Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

time. We might as well try to get along.”

“I suppose,” she said doubtfully. She peered the way Zoe had gone. “But I still don’t trust her. She doesn’t belong here.”

Kirk couldn’t disagree. “You can say that again.”

That seemed to mollify her. “I’m sorry. I know I must sound like a stereotypical jealous ex, but…” Her eyes moistened, and she drew nearer. “Oh, Shaun. I thought I was never going to see you again.”

Her face was only inches away from his. Her lips parted expectantly.

Kirk didn’t know how Shaun would respond. “Fontana… Alice…”

“I know, I know.” She seemed to take his hesitation in stride. “We both agreed that it was a bad idea, that our careers — and the mission — took priority, but that was before I watched you drifting off into space. I almost lost you, Shaun.”

Kirk stalled. “I’m sorry to put you through that.”

“It just got me thinking, you know.” Her eyes entreated him. “Did we make a mistake, Shaun? Are we wasting precious time?”

Time is definitely an issue here, Kirk thought. The oddity of his situation was not lost on him. Had he really traveled two centuries into the past to find himself in the middle of a complicated love triangle? And the devil of it was, he had no idea which, if either, woman he — or, rather, Shaun — was supposed to end up with.

Good thing McCoy isn’t around to see this. He’d never let me hear the end of it.

The video-com buzzed.

“Paging Christopher and Fontana.” O’Herlihy’s voice interrupted the awkward moment. His face skyped onto the miniature video screen. “What’s keeping you two?”

Kirk tried to conceal his relief. “We should probably get going.” Fontana looked disappointed and maybe even a little hurt. He gave her a smile to ease the sting. “We can… talk more later.”

If Zoe didn’t get to him first.

“Roger that.” She gave him a funny look, as if something wasn’t quite right, before hitting the speaker button on the comm. “Hold on to your horses, Marcus. We’ll be right there.”

Kirk hoped that she would chalk up his reticence to ordinary human misunderstandings and relationship issues. That would certainly be the most likely explanation as far as she was concerned. How could she possibly guess the truth?

He could barely believe it himself!

“Don’t forget your lucky dog tags,” she reminded him.

“What? Oh, right.” The metal tags, which had apparently once belonged to Shaun’s father, were tethered to a hook. Kirk wondered if they were the same tags John Christopher had worn when he was beamed aboard the Enterprise. He placed them around his neck. “Can’t forget these.”

“You never did before,” she said.

The briefing took place on the ship’s flight deck, since the Lewis & Clark lacked the space for a separate conference room. Kirk couldn’t help comparing it with the bridge of the Enterprise. Like the rest of the ship, it seemed remarkably cramped and primitive by comparison. There wasn’t even a yeoman to serve coffee.

“There you are,” O’Herlihy said as Kirk and Fontana arrived. He had the copilot’s seat turned toward the back of the module. “Dare I ask what was keeping you?”

Kirk sighed inside. Did everyone on this ship know more about Shaun’s private life than he did?

Probably.

“Nothing that you need to know about.” Fontana adopted a light tone that was probably at odds with her true feelings about what had just happened. She took a place on the ceiling, where she could keep an eye on the two men. “Don’t be a dirty old man.”

“Occupational hazard,” O’Herlihy quipped, not unlike McCoy. “Just ask my wife.”

“Sorry for the delay, Doctor.” Kirk settled into the pilot’s seat. He guessed that was Shaun Christopher’s usual spot. “My fault. I guess I’m not exactly at the top of my game.”

“Don’t apologize,” O’Herlihy said. “If we were back on Earth, you’d already be on medical leave, if not under observation twenty-four/seven.”

Yes, Kirk decided. He definitely reminds me of Bones.

“We have a job to do, Doctor. I intend to do it.”

He had already started covertly studying the ship’s operations manuals. The technology was remarkably simple by twenty-third-century standards. Scotty would have been appalled by the unsophisticated systems and engineering. Why, they were still getting by on a first-generation impulse drive. Zefram Cochrane hadn’t even been born yet.

If nothing else, Kirk reflected, he had been given a front-row seat to space history in the making. The Lewis & Clark was a covered wagon compared with the Enterprise, which just made its crew’s dedication and courage all the more impressive. Fontana and O’Herlihy, not to mention Christopher, were true pioneers, venturing out into the unforgiving void with nothing but a crude titanium hull to protect them. They had no deflectors, no phasers, no photon torpedoes, no transporters. Not even artificial gravity or universal translators.

I need to appreciate this opportunity, he thought. Not take it for granted.

“All right, then,” O’Herlihy said. “Let’s get down to business.” He leafed through a stack of printouts. “We’ve received the latest updates from Mission Control. Seems they’re keeping a tight lid on any info about that probe, and they expect us to do the same.”

“So, they’re keeping the whole thing quiet,” Fontana said. “Just like they did about our unwanted guest earlier.”

Kirk observed that Zoe had not been invited to the briefing. No surprise there. He wondered what the enticing stowaway was up to at that moment. Just working on her “blog,” whatever that was?

“Exactly. They don’t want to stir up any more controversy about this mission, especially since we didn’t manage to retrieve the probe.” O’Herlihy clucked in regret. “A pity it zipped away like that. Just think of all we could have learned from it!”

Don’t worry, Kirk thought. We’ll run into it again — two hundred and fifty years from now.

“It’s completely gone?” Fontana asked. “There’s no sign of it?”

O’Herlihy shook his head. “LIDAR tracked it to the edge of the solar system before losing it. Hubble has lost sight of it, too. It’s long gone.”

Kirk frowned. He hoped that they hadn’t also lost their best chance of putting him back where he belonged, both physically and temporally. He remembered how battered and decrepit the probe had appeared in his time. What if the future version of the probe was too damaged to reverse whatever it had done the first time?

Is it already en route to Klondike VI, he wondered, or does it have other errands to attend to first? Maybe some other gas giants to observe?

“I wonder where it came from,” Fontana said. “And what it was doing here.”

“We may never know,” O’Herlihy said sadly. “In the meantime, however, NASA wants us to continue with our mission and complete our observations of Saturn and its moons. And, Lord, is there plenty to observe.”

“Such as?” Kirk asked.

“Take a look at this.” O’Herlihy relocated to one of the auxiliary terminals and called up an image on a monitor. Kirk and Fontana looked over his shoulder. “These are our latest photos of Saturn’s north pole, taken during our last pass.”

The famous hexagonal vortex looked just the way Kirk remembered it from the future, spread vibrantly for thousands of kilometers atop the planet. It looked just like the travel photos and calendar shots he had seen his entire life, not to mention his own personal memories.