by Greg Cox
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
2270
Space went away.
Gravity seized Shaun Christopher for the first time in months, and he collapsed onto a hard red platform. His bare hands struck the platform, and he realized with a shock that he wasn’t wearing his spacesuit anymore and was no longer floating above Saturn.
Instead, he found himself in a spacious, well-lit chamber that bore no resemblance to the familiar confines of the Lewis & Clark. Metallic disks the size of manhole covers were embedded in the elevated platform, which overlooked some sort of futuristic control room, complete with an instrument panel mounted on a pedestal facing the platform. Overhead spotlights or projectors were located above each of the metal disks. Shaun had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.
But he wasn’t alone.
Four unfamiliar figures faced him. A dark-haired man wearing a bright red tunic and a worried expression manned the instrument panel, assisted by an attractive young woman wearing a short red dress. Another woman stood a meter away, her face hidden by a shimmering golden veil. An electronic tablet was tucked under her arm.
And then there was the other… man?
Pointed ears rose from both sides of a distinctly elfin countenance that reminded Shaun of the old Sub-Mariner comics he had read as a kid. The stranger wore a blue tunic bearing an unfamiliar gold insignia. He clutched what looked like a handheld Geiger counter. Cool brown eyes regarded Shaun with just a hint of dismay. He arched a sweeping eyebrow.
“Captain?” he inquired, getting Shaun’s rank wrong. “Are you hurt?”
He lowered his gadget and came toward Shaun.
“Stay away from me!” Shaun blurted. He scrambled backward, frantic to get away. Gravity weighed him down; he wasn’t used to it anymore. His limbs felt like lead. He banged into a solid metallic object resting behind him. Startled, he stared at the charred lump of machinery; it took him a second to recognize the probe, which looked much older and more damaged than it had only seconds ago. He didn’t understand what was happening. “Where am I? How did I get here?”
“Captain?” the pointy-eared stranger repeated. He let go of his device, which hung from a strap over his shoulder. “You appear disoriented.”
“What’s happened, Mr. Spock?” the man at the control panel said. A pronounced brogue betrayed his Scottish roots. “What’s wrong with the captain?”
“Page Dr. McCoy,” the man named Spock ordered briskly, as though he was in command. “Tell him to report to the transporter room at once.”
Transporter room? Shaun glanced around in confusion. What the hell does that mean?
“Where am I?” he demanded again. “What is this place?”
“You seem to have suffered a severe neurological shock,” Spock attempted to explain. “You require medical assistance.”
He reached out for Shaun.
“Don’t touch me!”
Until he found out what this was all about, he wasn’t going anywhere with anyone, let alone somebody who looked almost more devil than human. Back on Earth, he would have dismissed the man’s tapered ears as just some sort of eccentric body modification, like tattoos or piercings, but out here in space, millions of miles from home, more alarming possibilities leaped to mind.
He reached instinctively for his father’s dog tags, only to remember that Fontana had them now. He couldn’t help recalling that UFO his dad had spotted and his own experiences at Area 51. Dr. Jeff Carlson, the head of the DY-100 project, had given Shaun a firsthand account of the notorious Roswell incident back in ’47. Shaun stared at Spock with mixed fear and wonder.
Was this… a Ferengi?
Dr. Carlson had always said they had large ears, Shaun recalled, but what was a Ferengi doing out here by Saturn… with a Scotsman, of all people?
Oh my God, Shaun thought. Have I been abducted?
Nightmarish images of invasive biological probes and experiments flashed through his brain. He had always thought such stories were merely the stuff of cheesy sci-fi movies and supermarket tabloids, but now he wasn’t so sure. How else to explain any of this?
“Please, Captain,” Spock said. He gazed down at Shaun, while making no sudden moves. “Let me assist you.”
Why did they keep calling him Captain? Did Earth ranks confuse them?
“I don’t understand!” he protested. “This is insane!”
“It was the probe,” the veiled woman stated. “There was an unexpected energy discharge. Please, let us help you.”
She approached him from the left. Was she an alien, too, beneath the veil? Did she have three eyes or fangs? Was she even truly a woman?
“Keep back!” he shouted again. “All of you! You’re not getting near me until you tell me where I am!”
He searched frantically for an escape route. Adrenaline gave him the strength to lurch to his feet, but the gravity still threw him off. He tottered unsteadily. Spock rushed forward to catch him, taking hold of Shaun under his shoulders. Shaun tried to break free, but his limbs were too heavy, and Spock was surprisingly strong. Despite the stranger’s lean physique, his grip felt like iron. More proof that the man wasn’t human?
“My apologies, Captain,” Spock said. “But I fear you are not yourself.”
His fingers pinched Shaun’s neck… and everything went black.
