Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

Twenty-four

2020

“So, is this it?” Zoe asked. “Are we screwed?”

“Not on your life,” Kirk said. He had never believed in no-win scenarios, and he wasn’t about to start now. “We still have five hours to take back the ship.”

“Er, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re locked up in maximum security.”

“Hardly.” He glanced around the compartment. “This is an airlock, not a brig. It wasn’t built to keep people in.” He inspected the hatch leading back into the habitat module, while mentally reviewing the specs he had studied earlier. “In theory, there should be a manual override.”

She shook her head. “You disabled it, remember?”

Not really, Kirk thought. He assumed that Shaun had done so when the stowaway was first discovered. It made sense. Shaun and Fontana would have made sure that Zoe couldn’t open the airlock on her own. I would have done the same thing.

But he had more than two centuries of scientific expertise on these early astronauts. Perhaps there was some way to take advantage of that. His gaze fell on Zoe’s smart tablet, which she had been allowed to keep in her cell. “Give me that device of yours.”

She batted the tablet over to him. “Why? What are you up to?”

“Wait and see.”

A tool chest on one wall contained the equipment that the crew used on their extravehicular activities. Kirk used a zero-g screwdriver to pry loose the casing at the back of the tablet, exposing the crude silicon circuitry. Its wireless capacity had also been disabled, he noted, but he might be able to remedy that. The only question was whether he could do so in time with the primitive tools at his disposal, as well as making the necessary improvements to its programming.

Spock could do this blindfolded with chopsticks, he thought. Too bad he’s not here.

Zoe watched over his shoulder as he tinkered with circuits. Needing additional components, he cannibalized the headphones in a spare “Snoopy cap.” He was reluctant to pillage the EVA gear but didn’t see any other option. Everything depended on giving Zoe’s tablet a twenty-third-century upgrade.

“Wow!” she murmured. “Who knew you were MacGyver in disguise?”

He didn’t get the reference but assumed that it was a compliment.

“Hand me those magnifying lenses,” he requested.

“Yes, Doctor.” She passed him the lenses like a nurse in sickbay. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Improvising.”

Sweat beaded on his brow as he struggled with the archaic equipment. The lack of proper tools frustrated him. Time ticked by agonizingly, and he would have traded an entire ringful of dilithium crystals for one good laser solderer. His mind flashed back to that time in the Great Depression when Spock had managed to modify a tricorder using far more obsolete materials than these. He smiled tightly, encouraged by the memory. If Spock could put together a working mnemonic memory circuit out of nothing but “stone knives and bearskins,” then he should be able to hot-wire a twenty-first-century computer tablet using NASA hardware.

Or so he kept telling himself.

“Almost there,” he muttered.

A sudden impact shook the airlock. A metallic bang sounded as if it was coming from right outside the ship. The signal light above the inner hatchway went out.

Uh-oh, Kirk thought. That could be trouble.

“Yikes!” Zoe dropped a screwdriver, which drifted slowly toward the floor. “What was that?”

“The rings,” Kirk guessed. It was the only plausible explanation for the impact. “The ship must be passing through the rings. An iceberg slammed into the hull.”

Smaller impacts buffeted the hull, like hail pounding against a tin roof. For a moment, he thought he was back in the Klondike system, with its unstable rings, but Saturn’s rings had their own share of hazards if you were suicidal enough to brave them, which O’Herlihy clearly was. Praying that none of the collisions would breach the hull, Kirk listened tensely for an alarm. When no siren sounded, he assumed that the ship’s tough titanium skin had withstood the storm for now.

“Sounds like we’re okay,” he told Zoe. “That first bang must not have been big enough to sink us.”

“You sure about that? ’Cause it sounded damn big to me.”

“Yes,” he had to agree. “It did.”

The collision was an unwelcome reminder that they were running out of time. Even if they survived their periodic passages through the churning rings, Saturn’s ferocious atmosphere still waited to crush the fragile spaceship to a pulp. Hurricane winds would whip the shattered fragments around the planet at speeds exceeding a thousand kilometers per hour. And then, of course, there was the danger of burning up in reentry.

Granted, history had recorded no such disaster, but perhaps he had changed history already just by being there. There were too many unknown variables. He couldn’t count on the Lewis & Clark surviving as it had under Shaun Christopher’s command.

“Start getting into one of those spacesuits,” he ordered Zoe. “Just in case.”

She hurried over to where the suits hung on the wall. “How come?”

If they lost their atmosphere, he wanted her pre-pared. A spacesuit would buy her precious time.

“Just do it,” he said, “and hurry.”

She didn’t argue with him. “Hey, if you were into cosplay, you just needed to ask.”

