Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

Geoffrey Christopher of space history fame?”

He nodded, both surprised and flattered that she recognized his name. “You’ve heard of me?”

“I’m quite familiar with your illustrious resume, Colonel,” she said, “although I admit I never expected to make your acquaintance, let alone under such bizarre circumstances.”

She seemed to be taking those circumstances remarkably well, especially considering that he looked like James T. Kirk at the moment. Did this sort of thing happen often in the future? He certainly hadn’t gotten that impression from Dr. McCoy.

“This is a bit out of my comfort zone, too,” he confessed. “NASA never trained me for anything like this.”

On the screen, some of the smaller ships appeared to be retreating to a domed complex on the nearby moon. Chunks of flying space debris endangered the numerous vessels, although the Enterprise was clearly attempting to provide cover for them by blasting the larger missiles apart with powerful blue laser beams. The beams seemed to pack enough firepower to make the Pentagon drool with envy.

“Maintain defensive fire, Mr. Chekov,” Spock instructed. “Target all hazards to ships or colony.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” a young ensign reported. His Russian accent reminded Shaun of the cosmonauts he had trained with at the Star City complex outside Moscow. “Shields restored to usual configuration. Deflectors at thirty- five percent and rising.”

“That’s more like it,” said an Asian crewman sitting to the Russian’s left. “Helm controls responding again.”

“Excellent, Mr. Sulu,” Spock said. “Take us further above the rings to reduce the chance of any future collisions.”

“With pleasure,” Sulu replied. “Altering trajectory relative to the equator. Attempting to stay within firing range of Skagway.”

The image on the wall screen shifted as the Enterprise ascended higher above the plane of the rings. The turbulence shaking the ship began to abate, even as Shaun tried to figure out exactly what was going on. He gathered that the moon colony was in jeopardy, and possibly the starship, too, but the details remained murky. Dr. McCoy hadn’t exactly kept him informed about current events.

Shaun sat down next to Qat Zaldana. “Why don’t you bring me up to speed?” he suggested.

“Since the twenty-first century?” she quipped. “That could take a while.”

He nodded at the screen. “How about just what’s happening out there?”

“That I can manage.” She quickly explained that the planet’s rings were coming apart and that the moon itself was spiraling into the inner rings toward the planet itself. To make matters worse, it seemed that more than a thousand people were still stranded on the moon, and even the Enterprise, as impressive as it was, wasn’t big enough to carry them all to safety.

No wonder Spock looks so grim, Shaun thought. They were looking at a tragedy of catastrophic proportions, like Katrina or Mount Rainier. “And there’s nothing you can do?”

She shook her head. “We suspect this disaster may have something to do with that alien probe and possibly an unusual hexagonal vortex down on the planet, but we haven’t been able to put all of the pieces together, at least not in time to save the people left on Skagway.”

“Hexagon?”

“That’s right,” she said. “There’s a hexagonal storm at the planet’s north pole, much like the one on Saturn, which started shrinking at about the same time the rings began to destabilize. We assume there’s some kind of connection or causal link.”

Talk about deja vu, Shaun thought, if that was the right term for remembering something from your own past while occupying someone else’s body in the future. “That sounds a lot like what we were observing back in my time, right before I ended up here. Saturn’s rings were behaving strangely, the hexagon was shrinking, and so on. The scientists back in my time didn’t know what to make of it.” Shaun remembered how nonplussed O’Herlihy had been by his findings.

“How strange,” Qat Zaldana said. “Mr. Spock, are you listening to this?”

“Indeed,” Spock admitted. He spun his chair around to face them. “You have successfully captured my attention. Please continue your recollections, Colonel Christopher.”

“Not much more to say,” Shaun said. “We were studying the phenomenon from the Lewis & Clark when the probe distracted us.” He chuckled at the memory. “Trust me, that voyage was full of surprises.”

“None of that is in the historical record,” Qat Zaldana said. “And I’m an astronomer. I would know.”

“Must have been covered up,” Shaun guessed. “I don’t know how it is in your time, but back where — I mean, when—I come from, governments had plenty of secrets that they guarded zealously.” His stint at Area 51 had taught him that and then some. “But it sounds to me like that big purple planet out there is going through the same thing Saturn did back in 2020.”

“Except that Saturn and its rings and moons remain constant to this day,” Spock said. “They are now much as you would have known them before your historic mission, which implies that the phenomenon you observed was reversed somehow.”

That makes sense, Shaun thought. He tried to imagine what could have affected the rings way back when. “You think it was the probe?”

“Possibly,” Qat Zaldana said. “What exactly do you remember, Colonel?”

He threw his mind back, trying to recapture every detail. In theory, centuries had passed since his dramatic run-in with the probe, but it had been only a couple of days for him.

“There were these pulses,” he recalled. “Just before the probe zapped me here, it fired some sort of pulsed energy burst at the heart of the hexagon.” He glanced up at the screen. “Kind of like those high-powered lasers of yours.”

“Phasers,” Spock corrected him. “Are you certain the pulses were directed at the vortex on the planet’s surface?”

“Absolutely.” It was all coming back to him now. “I’ll never forget it. I was floating in space, preparing to bring the probe aboard, when it suddenly fired off these incandescent bolts of bright blue energy, which triggered a reaction down on the planet.”

Qat Zaldana leaned toward him. “What sort of reaction?”

“The whole hexagon lit up, glowing like a pinwheel, and a shock wave sent me tumbling away from the probe. Then the pulses just stopped, like I had just imagined them.”

“And then what happened?” she asked.

“The hexagon,” he recalled. “It almost looked as though it was going back to normal after the pulses. Its sides stopped contracting and started heading outward again at an incredible rate. It was probably a stupid thing to do, but I couldn’t resist flying back to check out the probe again. I made the mistake of grabbing onto it and ended up here… in your captain’s body.” He still couldn’t believe how insane that sounded. “I don’t know what happened next.”

“Saturn’s rings and moons are still in place in our time,” Spock stated. “And the hexagonal vortex at its northern pole can be seen to this day. I recall observing it during a scientific conference on Titan.”

Shaun gathered that there were bases or colonies on Titan now.

“Then that’s it,” he said. “The probe must have fixed Saturn back in my day. Maybe it can do the same now and save all those poor souls in that colony.”

Spock did not seem hopeful. “Unfortunately, the probe is no longer functional. Whatever remarkable capabilities it may have possessed in your era have been lost to the ravages of time.”

Oh, right, Shaun thought. He recalled banging into the future version of the probe back in the transporter room, right before Spock knocked him out with that neck pinch. That probe had looked like a wreck compared with the gleaming alien artifact he had encountered out by Saturn. Two centuries of change had clearly taken their toll on the probe, along with everything else he had ever known. The Lewis & Clark had probably rusted to pieces by now, if it wasn’t gathering dust in a museum somewhere. By all rights, I should be nothing but dust.

“It’s true,” Qat Zaldana confirmed. “We’ve examined the probe thoroughly. It’s dead as can be.”

The news crushed Shaun’s hopes. “Then we’re screwed, and so are the poor bastards on that moon.”