She turned toward him, a thoughtful look on her face. Shrewd green eyes examined him. “I still don’t know who you are, mister, but I’m glad you’re here.”
“Thanks. That means a lot.”
She eyed him pensively. “Can you please tell me one thing? Where is the real Shaun?”
“I wish I knew,” Kirk said.
Before he could even try to explain, he remembered something else they needed to deal with first.
He spun his chair around to check on the unconscious scientist, only to find the man missing. “Damn!” Kirk swore. “He’s gone.”
Fontana knew at once who he meant. After all, there was only one other man aboard the ship. An obscenity escaped her lips. “That bastard. He must have slipped away while we were saving the ship.” She clenched her fists. “God, he had me fooled this whole time. I still don’t get it. Why is he doing this?”
Kirk gathered that she hadn’t heard about O’Herlihy’s daughter. “I’ll explain later. We have to find him!”
Unstrapping himself, Kirk lurched from his seat and headed for the hatch. With any luck, O’Herlihy hadn’t gotten far. Maybe they could still catch him before he did any more damage. “Stay here!” he instructed Fontana, leaving her at the helm. “I’m going after him.”
He dove headfirst into the mid-deck below. Fire-retardant foam still drifted about the compartment. He put a hand over his mouth and nose to keep from inhaling it. The fans and filters labored noisily to scrub the atmosphere, even as Kirk searched for the fugitive doctor. His eyes scanned the deck.
A warning light flashed above the airlock. An alarm sounded.
Kirk rushed to the entrance to the docking ring. Peering through the porthole in the hatch, he spied O’Herlihy inside the airlock, struggling with the outer hatch. According to the indicators, the compartment was still pressurized. He was not wearing a spacesuit.
“Marcus!” Kirk yelled at him through the door. “What do you think you’re doing?”
O’Herlihy turned to face him. His face was haggard and bloody. His nose looked broken. He spoke like a man who had lost all hope.
“Don’t blame yourself, Shaun. It’s not your fault. I’m the one who failed Tera, not you.”
Kirk realized that O’Herlihy intended to flush himself out the airlock.
“Don’t do it. We’ll find a way to save your daughter!”
“It’s too late,” the doctor said. “We’re too far away to do anything. I’ll never see her again, at least not in this life.” He smiled ruefully. “Look at it this way. I’m going to be the first man on Saturn. If I’m lucky, people will remember that part… and not everything else.”
An alarm squealed in protest as O’Herlihy fumbled with the hatch’s manual override. The ship didn’t want to open the hatch before the airlock was depressurized, but the suicidal scientist was determined to open it anyway. Kirk didn’t underestimate the man’s abilities. O’Herlihy knew this ship as well as anyone.
“Wait!” Kirk pleaded. “Give me a chance to fix things.”
He remembered Zoe’s upgraded tablet, which was still clipped to his suit. He took hold of it and hacked into the airlock’s locking mechanism again. O’Herlihy cursed as the outer hatch refused to budge. The inner hatch slid open.
“Sorry, Doctor,” Kirk said. “I told you before, nobody is dying today.”
“I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about,” Kirk said.
Kirk, Fontana, and Zoe had convened on the flight deck. Prying Zoe out of the broken airlock had been a challenge, but, working together, he and Fontana had managed to get the damaged hatch to open. O’Herlihy was under a suicide watch in the infirmary, strapped down to the examination pad and monitored 24/7 by a closed- circuit camera. At the moment, the suicidal scientist was sleeping restlessly, having been sedated by Fontana in an instance of poetic justice.
“And plenty of time to do so,” she said. “Even with the impulse engines up and running, we’ve got a long trip back to Earth. Maneuvering is going to be tricky, now that we’ve used up most of our thruster fuel, but Mission Control is already working on a new flight plan to get us close enough to Earth. I’m going to cross my fingers and assume that everything will work out. I mean, we’ve beaten the odds so far.”
“That’s the spirit, Alice.” Zoe had traded her elastic cooling suit for a spare T-shirt and shorts. “Speaking of rescues, what about the doc’s daughter? What’s going to happen to her?”
Kirk was worried about that, too. “We’ve notified the authorities back on Earth. Last I heard, they were planning a rescue attempt, but it’s going to be a gamble. Apparently, HEL is holed up in a heavily fortified compound on an island in the Pacific Northwest. The odds are against anybody getting to Tera before her captors can execute her.”
“You’re not kidding,” Zoe said. “I’ve been to that compound, to interview HEL’s leaders.” She shuddered at the memory. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
If only he could do something to rescue Tera himself, but Earth was still three months away. Kirk could only hope that the special forces of this era were up to the task and that an innocent young woman wouldn’t end up as collateral damage.
An electronic chime came from the main communications panel.
“Hark!” Zoe said. “We’ve got mail.”
Fontana flew over to investigate. “Looks like we’re receiving a transmission.”
“From Earth?”
Kirk frowned, fearing bad news regarding O’Herlihy’s daughter. No matter what the man had done, Kirk didn’t want to have to tell him that Tera had been killed in a raid on HEL. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose one’s only child.
“No.” Fontana looked up from the terminal with a stunned expression on her face. She gazed at the empty reaches of space beyond Saturn’s rings. “Unless this equipment is malfunctioning, the signal is coming from… out there.”
Kirk felt a surge of excitement. He had almost given up waiting for a moment like this.
Could it be?
“What does it say?” he asked urgently. “Is there a message for us?”
“I’m not sure,” Fontana said. Her smooth brow furrowed in confusion. “Let me put it on the speakers.”
An unmistakable mellifluous voice emerged from the comm system.
Twenty-eight
2020
Gravity hit Kirk like a ton of thermoconcrete. He staggered on the transporter platform, and McCoy rushed forward to prop him up. “Easy, Jim. Give yourself time to adjust.”
“Thanks, Bones.” He let the doctor help him off the platform. His bones and muscles, debilitated by weeks of zero gravity, felt like overcooked pasta. “Guess I’ve got some physical therapy in my future… if I don’t get my own body back.”
“Count on it,” McCoy said. “And don’t expect me to go easy on you.”
Kirk chuckled. It was good to be home.
“Welcome back, Captain.” Spock greeted Kirk. “I apologize for the delay, but as you know, we had other matters to attend to, and time travel is hardly an exact science.”
“Understood, Mr. Spock.” Kirk stood as straight as he could manage; it wouldn’t do for the captain to appear too weak, even before friends. “I remember how tricky that slingshot maneuver can be. I’m just glad you made it to the right year.”