The barrage outside abated swiftly. Kirk recalled that the rings, although almost three hundred thousand kilometers across, were often less than a kilometer thick. They would have passed through the rings in no time. They were safe for the moment.

Until their polar orbit carried them through the rings again.

Biting his lip, he hastily finished his modifications to the tablet. Unable to replace the casing he had pried off before, he had to leave its inner workings exposed. He hoped the ship’s sterile atmosphere would not contaminate its circuits too quickly.

“Done,” he pronounced. “I think.”

“Glad to hear it,” Zoe said, climbing into a water-filled cooling garment. “Now, you want to tell me what you have in mind?”

He approached the locked inner hatch. “I believe the colloquial term is ‘hocking.’”

“You mean ‘hacking’?”

“Right,” he confirmed, suitably corrected. “That.”

He pointed the tablet at the sealed doorway. In theory, he should be able to “hack” into the ship’s computerized locking system. The elementary programming had been child’s play compared with, say, rewriting the parameters of the Kobayashi Maru simulation back at the Academy. Twenty-first-century firewalls were still a long way from foolproof.

“Wish me luck,” he said. “Open sesame.”

He keyed the override command.

Nothing happened. The hatchway remained sealed.

“Damn,” he muttered. He tried another command, with equally disappointing results. The hatch refused to budge. The indicator light above the exit flashed neither red nor green.

“What’s the matter?” Zoe asked. “Why isn’t it working?”

“That collision,” he realized, “back in the rings. The impact must have damaged the mechanism. I can’t get it to respond.”

“So, we’re stuck in here after all? While the doc is playing kamikaze with the ship?”

“Maybe not.” He turned away from the inner hatch toward the one leading to the open cargo bay outside. “There’s still another way out.”

She looked where he was looking. Her jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

“Wouldn’t be a real NASA mission without a proper spacewalk,” he said, “and I’m not sure we have any workable alternatives.”

She stared at the outer hatch and gulped. “Beats sitting around waiting to crash into Saturn, I guess.”

“My point exactly.” He began removing the second spacesuit from its niche. “Help me get into this suit.”

Under ordinary circumstances, donning the suits would take at least fifteen minutes. Adrenaline and necessity sped them through the elaborate process in ten. They rushed through the various checks and tests, cutting corners wherever possible. By the time they had put each other’s helmet on and pressurized the bulky suits, there was barely enough room in the airlock for both of them. They tested their radio receivers.

“What’s the plan?” Zoe asked. “Where are we going in these unflattering get-ups? Once we’re out of this space-age dungeon, that is.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here.”

“Hell, no!” she protested. “You can’t just leave me here!”

“It’s too dangerous,” he insisted. “I’ve had spacewalk training. You haven’t. And trust me, it’s not like taking a stroll back on Earth. You’re not equipped for this. I’m sorry.”

She glanced down at the cumbersome suit, which was at least one size too big for her. Her head barely poked out of the metal ring at the top of the rigid torso assembly. The gold-tinted visor covered her face like a veil.

“Then why am I dressed like Barbarella before her striptease?”

“To survive when I depressurize the airlock,” he explained. Even staying where she was, she was going to be exposed to the vacuum for a time. The life-support system on her back held at least eight hours of oxygen, which ought to be more than enough. “Don’t worry. One way or another, this will be over before you run out of air.”

“Got it,” she said. “But what am I supposed to do while you’re out traipsing through space?”

“Keep O’Herlihy distracted as long as possible.” The scientist was bound to notice when the airlock was activated, if he wasn’t too busy collecting data while simultaneously piloting the ship to its doom. He might even come to investigate. “You think you can do that?”

“You’re kidding, right? I was born to distract people.”

Kirk could believe it.

Almost ready to depart, he had a few last tasks to handle first. A command via the tablet started the depressurization mechanism, which, to his relief, was more functional than the inner hatchway. As the air was rapidly pumped from the chamber, he took a metal hammer and shattered the lens of the closed-circuit camera beneath Zoe’s discarded top.

There, he thought. If Marcus wants to find out what’s happened here, he’s going to have to check it out in person.

That should give Kirk time to get where he needed to go.

As a final precaution, he tethered Zoe to the locked inner hatch to keep her from drifting out into the cargo bay with him. “Hold on to the door,” he urged her, “and don’t let go.”

“Not going anywhere,” she promised. “Don’t be too long, though. Okay?”

“You won’t even know I’m gone.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m missing you already.”

The green light over the outer hatch gave him the go-ahead. He secured the tablet to one of the clips on his suit, then tried to activate the second hatch. Despite the oxygen feeding into his helmet, he held his breath to see if the airlock would respond.

