Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

O’Herlihy retreated to give them more room and perhaps a bit of privacy.

“I don’t like this,” she whispered. “Not one bit.”

“I know.” He retrieved his lucky dog tags from a hook on the wall, where he had hung them earlier. NASA frowned on accessorizing its high-tech spacesuits. He placed them around her neck. “Look after these until I get back.”

“You know I will.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “For luck,” she explained for the benefit of their audience. Zoe snickered in the doorway, while O’Herlihy refrained from comment. Shaun found a new appreciation for the cooling effects of his elastic undergarments. He was tempted to kiss her back, but the mike in front of his lips made that problematic.

“Thanks,” he said inadequately. “For everything.”

She lowered the helmet onto his head. “Be careful, Shaun. Come back to me.”

He nodded at her through the gold-tinted visor. Her emerald eyes seemed to exert their own gravity, pulling him in. For a moment, he forgot about the probe.

Why exactly did we break up again?

Something to think about later.

Even after he was sealed into the suit, there was much to do before he was ready to exit the ship via the cargo bay. They had to pressurize the suit, frequently adjusting the pressure until it was just right, then test the life-support system and radio communications gear. Not until all of the gauges showed green did the other astronauts lift the jet pack onto his shoulders. The cumbersome device, officially known as the EVA Maneuvering Unit, fit over the life-support backpack. He didn’t want to think about how much the entire outfit would weigh on Earth or even Saturn.

“Very spiffy!” Zoe took a photo of him. “Now you look like a genuine spaceman.”

Shaun hoped the probe would approve, too. He gave her a thumbs-up as his crewmates exited the airlock, dragging Zoe with them. The hatch closed behind them, and he waited impatiently for the airlock to depressurize so he could enter the cargo bay and get on his way. The probe had been there for hours. He was anxious to make its acquaintance.

Eventually, a green light signaled that he was cleared to proceed. He opened the far hatch and floated into the ship’s cavernous cargo bay, which was large enough to hold more than six months’ worth of provisions and equipment, plus, he hoped, a captured alien probe. As on the rest of the ship, handrails were mounted on the interior walls.

The space doors were already open, and Shaun could look down on the vast expanse of Saturn’s pole. He was struck by how much smaller and more pallid its famous hexagonal vortex had become; it was now only a semblance of its former self, probably no more than fifteen thousand kilometers across. It was startling how much it had shrunk in the short time they had been there. At this rate, there might be nothing left of it by the time they got back home.

His visor shielded him from the glare of the planet. The probe was silhouetted against the fading hexagon hundreds of kilometers below. Its metallic bronze casing reflected Saturn’s amber light. No longer buried inside a huge ball of ice, the probe’s true configuration had been revealed to resemble an hourglass with dishes mounted at both ends. A glowing turquoise ring orbited its midsection.

Okay, he thought. That’s as artificial as can be.

Holding on to the handrails, he made his way out into the cargo bay until he was above the open space doors. A momentary sense of vertigo assailed him. Even though his mind knew that there was no gravity, all of his senses told him that he would fall to his death if he let go of the rail. He tightened his grip.

Shake it off, he told himself. He had experienced this sensation before; it was a fairly common reaction on spacewalks. He took a deep breath and loosened his grip. You can do this.

“Christopher to Lewis & Clark,” he said into the mike. By now, the others would be in place on the flight deck, monitoring his transmissions. “Preparing to exit vehicle.”

“Copy that, Shaun,” Marcus replied via the radio. “Have a safe flight.”

“Just wait until you see the souvenir I bring back.”

Letting go of the rail, he activated the jet pack. A burst of nitrogen gas propelled him out of the cargo bay and into the endless void outside the ship. Two dozen miniature jets, pointed at various angles, allowed him to direct his flight via the hand controls at his waist. Momentum carried him toward the probe.

Saturn’s crown loomed before him, seeming even larger and more intimidating than before. As even the ship was nothing but an infinitesimal speck compared with the magnificent gas giant and its glittering rings, Shaun suddenly felt like the smallest of subatomic particles. “There is no zero,” he whispered, quoting one of his favorite science-fiction movies. “I still exist.”

Despite the crucial and risky task before him, he took a moment to marvel at the awe-inspiring vista, which boggled the mind. He wondered if people would ever get used to unearthly sights like that. Part of him still couldn’t believe that he was really there, where no man had gone before…

That’s enough sightseeing, he thought, snapping out of his reverie. His oxygen tanks held at least eight hours of air, but that was no reason to waste time gawking. He jetted toward the probe, letting Saturn’s meager gravity, which, despite the gas giant’s size, was roughly comparable to Earth’s, add to his acceleration. Within minutes, the probe was directly ahead of him, approximately three hundred yards away.

The alien artifact looked like no Earthly spacecraft that Shaun was familiar with. At least three meters long, it had not budged from its stationary orbit high above the hexagon. He would have whistled in appreciation, but that wasn’t an option; as generations of astronauts had discovered, pressurized space helmets made whistling impossible. Inspecting the probe with his own eyes, he noted how shiny and undamaged it appeared, despite having traversed the solar system inside a comet. He wondered how long and how far it had traveled. All the way from another solar system?

Probably, he thought. Millennia of observation of Earth’s brother and sister planets had never turned up even a hint of a civilization capable of launching a probe like this. The spacecraft had to have come from an extrasolar planet light-years away. Unless, of course, this was the world’s most elaborate practical joke. You know, I wouldn’t put that past Zoe.

“Closing on target,” he reported. “Will conduct visual survey before attempting capture.”

“Take your time, Shaun,” Marcus said. “No need to rush this.”

“Copy that.” Shaun used his braking jets to slow his approach. He circled the probe cautiously, alert to any unexpected developments, yet the onetime comet continued to ignore him. That was fine with Shaun.

Where did you come from? he wondered. And why are you here?

The next step was to determine whether it could be easily moved. Its weight was no issue in space; as an astronaut, he had routinely carted two-thousand-pound satellites around. But it was still unclear what means of propulsion the probe employed to hold itself in place above the planet. It was very possible that it might resist being relocated, in which case, they would have to rethink their plans.

Let’s try just a little shove first, he decided. “Preparing to make contact with object. Stand by.”

He moved in closer, a meter at a time. Ten meters, six meters, three meters—

Without warning, the probe’s lower dish lit up. It fired pulses of incandescent cobalt energy at Saturn, straight into the heart of the faded polar vortex. The pulse crossed the distance between the planet and the probe at the speed of light. Shaun frantically hit the brakes to avoid flying into the path of the pulses.

“Crap!” he blurted. “What the hell?”

Despite the vacuum of space, a sort of drumbeat pounded in his head. He tapped the side of his helmet, but the staccato rhythm didn’t go away, making it hard to think. He jetted away from the probe, which fired one last pulse at the planet below.

What was it doing?

He stared down at the probe’s target. To his amazement, a bright blue glow flared up at the center of the