Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

Ten

2020

One minute, James Kirk was standing in the transporter room aboard the Enterprise. The next, he found himself floating in space. An environmental suit, bulkier and more cumbersome than the Starfleet-issue suits he was accustomed to, protected him from the vacuum. Kirk blinked in surprise. His eyes watered from the brilliant white flash that had transported him there, and, without thinking, he reached to wipe them. A gloved hand bumped into the gold-tinted visor of a spacesuit helmet. His own breathing echoed in his ears.

What the devil?

He glanced around, trying to orient himself. The north pole of Klondike VI appeared to be thousands of kilometers below him, if below meant anything in zero g. Or was it Klondike VI? The color wasn’t right, more mustard yellow than violet as before. And the furious hexagonal vortex at the pole looked much as it once had, not shrunken and pallid as in the most recent recordings. If Kirk didn’t know better, he’d swear he was drifting above Saturn instead. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Saturn was months away, in a completely different sector.

The only familiar object in view was the probe, but even that seemed to have changed in an instant. The battered relic now looked much newer and less weathered than it had only seconds ago. He could see the alien hieroglyphics more clearly now; the gleaming bronze casing was no longer charred and pitted. The turquoise ring glowed more brightly than before. Additional lights flickered across its circuitry.

Kirk’s fingers tingled beneath his gloves. He recalled touching the probe right before he found himself here, along with the mysterious relic, which was also not on the transporter pad where it belonged. Had the probe transported them both outside the Enterprise somehow? It seemed so, but Kirk was still confused. Why had the probe reacted this way? And where had this clumsy spacesuit come from?

He was anxious to get back to his ship and get some answers. Come on, Scotty, he thought impatiently. Beam me back aboard.

But as long moments passed and he remained adrift in the void, Kirk began to fear that something was amiss on his ship. Had the transporters been damaged by the alien energies unleashed by the probe? And what about the rest of the ship? And his crew?

Blast it, he thought. Somebody open a frequency and talk to me!

He glared at the probe, knowing that it was somehow responsible for his predicament. He kept his distance, reluctant to touch it again. The glowing propulsion ring flared up brighter and started spinning faster than ever. Kirk could tell that something was happening.

The probe rotated in space, turning its dish arrays away from the planet. Kirk felt a surge of energy all the way through his spacesuit. All at once, the probe accelerated away from him at incredible speed. He watched in amazement as it left orbit and disappeared into space in a heartbeat. At the rate it was going, Kirk estimated that it would be out of the solar system in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

Heading home?

Kirk didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed by the probe’s abrupt departure. Even though the probe had brought nothing but trouble so far, he hoped it hadn’t taken Skagway’s last chance with it. They had never found out what it was doing there — besides transporting him into space.

“Shaun!” A frantic voice addressed him via the headphones inside his helmet. “Oh, my God, Shaun! Are you okay?”

Kirk didn’t recognize the woman’s voice. It didn’t sound at all like Uhura, or Qat Zaldana, for that matter. And why was she calling him Shaun? Had she gotten the wrong frequency?

“Kirk here,” he answered. “Who is this?”

“What’s that?” the voice responded. Static garbled the transmission. “I’m not reading you.”

Where was the transmission coming from? The Enterprise? Skagway? A rescue shuttle? Kirk hoped for the shuttle.

“Who is this?” he repeated. “Identify yourself.”

“Shaun? Can you hear me?”

Kirk tried to look for the Enterprise, only to discover that his helmet severely restricted his field of vision. Maneuvering in a vacuum, without anything solid to hold on to, made turning around problematic, but he bent backward at the knees until it looked as if he was competing in some kind of zero-g limbo competition and was able to gaze up and behind him. His jaw dropped.

The Enterprise was nowhere to be seen. In its place was an antique spacecraft only a fraction of its size, cruising in orbit several hundred meters away. The relic was composed of four large steel modules linked together in a chain. A pair of rectangular wings, extending from the rear propulsion unit, supported a series of solar panels designed to capture the distant sunlight while the ship was in orbit. Kirk immediately recognized the anachronistic vessel as an old, pre-warp ship of the sort used by human astronauts to explore Earth’s own solar system back in the twenty-first century. A spaceship, not a starship.

He didn’t understand. Ships like this were moth-balled centuries ago, at least on Earth. They were the stuff of history tapes and museum exhibits. But this ship looked brand-new and operational. What was it doing way out there in the Klondike system?

All at once, he thought of the Ares IV. That ship, one of the early Mars expeditions, had been lost in space more than two hundred years ago, when it had been swallowed up by an unexplained subspace anomaly. Was it possible that the ship had somehow ended up here, practically on the other side of the quadrant?

Maybe, he thought. Certainly, Khan’s ship, the Botany Bay, had ended up far from home, and that had been an even earlier model of spacecraft, equipped with only crude, atomic-powered engines. The Ares IV, or some other twenty-first-century spacecraft, could have conceivably traveled just as far.

But that didn’t explain what had happened to the Enterprise.