The captain went limp in Spock’s arms. He carefully lowered Kirk onto the transporter pad and scanned him with his tricorder. The device could not examine the captain as thoroughly as a specialized medical tricorder, but it reported that Kirk’s vital signs were within acceptable ranges for a human. There was no obvious internal bleeding or burns, although Spock counted on Dr. McCoy to conduct a more comprehensive analysis. He hoped that Kirk had not suffered any lasting brain damage or memory loss.
That would be unfortunate, Spock thought. For the mission and for Jim.
“What’s wrong with him?” Mr. Scott asked again. He abandoned the transporter controls to join Spock by the captain. “Is he going to be all right?”
“That remains to be determined,” Spock said. “But it would be illogical to assume the worst.”
Qat Zaldana crowded between them. “It was like he didn’t even know who you were,” she observed. “What did the probe do to him?”
An excellent question, Spock thought, but it occurred to him that it might be best if she was not present at the moment. If the captain had been seriously incapacitated, that was information that perhaps should not be shared with civilians — or the colonists down on Skagway.
“Lieutenant Mascali, please escort our guest back to her quarters.” He turned to Qat Zaldana before she could protest. “My apologies, but I’m afraid our examination of the probe will have to wait. The captain requires our full attention now.”
“Of course.” She backed away from the fallen captain. “I don’t want to get in the way.” She turned her veiled face toward Mascali. “There’s no need to accompany me. I can find my own way. Stay with your captain.”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” Spock said. “And I must ask that you keep what you have just witnessed to yourself.”
He did not want wild rumors undermining the crew’s morale.
She nodded. “Understood. My thoughts are with your captain.”
She exited the transporter room. Spock appreciated her swift departure. That was one fewer factor to complicate his computations.
“Maintain a safe distance from the probe,” he warned Scott and Mascali. “We do not need any more casualties on our hands.”
“Aye, that’s for certain,” the engineer agreed.
Stepping away from Kirk’s supine form, Spock scanned the probe with the tricorder. He detected no energy readings; the device now appeared to be completely inert. The ring around
its equator had slowed to a stop and was no longer glowing. The flickering lights on its surface had gone dark. Key circuits and components now read as burned-out. Had the discharge that had shocked the captain expended the last of its energy? It appeared so, but Spock was not inclined to take chances.
“Have the probe transported to a secure force-shielded location,” he instructed Scott. “Take all necessary precautions.”
“That I’ll do,” Scott assured him. “And a few unnecessary ones as well.”
The doors whooshed 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
2020
The cargo bay of the Lewis & Clark was much smaller than the storage facilities back on the Enterprise. A primitive-looking probe waited to be launched from the historic spaceship. The crude devices were definitely of twenty-first-century origin; Kirk remembered seeing models of them at the Smithsonian and Starfleet museums. The equipment bore antiquated NASA logos.
They looked brand-new.
Kirk couldn’t deny it any longer. Unless this was some sort of elaborate hoax, like the mock Enterprise that the rulers of Gideon had tried to trick him with a few years back, he was really aboard the very first Earth — Saturn probe, launched from Cape Canaveral way back in 2020, some two hundred fifty years ago.
Had the alien probe actually sent him back in time, not to mention space? But how and why?
The space doors sealed behind him, cutting him off from the vacuum outside. He floated across the cargo bay, struck by the lack of artificial gravity. He had taken part in zero-g emergency drills and exercises, of course, but it still felt odd to be aboard a spaceship that couldn’t generate its own gravity. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to navigate across a chamber like this, relying on his own momentum to carry him across open spaces. Grab rails along the walls, floor, and ceiling allowed him to control his flight. His spacesuit felt bulky and cumbersome.
An airlock sealed the bay from the rest of the ship. Its outer door slid open, and he drifted inside. Anxious faces stared at him through a small rectangular window in the sealed door at the opposite end of the airlock. The faces belonged to a handsome red-haired woman and an older man with a beard and a grave expression. He searched his memory for their names.
Fontana. O’Herlihy.
He would have to be careful what he said to them, Kirk realized, to avoid causing unwanted changes to history and the future. As he knew better than most, even a minor alteration to the past could send potentially catastrophic ripples down the timeline. He had learned that lesson the hard way. A lovely face surfaced from his memory, along with an aching sense of loss.
Edith…
He shoved the painful memory back. The door behind him closed. Moments later, a green indicator light indicated that the airlock had been fully pressurized. The door before him whooshed open.
“Shaun! Thank God!”
The woman, who had to be astronaut Alice Fontana, launched herself into the airlock. She hugged him tightly as they collided in midair, her momentum carrying them backward to the rear of the airlock. He could feel her enthusiastic embrace even through his spacesuit. Her own figure was clothed in a much more flattering blue jumpsuit.
