Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

2270

“Klondike VI directly ahead, sir.”

“Slow to impulse, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk instructed, relieved to have reached their destination at last. The Enterprise had made good time getting there, but nineteen long days had passed since they had first received word of the crisis facing the mining colony. A yeoman offered him a cup of hot coffee, which he accepted gratefully. He leaned forward in his chair. “Let’s see where we are.”

The planet appeared on the viewscreen. Kirk was struck by its resemblance to Saturn. The stormy cloud belts striping its upper atmosphere were perhaps a touch more purple, and its glittering rings were configured slightly differently, but if you squinted, you could almost imagine that you were back in the Sol system. Although Klondike VI was still some distance away, the haloed orb filled the main viewer. It shone with reflected light.

“Beautiful,” Uhura observed. “I’ve always liked ringed planets. There’s something special about them.”

“In what way, Lieutenant?” Spock asked. “Such rings are simply the result of predictable gravitational factors. Within a planet’s Roche limit, tidal forces tear apart any large satellites and prevent new ones from being formed. Most rings are simply composed of random ice particles and other debris caught in a perpetual orbit.”

“I know all that, Mr. Spock,” Uhura replied. “But I still think they’re gorgeous.”

Spock did not argue the point. “I will concede that their symmetry has a certain aesthetic appeal.”

“These particular rings are more than decorative,” Kirk pointed out. He had been reading up on Klondike VI during the voyage. “Those aren’t just ice crystals circling that planet. The inner rings are laced with significant amounts of dilithium, enough to make a mining operation both profitable and crucial to the future of space exploration.”

The rings before them were like precious bracelets, sparkling with the rarest of gemstones. A shame they were destabilizing.

“Indeed,” Spock said. “Prior to the present crisis, the Skagway colony was on its way to becoming the primary source of crystallized dilithium in this sector. It would be a significant loss should the operations there be curtailed.”

“Not to mention the possible threat to the colony’s population,” Kirk reminded him. The captain squinted at the image of Klondike VI but could not make out the moon in question. “Are we within view of Skagway?”

According to their files, the moon occupied a gap between the inner and outer rings. Skagway’s own gravity helped to keep the gap open — at least, until recently.

“Coming around now, Captain.” Sulu brought the Enterprise into orbit above the planet’s rings, then descended into the empty gap. Kirk spied a bright reflective object ahead of them. The moon grew larger as the starship quickly caught up with it. The Enterprise slowed to keep pace with the tiny moon. “There it is.”

Skagway was a small moon, barely one hundred kilometers in diameter. An icy white glaze, pock-marked with craters, covered its surface. No atmosphere protected it from random meteor strikes. Only a fraction of the size of Earth’s own moon, it was nonetheless home to nearly two thousand souls. Kirk hoped they weren’t in too much trouble.

“Full magnification,” he ordered.

A domed colony could be seen on the frozen surface of the moon. A crude spaceport surrounded the central dome. Automated harvesters and sifters, designed to extract dilithium from the nearby rings, were parked on landing pads composed of resurfaced ice. A small fleet of shuttles, tugs, and scout ships, ill equipped and insufficient to evacuate the entire colony, also occupied the spaceport. Crude hangars were presumably used to repair and service the various vehicles. Thermal collectors faced the planet, which, like Saturn, generated its own heat. Skagway rotated slowly on its axis, providing abbreviated days and nights for the people living beneath the translucent geodesic dome. The moon’s dense core had made subterranean drilling both expensive and problematic.

Too bad, Kirk thought. The colonists might be safer beneath the ground, at least in the short term. If only we had some Hortas at our disposal.

Looking closer, the captain spied what appeared to be evidence of the emergency. Fresh craters pitted the frozen lunar landscape. Various shuttles and harvesters were visibly damaged, possibly beyond repair. And the colony’s protective dome, while still intact, had been pitted by multiple high-speed collisions with falling objects. Even as Kirk watched the viewer, chunks of icy debris pelted the airless moon, throwing up clouds of crystalline powder. A slab of ice (or was it dilithium?) the size of a small shuttle barely missed the dome, hitting a landing pad outside the colony. A limited array of surface-to-air phasers had been deployed to defend the dome but were clearly inadequate to the crisis at hand; they had been intended to deal with only the occasional random object, not a constant barrage. Skagway was caught in a cosmic hailstorm that seemed to be growing in ferocity.

“Receiving hailing frequencies,” Uhura reported. “It’s Governor Dawson.”

The Enterprise’s arrival had apparently not gone unnoticed.

“Put her through,” Kirk said.

“Yes, Captain.”

Skooka Dawson appeared on-screen. A handsome woman in her late fifties who appeared to be of Aleutian descent, she was dressed simply in orange miner’s overalls. Close-cropped white hair framed a drawn face that showed obvious signs of strain. Dark pouches beneath her eyes hinted that she had not been sleeping well. A framed photo of the aurora borealis could be glimpsed in the background. A chunk of unprocessed dilithium rested atop her desk.

“Hello, Captain. Thank you for responding so promptly to our distress signal.”

“My pleasure, Governor.” Kirk was eager to get the straight scoop from the ground. “What’s your status?”

“Bad and getting worse,” she replied, not mincing words. “My scientists tell me that the planet’s rings are collapsing inward, which puts us right in the middle of an avalanche. We’ve had nonstop hailstorms for days now, and some of the bigger pieces are large enough to sink the Titanic, if you get the reference.”

“I know my maritime history,” he assured her. “How is your dome holding up?”

“We built this colony to last, but it was never meant to take this kind of punishment. The Yukon Gap is supposed to be clear of debris, or at least it always was before. Our deflectors are already being pushed to their limits, which is putting a severe strain on our resources. To be honest, I’m not sure how much longer we can hold out. We’ve already had to suspend all mining operations.”

The lights flickered in her office. A heavy thud rattled the paperweights on her desk.

“I understand,” Kirk said. “I’ll have my engineering team see what they can do to reinforce your deflectors.” He looked ahead to the bigger picture. “Do your scientists have any idea what might be causing these disturbances?”

“Not yet, but I’ll see to it that all our data are transmitted to your ship.” The lights sputtered again, then came back on. “Perhaps you can spot something we missed.”

“Perhaps.” Kirk could only hope that Spock could unravel the mystery. “I don’t suppose there’s any sign that this is just a temporary phenomenon?”

“I keep hoping as much,” she said, “but if anything, the storms seem to be worsening. There’s also some concern that Skagway’s own orbit could be affected. We could end up falling into the inner rings — or worse.”

Kirk imagined the moon descending into the gas giant’s turbulent atmosphere. The planet’s intense gravity and violent storms would make short work of the domed colony, even if it succeeded in passing through the inner rings in one piece. No amount of deflectors could save them.

Not for the first time, the captain wished there was a nearby starbase or M-class planet that the colonists could be transported to. But the distances involved made multiple trips impractical; if the situation was as bad as it appeared, there was not nearly enough time to get the entire population to safety.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said. “But we should be prepared to evacuate as many of your people as we can.”

Dawson nodded. “No offense, Kirk, but I wish that Constitution-class