His own ship had vanished just as inexplicably as his spacesuit had appeared. A thought occurred to him, and he tilted his head forward to look down (up?) at himself. Upon closer inspection, his spacesuit was revealed to be as much a museum relic as the ship orbiting nearby. A hard white carapace protected his upper body. Cooling water seemed to course through tubes close to his skin. An old-fashioned microphone was mounted inside the helmet in front of his mouth. Fans and pumps churned within the breathing apparatus. The entire outfit was astonishingly stiff and bulky compared with a modern EVA suit. He would have been only slightly more surprised to find himself wearing a suit of chain mail.

Unwelcome questions pushed themselves into his brain.

Where am I? When am I?

“Shaun!” the voice shouted over the static. “You’re drifting away! Use your jets!”

Jets? Kirk couldn’t feel the weight of a thruster pack on his back, but he assumed it was there. He glanced down and spotted a pair of hand-operated controls jutting out on either side of his waist. Fortunately, the controls didn’t appear all that different from those on the more advanced thruster suits he was used to. He guessed he could figure them out. There were really only three basic movements to master: yaw, pitch, and roll. He just needed to learn which toggle did which.

Maybe the one on the right was for basic propulsion?

“Message received.” He hoped the woman could hear him. “Activating thrusters now.”

He pressed the toggle forward slightly.

Nothing happened.

Kirk scowled inside the helmet and tried operating the other controls but with equally futile results. The thrusters refused to fire. Leaning back, he confirmed that he was indeed drifting away from the antique spaceship.

“Shaun!” the woman repeated. She clearly seemed to be hailing him from the old ship. “Use your jets!”

“I’m trying! They’re not working!”

“What’s that?” she shouted. “You’re breaking up!”

Never mind, Kirk thought. In desperation, he smacked the controls with his hand, but they remained unresponsive. He recalled the blinding energy surge that had transported him there in the first place. Had the flash shorted out the thruster controls and perhaps the helmet’s communications equipment, too? That might explain why the woman on the mystery ship couldn’t seem to hear him.

The planet spun slowly beneath him. He seemed to be drifting toward it, although it was hard to tell. The sheer size of the gas giant, relative to himself, dwarfed any minor changes in his perspective. It would be a while before he could perceive it getting larger, but it already seemed intimidating enough. The fierce hexagonal vortex waited for him, even though he knew he would be long dead before he came within thousands of kilometers of it. He was doomed to burn up in its atmosphere, provided his oxygen supply lasted that long, which was doubtful. How much air could this primitive suit carry, anyway? Glancing around, he spotted a head-up display inside his helmet. Judging from an illuminated gauge, he still had about seven hours left.

It didn’t seem like enough.

Why don’t they just beam me aboard? he wondered briefly, then realized his mistake. If that old-school spaceship was actually what it appeared to be, it was unlikely to be equipped with a transporter. Earth-based vessels had not really started beaming people aboard until the historic voyages of Jonathan Archer, by which time ships like this one were already obsolete. Chances were, it probably didn’t have any shuttles, either. Where would they put them?

“Hang on, Shaun!” the woman announced. “We’re coming for you!”

Why did she keep calling him Shaun, whoever that was? Had she mistaken him for someone else? He looked around as much as he was able but did not spot any other astronauts drifting in the void. Where was this Shaun she was so worried about?

Old-fashioned RCS thrusters flared along the hull of the engine module, and the ship dipped toward him. Kirk wished there was some way to slow his progress to make it easier for the ship to catch up with him, but he was a victim of gravity and momentum, with no way to control his flight. He was just an object in motion, floating through space. Like one of the ice crystals in the planet’s rings.

Slowly, steadily, the ship drew nearer, eating up the meters between them. Open space doors exposed an interior cargo bay. A mechanical arm, resembling a large metal crane, swung out of the bay toward Kirk. A clamp opened at the end of the arm.

The robotic arm reached for Kirk, but he was still too far away. He extended his own arm, stretching as far as the suit would allow. His gloved fingertips grazed the metal clamps, but, maddeningly, he couldn’t get a grip on it. Or vice versa.

“Damn,” he muttered.

It dawned on him that his legs were a good deal longer than his arms. He kicked upward, stretching out his right leg. The clamp closed tightly on his foot, which was protected by a rigid white boot. Kirk winced slightly. He prayed that whoever was operating the clamp knew just how much pressure to exert without tearing open the boot — or crushing his foot.

The arm drew him back toward the ship, feet first. It was hardly the most dignified way he had ever boarded a vessel, but he wasn’t complaining. Seven hours of air would tick away far too quickly. Better to be taken aboard an unknown ship than to suffocate in a vacuum.

He wished he knew what was waiting for him, though. Lifting his head, he spied a name emblazoned on the hull of the spaceship. Large block letters spelled it out in English: U.S.S. Lewis & Clark.

For a second, he wondered if he was reading it right. This wasn’t the Ares IV, he realized. It was Colonel Shaun Christopher’s ship from the first Earth — Saturn mission. Well versed in the history of space exploration, Kirk was quite familiar with its celebrated voyage. He even had an odd bit of personal history with Colonel Christopher’s family. He had read up on the Saturn mission only a few years ago.

Saturn…

He leaned back and saw the huge, mustard-colored planet filling the sky below him. Its crystalline rings sparkled in the reflected light of the gas giant, whose true identity Kirk could no longer deny.

That’s not Klondike VI. That’s really Saturn.

No wonder the woman kept hailing Shaun. Kirk suspected that the year wasn’t 2270.

Somehow, he was two hundred fifty years in the past.