Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

51 worthwhile.

We did it, Alice. We really did it.

If this was the future, he could live with it.

Spock cleared his throat. “The chair, Colonel, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, right.” Christopher jumped up and turned the chair back over to Spock. “Guess I shouldn’t get too comfortable in that seat.”

Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer, spoke up. “We’ve received word from Starfleet, Mr. Spock. We’re cleared to leave Skagway.”

“About time!” McCoy exclaimed. “Now can we go look for Jim?”

Twenty-six

2020

O’Herlihy flew through the ship, bouncing off the walls as he raced from the command module to check on the brig. His fist clenched a heavy steel wrench, the first weapon he had been able to lay his hands on. With luck, he wouldn’t need to use it — he had never been a violent man until today — but he had no idea what to expect. How had the prisoners managed to depressurize the airlock and open the outer hatch? And why in heaven’s name would they do such a thing?

This wasn’t part of the plan, he thought. It makes no sense!

Ghastly images of Shaun and Zoe being flushed out into the vacuum tortured his fevered mind. Perspiration beaded on his face, and he wanted to scream in frustration. This was the last thing he needed right now. The ship was spiraling in toward Saturn; he needed to make the most of what little time he had left to transmit their final discoveries back to Earth. Indeed, he had been so caught up in this vital work that he almost overlooked the fact that the cargo-bay airlock had been activated. Nobody had responded when he had paged the brig via the comm, which only increased his anxiety. He had been tempted to ignore the situation, since they were all destined to perish anyway, but nagging questions and doubts had driven him to find out what had happened to Shaun and Zoe, even at the expense of losing precious minutes of scientific exploration. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his bones.

If they’ve done something to endanger Tera…

Passing through the hab, he reached the airlock in a matter of minutes. The indicator light above the hatch was out, and he noticed that an adjacent bulkhead appeared slightly warped, possibly as a result of the ship’s jarring collisions with ring matter. Had the impact somehow activated the airlock, killing the prisoners? That seemed unlikely, but part of him almost hoped that was the case. Shaun and Zoe would have died quickly, getting it over with.

An appalling possibility occurred to him. Could the prisoners have chosen to take their own lives, rather than prolong their final hours? Or had they accidentally killed themselves in some desperate, panicky attempt to escape? That didn’t sound like Shaun, but then again, Shaun wasn’t exactly himself anymore. Who knew what he was capable of now?

An empty blue jumpsuit was draped over the hatchway window like a curtain, blocking his view of the airlock’s interior. Frantic for answers, he pounded on the hatch with the wrench.

“Hello? Is anybody in there?”

He had sealed and repressurized the airlock from command before heading there. He tried to open the hatch, but it refused to budge. The locking mechanism would not disengage. He banged on the hatch again.

“Are you still there? What have you done?”

A delicate hand drew back the curtain. Zoe’s face, upside-down, smirked at him through the porthole. She appeared to be wearing a skintight elastic cooling suit.

“Hey there!” she shouted at him through the hatch. “What’s up, Doc?”

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned that she was still alive.

At least she’s still locked up, he thought. “I want answers! What happened here?”

“What’s that again?” She cupped a hand over her ear in a transparent attempt to feign that she couldn’t quite hear him. “Would you mind speaking louder?”

“What happened?” he hollered. “Is Shaun still with you?”

“Jeez, Doc! There’s no need to shout.”

For God’s sake! He didn’t have time to play games like this. Fuming, he activated the comm instead. “I know you opened the airlock to the outside!” he ranted. “What were you thinking?”

“Would you believe it was getting a bit stuffy in here?” She tugged at the collar of the cooling suit. “Not to mention chilly. You wouldn’t believe how damp and clammy this place gets after a while. Not exactly the luxury suite, you know.”

Her flippancy infuriated him. “Stop it! Can’t you be serious for once in your life?” He tried to peer past her, but her inverted face filled the porthole, obstructing his view. “Where is Shaun? Let me talk to him!”

“Oh, it’s ‘Shaun’ again, is it?” Her fingers formed air quotes. “I thought you and Fontana had decided that he was possessed by space ghosts or something. You forget about that part?”

“Shaun, the probe, amnesia… whatever!” He threw up his hands, unable to believe that she was actually wasting their last few hours like this. “Is he in there? Did he survive?”

“What do you care?” she shot back. “We’re all supposed to die anyway, right, when we take our one-way plunge into Hurricane Saturn? What does it matter if ‘Shaun’ and I decided to air out this crummy cell first?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Between you and me, it was starting to smell like a gym locker.”

“Cut the comedy routine!” he demanded, as though dressing down a class clown back at the university. “How did you even get the hatch open? That should have been impossible!”

“You ever get tired of saying that, Doc?” she replied. “You’d think you would have figured out by now that anything is possible in this crazy universe. Just ask that weirdo hexagon down there.”

“Just answer the question!”

“Say, how is my BFF Fontana doing? She still sleeping it off? Granted, there’s a woman who really needed to unwind a bit, but slipping her a roofie seems a bit extreme.”

She’s stalling, he realized. But why? What is she hiding?

A worrisome possibility came together in his mind. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. There had been two spacesuits stored in the airlock, after all.

“Where is Shaun? Let me see him… if he’s still there.”

She shook her head upside-down. “The astronaut formerly known as Colonel Shaun Christopher is not available right now, but if you like, I can take a message.”

I was right, he realized. She’s ducking my questions.

His dire suspicions crystallized into certainty. Shaun wasn’t in the brig with her. He had exited the airlock in the other suit. He was spacewalking, and there was only one place he could be going.

The command module.

“Blast you, Shaun,” he murmured. “Why couldn’t you just let me finish this?”

There was no time to lose. Like a swimmer reversing direction at the end of a lane, he somersaulted in the air and set off back the way he’d come.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Zoe hollered. “Come back!”

He ignored her. She didn’t matter now. He needed to get back to command — before Shaun ruined everything!

Kirk was anxious to get out of his spacesuit. Stuck in the docking ring, he waited impatiently for the airlock to