Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

by Greg Cox

  Holding his hands up where Jase could see them, a stranger entered the bunker. He was a fit, good-looking white guy, in nondescript civilian attire, with sandy brown hair and the cool, confident manner of a professional soldier or cop. He reminded Tera of some of the astronauts and pilots her father had trained with, but as far as she knew, she had never seen him before. He held up two small electronic devices, about the size of compact phones. She didn’t recognize the brand.

  “Where’s your weapon?” Jase demanded. “Get rid of it!”

  The stranger dropped a small metallic gadget onto the floor. “The other one is just my communicator,” he explained, his eyes meeting hers. “Good to see you, Ms. O’Herlihy. I was hoping to find you here.”

  “Who are you?” Jase interrogated him. “FBI? CIA? Special Forces?”

  “My name is Kirk,” he said, speaking to Tera instead. “I’m a friend of your father.”

  “Of course you are!” Jase tightened his grip around her waist, keeping her between him and the intruder. “You hear that, Tera? Your loving dad called in the troops, even after we warned him what would become of you if he did. Guess he cares more about his precious Saturn mission than his own daughter’s life. How sick is that? What more proof can there be that the human species doesn’t deserve to survive?” He spit at the floor. “The sooner we’re gone, the sooner the Earth can start recovering from the damage we’ve inflicted on her.”

  “You’ve got the wrong idea,” Kirk said. “Humanity is growing up and learning from its mistakes. It won’t be easy, but we can discover effective ways to live in harmony with the Earth and, eventually, a multitude of other worlds, too. You just need to have faith in our potential as a species and give the future a chance.”

  “Bullshit!” Jase snarled. “We’ve had enough chances. We’re a mistake, an evolutionary accident that should have died out ages ago, before we screwed up the entire planet. We’re mutants. We’re not entitled to a future!” He pricked Tera’s neck with the knife. “Now, shut up and call off your people!”

  “All right. You’re in charge.” Kirk held out his communicator. “Just let me tell my forces to stand down. No tricks, I promise.”

  “I have a better idea,” Jase said, apparently in no hurry to become a martyr. Loosening his grip on Tera’s waist but keeping the knife pressed to her throat, he turned his palm upward. “Toss that thing over to me.”

  “Okay. Here goes.” Kirk lobbed it to Jase. “Just flip it open. They’re expecting my signal.”

  Jase fumbled with the device, which chirped as he opened it. “No tricks,” he reminded Kirk. He held the communicator up to his lips. “Hello? Is anybody there? Can you hear me?”

  “Aye,” a voice answered with a pronounced Scottish brogue. “And who might ye be?”

  “This is Jase Zero, commander of the Human Extinction League. We have hostages, who will be sacrificed if our demands are not met.”

  “Is that so? And do I understand that ye are the gentleman who is holding that poor lassie against her will?”

  “That’s right. And you’d better pay attention if you don’t want to listen to her scream. Do you get me?”

  “Aye, I’m reading you, mister. That’s all I need to know.”

  A sudden green glow lit up the bunker, stunning Tera from head to toe. She heard Jase’s knife clatter to the floor. Her brain went blank.

  And that was all she remembered.

  Thirty

  2020

  Kirk awoke in sickbay with a headache.

  “Ugh,” he groaned. “Remind me not to do that again.”

  McCoy applied a hypospray to his throat. “Here. This should help.”

  A hiss released the analgesic into his bloodstream. The pounding in his head dulled to a mild throb.

  “Any better?” McCoy asked.

  “Yes, thanks.” Kirk sat up and looked around. Spock stood at the foot of the bed, waiting patiently for the captain to recover. Kirk was eager to receive his report. “Tera?”

  “Safe,” Spock stated. “The wide-dispersal burst from the ship’s phasers stunned everyone within a one-kilometer radius. The landing party encountered no resistance and was able to recover the young woman without difficulty. She has been returned to her family with no memory of anything after the phaser rendered all of you unconscious. The authorities, alerted by an anonymous source, have made a successful raid on the compound. All terrorists present at the site have been taken into custody.”