“Er, I think there might be a misunderstanding here,” Kirk said, gently extricating himself from her arms. She had evidently mistaken him for Colonel Shaun Christopher, the leader of the expedition. He had no idea what had become of Christopher, but he suspected that the other two astronauts were in for a surprise. Unscrewing his helmet, he braced himself for their startled reactions. “I know this must be a shock, but—”
To his surprise, they didn’t look startled at all. The other man — Marcus O’Herlihy — approached him. “The only error, Shaun, was letting you get up close and personal with that probe in the first place. We should have taken more precautions.”
Kirk was confused. Why were they still addressing him as Shaun?
An alarming possibility occurred to him. He peeked at his helmet’s reflective visor.
The face of a stranger stared back at him.
The face of Shaun Geoffrey Christopher?
The astounding truth hit him with the force of a photon torpedo. Never mind his own time or ship. He wasn’t even in his own body anymore!
This is Janice Lester all over again, he thought, remembering the last time he’d found his mind inhabiting a body other than his own. He froze in shock. The helmet slipped from his numb fingers. It drifted away.
Fontana noted his stunned reaction. She gently took hold of his arm. “Shaun? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Think fast, Kirk thought. I can’t let them know who I really am.
History held no record of Colonel Shaun Christopher being possessed by the displaced consciousness of a starship captain from the twenty-third century. Kirk was pretty sure he would have remembered that part.
“It’s nothing,” he murmured. “I’m just a little shook up, I guess.”
“Small wonder,” O’Herlihy said. “After what you’ve been through. I think our first order of business is a thorough physical exam, once we get you out of that suit.” He held up his hand to forestall any protests. “No arguments, Shaun. You just got zapped by a presumably extraterrestrial probe. A physical is the very least that’s called for. Be thankful I don’t want to dissect you.”
“All right, Doctor,” Kirk said. “Just give me a moment to catch my breath.”
How long was he going to have to impersonate Shaun, he wondered, and how exactly did he expect to pull that off? Was there any way to get back to his own time and body?
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Fontana asked. “You seem… different.”
“Only a little fuzzy-headed, like I said.” Kirk tried to figure out what the real Shaun Christopher would say next. Probably the same thing I would.
“What about the probe? Do we still have it on sensors?”
“Sensors?” O’Herlihy sounded puzzled by the term. “You mean LIDAR? We lost track of the probe right after you got zapped. We should try locating it again, after we get you checked out, but the way it was moving, I suspect it’s long gone, possibly back to wherever it came from.”
“Good riddance,” Fontana said forcefully. She began to help Kirk out of his spacesuit. “I know, I know. That’s not a very scientific attitude, but I don’t like surprises, especially when they almost get one of us killed.”
“You’ve got a point there.” A new voice intruded on the discussion. “Who knew I was going to be the second-biggest wrinkle in your mission plans?”
The unexpected voice caught Kirk by surprise.
Who?
A
petite, dark-haired woman stuck her head into the airlock. She was oriented at a one-hundred-eighty-degree angle to Kirk, so that she appeared to be hanging upside-down in the doorway. Unlike the other two astronauts, she was dressed like a civilian, wearing simply a T-shirt and shorts. A folded blue jumpsuit rested in her grip. She grinned at Kirk.
“Glad to have you back, Skipper. For a few moments there, I was afraid I was going to have to fill in for you on the rest of this cruise.”
Fontana frowned. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Who the devil? Kirk tried not to stare at the newcomer. He had read up on this groundbreaking mission before, most recently after a certain time-warped encounter with a Captain John Christopher a few years back, and he was certain that there had not been a second woman aboard the Lewis & Clark. History recorded that the first Earth — Saturn mission had been conducted by a crew of three: O’Herlihy, Fontana, and Christopher.
So, who was this, and what was she doing there?
“I always joke,” she replied, “especially after I’m nearly scared to death. You should know that by now.” She turned herself right-side up and floated past Fontana to give Kirk a friendly hug. “No more of that, okay? I don’t need a scoop that bad.”
“All right,” he said carefully. He didn’t even know this woman’s name, let alone what her relationship with Shaun was like. “Trust me, I wasn’t planning on any of this, either.”
At least he didn’t have to feign confusion or fatigue. In the last forty-five minutes or so, he had been jolted by an alien probe, nearly lost in space, and found himself stuck in another man’s body more than two centuries in the past. He had felt better.
With the others’ help, he began to change out of the heavy spacesuit into a fresh blue jumpsuit. Dressing in zero g was more challenging than he remembered, and he did so clumsily. Loose sleeves and pant legs floated about like underwater fronds. He thrust his leg into the jumpsuit too hard and accidentally launched his head into the ceiling. His scalp smacked against a bulkhead.
