-term-memory loss was to be expected, I suppose.”
“Is that serious?” Fontana asked, sounding worried.
“I doubt it,” the doctor said. “Patients who have been in accidents often have little recollection of the actual events. It’s probably nothing to be concerned about, provided the rest of Shaun’s memory is intact.” He looked Kirk over. “You do remember who I am, right?”
He made it sound like a joke, but Kirk thought he heard something more serious underneath.
“A nervous mother hen?” Kirk said with a grin. “Seriously, I admit I was a little shook up, but I’m feeling better every day. Stop treating me like a basket case, both of you. That’s an order.”
“Fair enough,” O’Herlihy said. “But you’ll tell me if you’re having problems, right?”
“You’ll be the first to know,” Kirk lied. He felt bad about deceiving the two astronauts. They deserved better. But he couldn’t risk changing history by revealing that he was actually a time traveler from the future. “But really, I just want to get back to work.”
Fontana looked relieved. “Okay, that’s the Shaun Christopher I’m used to.”
Kirk was glad to hear it. It occurred to him that if he had to impersonate a human of the twenty-first century, the commander of an exploratory space vessel was not a bad fit. He and Shaun probably had much in common, including similar instincts and training. Could be worse, he thought. I could be stuck in the body of an opera singer or a brain surgeon.
When in doubt, maybe he just needed to act like himself.
“On a lighter note,” O’Herlihy continued, “Mission Control also forwarded a new batch of personal e-mails from home. Not quite as good as a care package of homemade brownies, but they will have to do. There appear to be plenty of photos and videos to review at our so-called leisure.”
Interesting, Kirk thought. He looked forward to studying Christopher’s correspondence in private. He hoped they would tell him more about Shaun as a person.
Fontana flew down to the nearest computer terminal. “Duty be damned. I think we can take a few minutes out of our busy schedules to check out those e-mails right away.” She grinned at Kirk. “If that’s all right with you, Colonel.”
“Indulge yourself, Commander.” He figured that Christopher would say the same. “After what we’ve been through the past few days, I think we can all use a little taste of home.”
Too bad he wasn’t likely to have any messages from his real home.
Or century.
The crew members floated off to various terminals to enjoy their personal correspondence in relative privacy. Kirk was grateful that the other two astronauts were preoccupied with their own messages. That gave him a chance to skim Christopher’s messages without being watched too closely. He felt a twinge of guilt at reading Christopher’s e-mail but assumed that any assumption of privacy vanished when he took over the other man’s body. Besides, for all he knew, Shaun’s consciousness was residing at the back of his brain somewhere — if it hadn’t been erased or transferred elsewhere.
Was Shaun about to read these letters, too? Kirk hoped not. He knew from experience how hellish it could be to remain aware but helpless while another mind controlled your body.
I had enough of that on Platonius.
Shoving the unpleasant memory aside, he checked out the first missive.
“Hi, Dad!” the message began.
Kirk blinked in surprise. Shaun had children? Not too surprising, considering the astronaut’s age, he realized, but the filial salutation still hit him like a phaser on stun. He scanned the e-mails quickly, trying to get his bearings. Shaun seemed to have three kids, two in college and one much younger.
Color photos, attached to the letter, showed a Fourth of July picnic on a beach. The youngest boy, Rory, looked about eight years old.
The same age as David, Kirk thought.
Kirk had never met his own son. Carol preferred it that way. It dawned on Kirk that David — and his mother — would not be born for centuries. He found himself envying Shaun.
“Mom is taking us to Colonial Williamsburg,” Rory wrote. “She says hi.”
From the sound of things, Christopher’s kids were staying with their mom while he was in space. Kirk read the passage again. Just “hi” from the mom? He wondered what the story was with her and Shaun. Were they married, divorced, separated, or had they never lived together at all? Scrolling quickly through the e-mail, he didn’t find a separate note from the unnamed mother. The other letter appeared to be from Christopher’s sister — and his father.
Kirk chuckled to himself. He couldn’t help being amused to receive a personal message from Shaun’s dad, retired Air Force Captain John Christopher. Only four years had passed, by Kirk’s reckoning, since he had bid farewell to Captain Christopher on the bridge of the Enterprise, but of course, decades had passed for Shaun’s father, who had not even conceived his son the last time Kirk saw him. And now Kirk was occupying Shaun’s body!
Talk about a small universe, he thought. Or should that be a small space-time continuum?
What were the odds that they would cross paths like this again, despite a gap of centuries? Kirk had to wonder if some cosmic intelligence was playing games with him, or was it just that time-travel conundrums were like some kind of persistent infection? Maybe once you caught one, you were always susceptible to a relapse? Spock would surely have a theory on the subject, possibly involving temporal linkages or chroniton entanglement. McCoy would probably just chalk it up to a bizarre twist of fate.
Maybe the truth was somewhere in between.
Over at an adjacent terminal, Fontana looked up from her own correspondence. “How are the kids? They having a good time with Debbie this summer?”
“Sounds like it.” Kirk wished he could pump Fontana for more details on Christopher’s family but changed the subject instead. “How about you? Any exciting news from home?”
“Not unless you count my idiot brother breaking his ankle snowboarding. And my mom has a new gallery opening next weekend.” She snickered. “I told her I probably couldn’t make it.”
“I suspect she understood,” Kirk said, relieved to be talking about anything other than Shaun Christopher’s mysterious loved ones. He resolved to scour the e-mail more thoroughly later for whatever personal info he could glean from it. “You’ll have to catch her next show.”
He wondered if Fontana’s mom was a painter, a sculptor, or what.
Watch out, he warned himself. Don’t let on that you don’t know.