  “Good,” Kirk said, relieved to hear that the rescue mission had gone off more or less as planned. Given a choice, he would have preferred not to get stunned along with HEL, but a lingering headache was a small price to pay for Tera’s safety. He wondered if word of her deliverance had reached the Lewis & Clark yet. In theory, the spaceship would already be creeping back toward Earth now. O’Herlihy still had several months to go before he could be reunited with his daughter, but at least both of them had survived their ordeal. “Well done, Mr. Spock. My compliments to your landing party . . . and Mr. Scott, of course.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Spock replied. “I must say, the human capacity for irrationality never ceases to perplex me. For sentient beings to advocate the extinction of their own species, even after a long history of environmental blunders, defies logic.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that score.” Kirk shook his head at the self-loathing nihilism that had spewed from the kidnapper’s lips. “I’m just thankful that Zoe was able to give us the precise coordinates of HEL’s headquarters and a rough map of its layout. That made rescuing Tera much less of a gamble.”

  “But are we sure we did the right thing?” McCoy said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we saved the girl and all, but aren’t we tampering with history?”

  “Perhaps not, Doctor,” Spock said. “I have been making a deeper study of the historical records of this decade, and it seems that the Human Extinction League was indeed shut down by the authorities in the fall of 2020 and ultimately failed to inflict any significant harm on humanity. They are, in fact, nothing but an inconsequential footnote from this day forward. Furthermore, it seems that one Tera Franklin, née O’Herlihy, is destined to lead one of the early Ares missions to Mars in 2033. Carrying on in her father’s footsteps, as it were.”

  Shades of Shaun Christopher, Kirk thought. “What about O’Herlihy himself?”

  “Officially, he ‘retires’ from the space program shortly after his return from Saturn. His ground-breaking studies of Saturn and its moons, however, will help pave the way for future exploration of the outer Sol system, as well as the eventual colonization of Titan in the twenty-second century.”

  Kirk was gratified to hear it. “So, there’s nothing about mutiny and sabotage in the tapes?”

  “Not officially. Evidence suggests that the government will go to great lengths to cover up much of what truly occurred on the mission, including the encounter with the alien probe and the radical fluctuations in Saturn’s rings and atmosphere.”

  “That seems a tad excessive,” McCoy said. “I can see whitewashing O’Herlihy’s misdeeds out of the history books, but why suppress major scientific discoveries?”

  “Consider the times,” Kirk said. “The economy is in trouble, World War III is on the horizon. I can see how the powers that be might fear that news of an unknown alien artifact tampering with our solar system might alarm an already jittery world. Or perhaps the Western powers simply don’t want to share their secrets with the Eastern Coalition. We can’t underestimate how paranoid people in this era are, sometimes with reason.”

  “It is a pity,” Spock observed, “that the secrecy of the times will cause so much fascinating information to be lost to history.”

  “Until now.” Kirk imagined that the ship’s historian would want to debrief him thoroughly at some point. What was her name again? “I have to ask, Spock. What becomes of Shaun and Fontana? Do they end up together?”

  Spock sighed, as though such unscientific
matters were beneath him, but he had clearly anticipated the question. “History records that they will marry in 2021, almost immediately upon their return to Earth. They will have two children, one of whom, there is reason to believe, will be conceived during their long voyage back from Saturn. James Kirk Christopher-Fontana, to be precise.”

  “You see, Bones?” Kirk grinned at the doctor. “It seems everything’s turned out just the way it’s supposed to.”

  “Except for one persistent loose end waiting out-side in the hall,” McCoy said. “She’s been asking to see you.”

  Zoe. Kirk had almost forgotten about her.

  “What about her, Spock? What does history tell us about Zoe Querez?”

  “Curiously little, Captain. In fact, there are no references to her after this date and scant few before then.” Spock sounded mildly vexed that she had eluded his research. “Of course, records from this era are notoriously incomplete. Much of the data was lost during the ensuing world war.”