The metal slid out of the way, exposing the cavernous cargo bay beyond.

That’s more like it, he thought. Spock would be proud.

He turned to wave farewell to Zoe. She blew him a kiss through her visor, then held on to the other hatch with both hands. They had agreed to maintain radio silence from now on, just in case O’Herlihy tried to listen in.

“See you soon,” he whispered.

He floated out into the cargo bay, holding on to the handrails to control his progress. He had left the short-circuited jetpack behind. In all the tumult, they had never gotten around to repairing it; besides, its miniature jets could never have kept pace with the ship unless the pilot was deliberately trying to rendezvous with him. He was going to have to climb, not fly, to his destination.

The spacious bay reminded him of his first, disorienting introduction to the Lewis & Clark, right after he’d unexpectedly found himself in this century. It was hard to believe that less than five days had passed since then; he felt as if he had already spent weeks in Shaun Christopher’s skin.

Here’s hoping I don’t end up dying in his place.

A ladder led out of the bay onto the hull. He climbed the ladder using carabiners of the sort used by mountain climbers to ascend rocky cliff faces. Kirk had always enjoyed climbing back on Earth; one of his long-term goals was to climb the towering peaks of Yosemite someday. Who knew? Maybe he would have time to accomplish that in this era, if any of them made it back to Earth.

Clambering onto the top of the ship, he paused to take his bearings. The Lewis & Clark was indeed cruising in a polar orbit, perpendicular to the rings. Its delicate solar panels had been retracted, no doubt to keep them from being shredded by the orbiting ring matter. Staring down the length of the ship, he spied the glittering tops of the rings spreading out from the equator, thousands of kilometers below. It was like gazing at the surface of a luminous river made of sparkling boulders and flakes of ice. The inner B Ring shone brighter than the planet itself, even as the rings appeared to be rushing up to meet the ship. Could he reach his destination before they passed through the rings again? Kirk wasn’t sure.

I need to get a move on, he realized, and pronto.

He tore his gaze away from the dazzling spectacle to focus on the task at hand. The front half of the ship stretched before him, pointed straight down at the rings. His goal was to reach the command module — and, most importantly, the docking ring attached to the nose of the command module. If he could just get there in time, he might be able to get back onto the flight deck and regain control of the ship. O’Herlihy was bound to have other ideas, but Kirk would cross that bridge when he came to it, after he crossed the rest of the ship.

Spacewalk exercises had been mandatory back at the Academy, and Kirk had always excelled at them. He was a bit rusty, though. Command of the Enterprise seldom required him personally to stroll outside the ship. At best, he took part in an EVA once or twice a year, usually as part of an emergency drill. He hoped that those drills would pay off now.

Guide rails mounted on the exterior of the modules provided foot and hand holds for careful astronauts. Kirk hooked his carabiners to the rail for safety’s sake, then pulled himself along hand after hand. He moved briskly, tempted to ditch the tethers to save time. They slid along the rail behind him, making no noise in the silence of space. His feet dangled behind him, avoiding contact with the hull. The last thing he wanted right now was for O’Herlihy to hear footsteps stomping outside the ship.

The captain wished he knew what the desperate scientist was doing right now. Feverishly transmitting priceless scientific data back to Earth in his last few hours or rushing to check on the airlock? It was possible that he’d assumed that both prisoners had been flushed into space, but what if he guessed that a captive or two were attempting an unauthorized spacewalk? He was a brilliant man; he might well have figured out what Kirk had in mind, which could severely complicate matters later on. Given a choice, Kirk wanted O’Herlihy to be otherwise occupied when he attempted to reboard the ship.

Keep him busy, Zoe. You can do it.

The hab loomed before him, wider and more heavily insulated than the other modules. Its sides jutted out between the cargo bay and the command module like a section of snake that was digesting a large, lumpy meal. He had to scale its stern to reach the top of the hab, which he hurried across to make up for lost time. Arriving at the end of the module, he descended onto the vestibule connecting the hab to command, the same vestibule where he and Fontana had battled the fire only yesterday. Had they survived the blaze only to be torn apart and crushed by Saturn’s singularly violent atmosphere?

Not if he had anything to say about it.

He set out across the vestibule. Almost there, he thought. He looked ahead and saw the brilliant immensity of the rings towering over him like a tidal wave — or perhaps a colossal floating avalanche.

I was too slow, he realized. Here they come again.