“I just hope she’s taking good care of Gus,” Fontana said. “God, I miss the little guy.”
Wait. Fontana had a child, too?
“Any message from him?” he asked.
She looked puzzled by the question. “Last time I checked, bulldogs weren’t much on letter writing.”
Damn, Kirk thought. I got it wrong again.
“Well, you never know,” he said, trying to recover. “You can do wonders with dog training these days.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said. “Very funny — not.”
O’Herlihy sniffled over at the far terminal. His back was turned to the other astronauts. Kirk thought he heard the man choke back a sob.
He seized on the distraction. “You all right, Doctor?”
“I’m fine,” O’Herlihy insisted. He rotated to face them. “Just a little choked up, that’s all.” He wiped a tear from his eye and licked his finger to make sure it didn’t get away. “What can I say? I miss my family.”
Kirk had already picked up on the fact that the doctor was a devoted family man. He had previously caught O’Herlihy mooning over home-video footage of a wife and a college-age daughter. They had looked like lovely women. He couldn’t blame O’Herlihy for missing them.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Fontana said. “Every-thing okay with Jocelyn and Tera?”
“They’re well,” he reported, although his hoarse voice betrayed how powerfully the letters from home had affected him. He made an effort to regain his composure. “My apologies. I shouldn’t get so emotional.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Kirk said. “After all, you’re human, not Vul—” He started to say “Vulcan” but caught himself. “I mean, you’re only human.”
“We all are,” Fontana added.
“I know,” O’Herlihy said. He stared plaintively at the screen before him. “They just seem so far away sometimes. Like I’m never going to see them again.”
Kirk tried to remember O’Herlihy’s biography but couldn’t bring up the details. He just remembered the name from the mission logs.
“You will,” Fontana promised. “They’ll be there waiting for you when we get back.”
And so will Christopher’s family, Kirk realized. They were millions of kilometers away now, but what about when he got to Earth? How in the world could he face Shaun’s own flesh and blood?
He couldn’t even tell them what had become of the real Shaun.
If he even still existed at all.
Fifteen
“Here comes another one!” Sulu blurted.
A boulder-sized chunk of ice hurled toward the domed colony on the viewer. Between its size and its velocity, it had a good chance of breaching Skagway’s fading deflectors and maybe even the lunar habitat itself. A breach in the dome was a worst-case scenario that seemed to be growing more likely by the moment.
“Got it,” Chekov said.
Without waiting for a command to fire, Chekov unleashed a salvo of phaser beams that shattered the frozen meteoroid into hundreds of smaller fragments only moments before it would have slammed into Skagway. Vaporizing the object would have been cleaner, but they needed to conserve the phaser banks’ power. Pulverized ice crystals rained down on the besieged colony.
Chekov let out a held breath. “That was a close one.”
“Just like the last two,” Sulu commented. “Is it just me, or are these giant hailstones getting more and more frequent?”
“Your perceptions are quite accurate, Lieutenant,” Spock stated from the captain’s chair. “The frequency of such near-collisions has increased by a factor of six-point-seven over the last twenty-four hours. As the rings continue to destabilize, ever more debris is being drawn toward Klondike VI, placing Skagway in jeopardy, even as the moon’s own orbit brings it steadily closer to the inner rings — where it will face additional hazards.”
They were fighting a losing battle, Spock knew. Once Skagway entered the inner rings, the challenge of defending the colony would increase exponentially. And the Enterprise ’s tractor beams, while state-of-the-art, were hardly sufficient to hold even a small moon in place.
He called up the latest tracking data on Skagway’s orbit. The figures scrolled across the display panel on his right armrest. He performed the necessary calculations in his head. The analysis took only seconds.
“Mr. Sulu.” He addressed the helmsman. “Skagway’s orbit has contracted by a factor of nine-point-two. Please adjust our own orbit to compensate.”
“Already on it, sir,” Sulu said. “Matching course and speed.” He kept his gaze fixed on the wayward moon. “Don’t worry, Mr. Spock, I’m not letting those people out of sight.”
Chekov sighed. “Too bad those drifting icebergs aren’t letting them alone, either.”
Spock detected a note of fatigue in the ensign’s voice. By his calculations, Chekov had now been on duty for fourteen hours, twelve minutes, and forty-four seconds. A swift review of Chekov’s defensive phaser fire indicated a slight but significant loss in reaction time. Spock made a decision.
“Lieutenant Ita,” he instructed, “please relieve Ensign Chekov at the nav station. Mr. Chekov, you are relieved.”
“Sir?” Chekov looked back at him in dismay.
“No criticism is intended, Ensign,” Spock assured him. Five years of working alongside humans had taught him the importance of taking their egos and emotions into account in command situations. Maintaining crew morale was not his forte, but he had learned that it was not a factor that could be safely overlooked, particularly where humans were concerned. “Your performance has been exemplary, but you, like all living organisms, are subject to fatigue. It is only logical to rotate key personnel as required. You may resume your duties after a suitable interval of rest.”
“Well, when you put it that way.” Chekov grudgingly surrendered his seat to Maggie Ita. He yawned and stretched. “I suppose I could use a little break.”
“Get some sleep,” Sulu urged his comrade. “You deserve it.”
Sulu sounded faintly envious. Spock resolved to relieve the helmsman, too, once Ita settled into phaser duty. It would be inadvisable to replace both Sulu and Chekov at the same time, but Spock calculated that approximately thirty-six-point-five minutes would allow for a smooth turnover at the conn. Any sooner might compromise their defense of Skagway, while any longer might decrease Sulu’s efficiency beyond an acceptable margin.
“Da.” Chekov trudged toward the turbolift. “I will be in my quarters if you need me.”<