  “True enough.” Kirk hoped that Zoe’s future anonymity didn’t mean that she would be thrown into some secret government prison after her antics in space. She deserved better, even if she did know more than she should. “All right, Bones. Send her in.”

  McCoy paged security. Moments later, Zoe was escorted into sickbay. He saw, with some amusement, that she had borrowed a red yeoman’s uniform from somewhere. She twirled, showing off her legs.

  “You like? If I had to wear those same old clothes one more day . . .”

  “It suits you,” Kirk said. “I mean it.”

  She squinted at his unfamiliar features. “Is that really you in there, Skipper? I admit, I’m still getting used to your brand-new face.”

  “Depends on which Skipper you mean. I’m the other Shaun you knew, the one after the probe. The more ‘interesting’ one, remember?” He smiled at the memory of their zero-g grappling in the airlock. “I hope the new face doesn’t put you off too much.”

  “Nah.” She winked at him. “It suits you.”

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and got to his feet. It felt good to have a young, capable body again, well adapted to artificial gravity. McCoy and Spock backed away to give them some privacy. “I appreciate your help with the rescue mission.”

  “No problem. I hear you folks pulled the doc’s kid out of the fire?”

  “She’s fine, thanks in part to the intel you provided.”

  “Good,” Zoe said. “I liked Marcus, even if he did try to kill us all.” She glanced around the sickbay, taking in this peek at the future of medicine. “So, what now, Skipper? You beaming me back to the Lewis & Clark?”

  “I’m afraid our transporters aren’t quite that powerful. We’re still orbiting Earth, using our deflectors to avoid detection, which raises an interesting possibility. If you’d like, we can drop you off anywhere on the planet. There’s no need for you to spend the next three months in transit back from Saturn, especially since you weren’t supposed to be on that flight in the first place. Plus, it might make it easier for you to evade the authorities if you aren’t on the Lewis & Clark when it gets back to Earth in January.”

  She shook her head. “Thanks for the offer, Captain, and I’m sure Fontana and the real Shaun will appreciate the alone time, but it’s not necessary.” She stepped away from the bed. “You see, Earth isn’t really my home.”

  She shimmered before him like a mirage. Kirk’s eyes bulged, and Spock and McCoy rushed to rejoin them, as a familiar golden veil formed over her features. The red yeoman’s uniform vanished, replaced by twenty-third-century business attire. Kirk immediately recognized the petite figure standing before them.

  “Qat Zaldana?”

  “Hello again, gentlemen. It’s good to see you once more—in this persona, that is.”

  “Wait a second,” McCoy blurted. “Am I getting this right? Zoe Querez and Qat Zaldana are one and the same?”

  “So it appears, Doctor,” Spock said, “albeit separated by more than two centuries.”

  She shrugged. “Time doesn’t mean a whole lot to beings like me. We’re not constrained by the fourth dimension the same way you are.”

  “But which one is the real you,” Kirk asked, “and which is the disguise?”

  “Both. Neither. That question kind of misses the point, Captain. You can call me Qat or Zoe, whatever feels natural.”

  Kirk felt as if he was talking to an unusually glib Organian or a Metron. Clearly, this entity was far more than she had appeared to be—in either of her guises. No wonder she had been able to stow away aboard the Lewis & Clark so easily. She could probably go anywhere she wished.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What have you been doing among us? Why did you conceal your true nature?”

  “To avoid spoiling the game, of course. It’s been a nail-biter, but you came through with flying colors . . . in both centuries.”

  “A game?” Anger flared inside him. “Is that all this was to you? Some kind of sport, an entertainment? We almost died out by Saturn. People did die at Klondike VI!”

  “That wasn’t my doing. I was just playing along, watching as events unfolded according to the choices made by you and your fellow creatures.” Her veil shimmered and evaporated, exposing Zoe’s face underneath. “It was the doc who went off his rocker, remember, and the colonists on Skagway who panicked and rioted.”