He looked about for cover. A canopy-sized communications dish offered shelter, and he flew beneath it only a heartbeat before the ship entered the rings. The light from countless reflective particles, spread across more than a hundred thousand meters, blinded him, forcing him to shield his eyes. Minute pieces of dirty ice, most no larger than grains of sand, pelted the hull. More substantial chunks of ice mingled with the tiny particles. The myriad obstacles orbited Saturn like billions of miniature moons. A hailstone the size of a pebble smashed through the communications dish, barely missing Kirk’s head. A second piece ricocheted off the hull, leaving a dent in the titanium shielding. He crouched low and kept his head down. The multiple layers of his spacesuit contained a lining of rubberized nylon to prevent damage from micrometeorite strikes, but he knew that if a fast enough or large enough piece struck his life-support system or helmet, he was as good as dead. A volley of lethal frozen bullets strafed the ship. He recalled that the temperature of the rings was minus one hundred ninety degrees Celsius. He could feel the cold even through his insulated suit.

Hang on, he thought. It will all be over in a minute.

Although they stretched above and below the ship for as far as the eye could see, the rings were only about twenty times deeper than the Lewis & Clark was long. The accelerating spaceship swiftly passed through the rings into the open space above Saturn’s southern hemisphere. An immense aurora, produced by charged particles captured by the planet’s powerful magnetic field, shimmered above the south pole. The ship wouldn’t encounter the rings again, Kirk realized, until the ship passed over the pole and headed back up toward the equator on the opposite side of the planet. He decided that he wanted to be back inside before the next barrage.

That had been about as close to a firing squad as he cared to get.

Gliding out from beneath the punctured dish, he spotted numerous nicks and scratches on the hull, along with a few larger dents. A thorough inspection of the ship’s exterior was clearly called for, provided they survived the present mutiny. Ignoring the damage for the time being, he pulled himself along the guide rail, which was now warped and crimped in spots. Pushing against the thick suit and gloves from the inside was strenuous work. By now, his arms ached, and he was breathing hard. He couldn’t slow down, though. Not when time was running out.

He crossed from the vestibule onto the command module. Light shone from the windows, tempting him to scout out the situation before proceeding further. Moving stealthily, he peered through a porthole, which offered only a partial view of the flight deck. His eyes widened as he spotted Fontana bound to the same ladder she had tethered him to only hours ago. She appeared to be unconscious, but it was hard to tell. Hadn’t O’Herlihy said something about giving her something to sleep? He guessed that hadn’t been her idea.

Looking away from the drugged copilot, he searched for O’Herlihy at the helm and the computer terminals but failed to locate him. He hoped that meant that the saboteur was away from the command module at the moment. There was nothing downstairs, after all, but the blackened wreckage from the fire. Perhaps he was still investigating the disturbance at the airlock.

Good, Kirk thought. This is going to be tricky enough.

The docking ring was on the nose of the command module, attached to the mid-deck. Kirk prayed that the fire had not done serious damage to the airlock, or he could well find himself locked out in the cold. Descending past the cockpit windows, he got into position outside the docking hatch. Although procedure dictated that the hatch was to be opened only in conjunction with the onboard flight crew, the airlock had not been built to repel boarders. After all, space piracy was not really grounds for concern in this solar system yet. That was still generations away.

All the better for me, Kirk thought. He mentally patted himself on the back for memorizing the ship’s specs when he’d had the chance. Zoe’s tablet remained clipped to his wrist, having survived the bumpy passage through the rings. He clumsily stabbed the controls with his gloved fingers. Barring any untimely malfunctions, this should work.

He keyed in the final command.

The hatch slid open.

Let’s hear it for twenty-third-century know-how, he thought. I may have a future as a safecracker in this era.

Moving quickly, he entered the airlock and closed the hatch behind him. One more hatch lay between him and the mid-deck. He just needed to repressurize the compartment first, or else the force of the ship’s atmosphere rushing into the airlock would smash him into the outer hatch with bone-crushing force, if not blow out the hatch altogether. Unlike Spock, he could not instantly calculate exactly how many kilograms per square centimeter that would unleash, but he knew it was nothing to be taken lightly. Opening an unpressurized hatch would also set off alarms all over the ship, which he hoped to avoid if at all possible.

No need to alert O’Herlihy if he didn’t have to.

Waiting impatiently for the airlock to fill up with air, he peered through the six-centimeter porthole into the torched mid-deck, on the lookout for O’Herlihy, but all he saw was scorched rubble and the new fire extinguishers they had placed in the module as a precaution. He wished he knew where the treacherous doctor was hiding. For all Kirk knew, O’Herlihy was lying in wait just out of view, waiting to ambush him.

He reached instinctively for a phaser, only to realize his mistake.

Wrong ship, wrong century.

He would have to take his chances the old-fashioned way.

Ready or not, Doctor, here I come.