Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

be dissolving before their eyes.

“Huh?” Zoe said. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”

“No,” O’Herlihy said, sounding torn between dismay and wonder. “Not this far out from the sun. Granted, Saturn also radiates its own heat but not enough to melt a comet like that!”

Shaun stared at the comet, which was shrinking like an ice cube on a hot summer day. Its icy core seemed to be subliming directly from solid to gas, skipping the liquid state. Billowing clouds of vapor poured off the nucleus. Solar winds blew the gas back into the comet’s tail, which was wrapping around the planet below before dissipating into the vacuum. He had never seen anything like it.

“What’s happening, Doc?”

“Give me a second!” the harried scientist replied. He recalibrated their equipment, directing all of their sensory apparatus, including the trans-spectral imager, at the fuming comet. “I’m at my wit’s end here. None of this makes any sense!”

Join the club, Shaun thought. He’d had more jolts on this voyage than in the rest of his NASA career combined, up to and including the disappearance of the DY-100. “Hold it together, Marcus. Just think of all the history we’re making. We’re discovering stuff that nobody ever dreamed of before.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Fontana said. She snuck her hand across the helm to squeeze his. “Count on you to see the upside.”

He smiled back at her. “Astronauts have to be optimists. Who else would blast themselves into space?”

“As long as we keep one foot on the ground,” she said. “Figuratively speaking.”

“You do a pretty good job of that. That’s why we make such a good team.”

Was that a hint of a blush on her cheeks? “Nice of you to say so,” she said, “but if we get abducted by aliens, it’s all your fault.”

She said it lightly, but Shaun knew she was right. If there was some extraterrestrial intelligence directing C/2018, there was no way of telling how it might react to their presence. There was no guarantee that first contacts had to be peaceful. Just ask H. G. Wells, he thought. Or Montezuma.

Steam continued to pour off the comet, which had already shed most of its mass, so that it was now smaller than the Lewis & Clark. A bright blue glow emanated from the nucleus, visible even through the thick clouds of vapor surrounding the core. The comet’s tail extended beyond the curve of Saturn, almost like another ring.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Zoe murmured. She grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

Shaun watched as the comet dissolved into mist. What was causing it to sublime like that? Surely not the heat of the planet.

“Marcus?”

“It’s heating up from within,” the scientist reported, “as though there’s some sort of internal heat source beneath the ice.”

Zoe stared at him. “You mean, it’s defrosting itself?”

“That would be one interpretation,” O’Herlihy conceded. “Although I probably would have phrased it differently.”

“That’s why I’m a journalist and you’re an academic.” She peered at what remained of the comet. “What do you think is under all that ice and fog?”

“I don’t know,” Shaun said, “but it looks like we’re about to find out.”

The coma surrounding the nucleus was sucked into the comet’s tail, exposing a shrinking chunk of ice that appeared to be no more than ten meters across. The glow seemed to be coming from beneath the icy crust, just as O’Herlihy had determined. Shaun wondered if the melting was taking place on purpose now that the “comet” had reached its destination. That seemed as plausible an explanation as any.

The last of the ice began to steam away. “Look!” Fontana said, pointing excitedly at the window. “You see that?”

Shaun saw. The icy crust had nearly misted away in spots, exposing patches of polished bronze plating. A glowing turquoise ring could be glimpsed beneath a frosty glaze.

A stunned hush fell over the flight deck. All present grasped the astonishing implications of what they were seeing. Even Zoe seemed rendered speechless.

“Okay,” Fontana said finally. “That’s no comet.”

“No,” Shaun realized. “That’s a probe.”

Eight

2270

“A probe?”

“So it appears, Captain,” Spock reported. “Of alien design and origin.”

Kirk strode onto the bridge, having been alerted to a change in the comet’s status. By ship’s time, it was after two in the morning. The ship’s corridor had been dimmed to simulate nighttime. The captain was gratified to see that his senior officers were already in place on the bridge. He dropped into his chair and peered at the viewer.

The probe, seen moving across the system under its own power, was shaped roughly like an hourglass, with wide concave dishes at both ends. Its dented bronze casing reflected the light from Klondike VI. A glowing turquoise ring orbited the neck of the hourglass. Kirk wondered if the spinning blue halo was the propulsion unit. Multicolored lights flickered along bands of instrumentation and sensors. The hourglass was oriented sideways on the screen. It was hard to judge its speed against the backdrop of the planet.

“Course and activity?” Kirk asked.

“The probe is approaching the northern tip of Klondike VI, its trajectory bypassing the rings and their hazards. It appears to be decelerating as it nears the pole.” Spock manned his science station. The glow from his scanner cast azure shadows on the planes of his face. “In addition, the ice that formerly covered the probe has now melted away entirely, as a result of the activation of an internal heat source.”

This can’t be a coincidence, Kirk thought. A freak comet was unlikely enough, but an alien probe arriving at the same time that Klondike VI and its rings were undergoing massive distortions? There had to be a connection.

“Bring us closer,” he ordered. “And dispatch a shuttlecraft to defend the colony.” A shuttle’s phasers were nowhere near the same class as the Enterprise’s, but they should be able to provide Skagway with a degree of protection while the starship was investigating the probe. “Have the shuttle equipped with auxiliary phasers as well.”

“Aye, sir,” Uhura said. “Relaying your orders to the hangar bay now.”

Confident that the shuttle would watch over the colony, Kirk gave the probe his full attention. “What do you make of it, Mr. Spock? Any idea who might have sent it?”

“Negative, Captain.” Spock looked up from his sensors. “The alloys and configuration do not match anything in our library banks. I am also detecting energy signatures of a highly unusual nature.”

Kirk didn’t recognize the design, either. It wasn’t Romulan or Tholian or even Gorn.

“What about you?” he asked Qat Zaldana, who had apparently beaten him to the bridge. The veiled scientist stood between Kirk and Spock, leaning against the red safety rail surrounding the recessed command module. Kirk gestured at the probe on the screen. “Does that object ring any bells with you?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain. We’ve been studying this system for decades now, and there’s no record of this comet — or probe — ever approaching Klondike VI before. I can’t place its origins, either.” She shrugged apologetically. “Then again, I’m an astronomer, not a xenologist.”

“Careful,” Kirk teased her. “Or our ship’s doctor will sue you for trademark infringement.”

Sulu and Uhura chuckled at their posts, but Qat Zaldana didn’t get the joke. She tilted her head in a quizzical manner. “Excuse me?”