  “But if you’d been honest with us,” Kirk insisted, “revealed your true nature, couldn’t you have fixed things yourself, before things reached a crisis? You obviously have knowledge and abilities beyond our own. Why didn’t you use them to help us instead of watching us run around like rats in a maze?”

  “More like adorable puppies learning a new trick,” she teased him. “Seriously, it wasn’t my place. Your plane of existence—your challenges, your victories. Think about it. Would you really want higher-level busybodies like me meddling in your affairs all the time?” She turned back into Qat again. “And honestly, material beings and worlds all seem fairly ephemeral from our perspective. Whether the rings collapse now or billions of your years from now doesn’t really matter to us; they’re still gone in a blink.” Zoe emerged from beneath the shimmering veil. “The fun was in seeing how you all coped with that twisty little temporal puzzle at the center of your respective missions.”

  Fun? He was starting to wonder if she was less like an Organian and more like a Trelane. Come to think of it, Zoe’s mischievous, frequently immature attitude bore a slight resemblance to a certain self-styled Squire of Gothos. He wondered if he should call for security—and if that would make any difference.

  Probably not.

  McCoy scratched his head. “Help me out here. The probe. The problem with the rings. Was that your creation?”

  “Nope. I’m not what you call a Preserver. I’m something else altogether.” She split down the middle, looking like Zoe on the left and Qat Zaldana on the right. “That whole business with the probe and the planets was simply an intriguing situation playing out in your cute little reality, one that I couldn’t resist sitting in on. I just nudged things along a bit, made sure you both ran into the probe at the right times and places, transcendentally speaking. And you know what? It paid off. You got the clues you needed to figure everything out. Bravo!”

  “What about the body swapping?” Kirk asked. “The mind transfer over time and space?”

  “Okay,” she confessed, “I may have had a little to do with that. Or a lot.”

  She knew who I was the whole time, he realized. Even in the brig.

  He didn’t know what to think about that.

  “You said we came through with flying colors. What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re quite the interesting physical species. Just wait until I tell the others about you. You definitely warrant further study.”

  “In the future,” Spock asked, “or in the past?”

  Zoe/Qat shrugged. “Is there a difference?”

  She blew Kirk a kiss, t
hen vanished in a flash of blinding white light.

  “Well, I’ll be.” McCoy rubbed his eyes. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to that sort of thing. You think we’ll run into her or her people again?”

  “Who knows, Bones? It’s a big universe out there, full of unexpected wonders and paradoxes.” Kirk chuckled wryly. “You know, I was starting to forget that, but not anymore.”

  Spock arched an eyebrow. “Would you care to elaborate, Captain?”

  “It’s funny,” Kirk said. He gazed at the empty space that their enigmatic visitor had exited only moments before. “Not too long ago, just before we shipped out for Skagway, I was afraid that I was starting to take what we do for granted, that after nearly five years on this mission, exploring the galaxy was becoming routine.”

  “But now?” McCoy asked.

  “Now I’ve had a chance to remember just how exciting, and perilous, space travel can be.” Kirk thought back to his days aboard the Lewis & Clark. “Maybe I needed to go back two centuries, experience primitive space travel in all its danger and novelty, to remind myself just what an astounding adventure we’re on out here. And I can’t wait to get back to our own time, where there are still strange new worlds and civilizations waiting to be discovered.”

  He strode out of the sickbay into the corridor outside. The never-ending bustle of life on a starship set his heart pounding. He marched briskly toward the turbolift. His bridge was waiting for him, and his future. Spock and McCoy hurried after him.

  “Step lively, gentlemen,” he called out. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  “Why?” McCoy asked. “Where are we going?”

  “Home.”

  Bibliography

  Besides the usual Star Trek reference sources, I relied heavily on several books to help me capture the feel of a “realistic” twenty-first-century space mission to Saturn. Needless to say, any liberties I took were entirely my own idea and should not be blamed on the fine authors of the books below.

  Asimov, Isaac. Saturn: The Ringed Beauty. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Gareth Stevens, 1989.