Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

Enterprise’s computer. He hadn’t realized how much he had come to rely on it.

“You look comfortable,” Fontana interrupted. She hovered in the doorway. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

“Great. Here I come.” She flew into his compartment, pausing to close the hatch behind her. Deft movements propelled her over to where he was floating. Executing a barrel roll to line up beside him, she peeked at the blueprints on the laptop’s monitor. “The tech manuals? Don’t you know that stuff by now?”

Kirk couldn’t admit that he had a lot of catching up to do. “What can I say? It relaxes me.”

He closed the lid on the computer, not averse to taking a break. His fingers and wrists were tired of pecking away at the keyboard. What was that peculiar-sounding ailment people suffered from in this era? Carpal-tunnel something?

“Really?” she said. “I thought spy novels were your vice of choice.” She spoke with easy familiarity. “I figured you’d be reading some trashy new cloak-and-dagger thriller.”

Good to know, Kirk thought, filing away that bit of personal trivia. That explained all those twenty-first-century espionage novels he had found loaded in the ship’s entertainment files. Most of them were potboilers destined for obscurity, but he had recognized the titles of a few future classics. The Chrysalis Experiment, for instance, and Assignment: Armageddon. Those books, by “Lincoln Roberts,” were still being read in his time.

“Just trying to expand my horizons, I guess.”

“By reading tech manuals for pleasure?” Fontana shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like the Shaun Christopher I know.”

He shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you thought.”

“You know, I’m starting to think so.”

He sensed a serious undercurrent in her remark. “Something on your mind, Alice?”

If she was having doubts about him, he needed to remedy that. If possible.

She rolled over onto her side, the better to examine him. Striking green eyes met his. “Have you given any thought,” she said tentatively, “to what we talked about before? That time you were shaving?”

“About us, you mean?”

“Yes.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the closed hatchway. “Marcus is up on the flight deck, reviewing the telemetry on that damn probe, and the brat is downstairs updating her stupid blog.” She took hold of his jumpsuit to put herself closer to him. “We’ve got time for a heart-to-heart — and more, if you feel like it.”

“I see,” he hedged, uncertain how to proceed. He was not one to refuse the advances of an attractive woman, but this was another man’s love life he was in the middle of. Fontana wanted Shaun, not James Kirk. He was reluctant to romance her under false pretenses, even for the sake of maintaining the timeline. And then, of course, there was Zoe. What if she was the one Shaun was supposed to be with?

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Alice,” he said, holding himself back. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re a remarkable woman. Any man would be lucky to be with you, but… maybe now is not the right time.”

“Why? Because of the mission? NASA policy?” Her eyes narrowed. “No, that’s not it, is it? There’s something different about you, about us. There was always a spark between us, even after we called things off, but now… you’ve changed somehow.” A note of suspicion crept into her voice. “Is it her? The stowaway? Is there something going on between you two?”

Not that I know of, Kirk thought. Or at least, not yet.

“This isn’t about Zoe,” he said. “Things are just… complicated right now.”

“Complicated how?”

Before he could come up with a halfway plausible answer, a siren went off, startling them both. The ear- piercing wail echoed off the bulkheads.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “That’s the fire alarm!”

Their awkward personal issues were instantly put on hold. A fire on a spaceship could be deadly even in his own time, let alone on an isolated, fragile vessel like the Lewis & Clark. This far out from Earth, with no Starfleet to rescue them, evacuation was not an option. The escape pod was only intended for near-Earth disasters. Out here, there was no hope of recovery and nowhere to flee to. They could end up stuck on a burning ship.

I don’t understand, Kirk thought. This wasn’t in the history tapes.

Then again, neither was he.

“Move it!” he ordered as they both went into red alert mode. Pushing off from him, Fontana dived for the hatch. She placed her palm against it, testing the temperature, before cautiously sliding it open. An acrid smell invaded the compartment.

“Smoke,” she reported.

Kirk smelled it, too. He lunged for the video-com. “Christopher to Command. What’s happening?”

O’Herlihy’s face appeared on the small screen. Thick gray smoke obscured his features. “There’s a fire in the mid-deck,” he reported, coughing hoarsely. “Downstairs!”

Kirk recalled that O’Herlihy was working on the flight deck. Standard shipboard fire-prevention measures, drilled into Kirk back at the Academy, flashed through his brain. “Kill the ventilation system,” he ordered, to slow the spread of the fire and smoke. Any flowing air currents would just speed up the danger. “And shut down all power to the mid-deck.”

“I’m on it!” O’Herlihy rasped. “Hurry!”

“Hang on!” Kirk said. “We’re on our way.”

Smoke was the immediate threat, he realized, even before the flames. In this confined environment, suffocation was a very real danger unless they took precautions in time. After all, they couldn’t exactly throw open a window.

“Respirators!” he called out to Fontana.

“Way ahead of you!” She unclasped a blue plastic case from a bulkhead and extracted a rubberized full-face breathing apparatus attached to a portable oxygen canister. He expected her to don it herself, but instead, she flew it across the room to him. “Catch!”

He snatched the mask out of the air. “What about you?”

“There’s another one in my compartment.” She flew out into the corridor. “Be right with you. Don’t wait for me!”

There wasn’t time to argue the point. He secured the mask to his face and made sure the seal was airtight. A toggle initiated the oxygen flow, and he breathed deeply of the uncontaminated air before exiting his quarters and heading for the hatch to the lower level. Smoke was already wafting up from below. He clicked on an attached searchlight to make his way.

He heard someone coughing downstairs. Zoe!

He dived headfirst through the hatch into the rec area and looked around hurriedly for the stowaway. The fans had gone silent, slowing the smoke’s progress, but a sooty haze still made it hard to see.

“Zoe!” he called out, but the mask muffled his voice. “Where are you?”

At first, he couldn’t find her, and he feared she was passed out or worse, but then she swam out of the smoke toward him. A wet rag was wrapped around the bottom half of her face, making her look like an old-time bandit. Sweat gleamed on her bare arms and legs, as though she had been working out on the treadmill. Her dark eyes were watering from the smoke. Despite the rag, he could hear her gasping for breath.

He fumbled with the straps on his mask, intending to share his oxygen with her, but Fontana beat him to the punch. Joining him in the smoke-filled compartment, she thrust a spare respirator at Zoe. Her own mask was already affixed to her face. He guessed that she had acquired the third unit from O’Herlihy’s quarters.

Good thinking, Kirk thought.

Zoe pulled the mask over her head. Kirk checked quickly to make sure that it was working. She gave him an encouraging thumbs-up, then saluted Fontana, who more than deserved it. The fact that Fontana, of all people, had possibly saved Zoe’s life was not lost on him. That was worth a commendation or two, as far as he was concerned.