by Greg Cox
A pattern began to take shape upon the screen. Soon she could make out a scratchy picture of a man’s face, accompanied by snatches of a desperate voice interrupted by bursts of static:
“146 to 194 . . . exposed . . . capture imminent . . . technology beyond . . . at risk . . . future history . . . recommend . . . urgent . . . self-destruct . . . emergency . . . no escape . . .”
Roberta thought she heard a harsh, sizzling noise in the background, followed by a loud, metallic crash. Then the static cleared for an instant and she got a better look at the speaker. To her surprise, she saw that he had the same sort of strange, pointed ears as that Martian guy, Mr. Spock. He looked in bad shape, like he’d been in a fight. His lip was swollen and a trickle of green fluid ran down the man’s face from a nasty-looking gash on his forehead. Green blood? she thought. This was too weird.
The sizzling noise grew louder. The face on the screen screamed once, a ghastly sound that tore at Roberta’s heart, and the screen went blank. “146,” Seven barked, “please respond. This is 194. Repeat: respond immediately!”
The screen remained blank. “Transmission halted at origin,” the Beta-5 announced. Seven’s head drooped below his shoulders. He clenched his fists in frustration. For a second, he looked incredibly tired.
“Mr. Seven?” Roberta asked hesitantly. “Are you okay?”
He lifted his head and stepped away from the computer. He took a deep breath. “I’m fine,” he answered, “but I’m afraid the future is not.”
“The future?” Roberta echoed.
“Precisely, Miss Lincoln, but which future? That’s the real question.” All business now, he addressed the Beta-5. “Computer, analyze future history for divergence from standard time line.”
Lights blinked upon the face of the futuristic apparatus. A loud hum emerged from the machine as it processed Seven’s request for at least five minutes. Roberta was taken aback by the delay. She had never known the Beta-5 to take more than ten seconds to answer any query, no matter how complicated. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
Isis seconded Roberta with an inquisitive meow. Seven shushed them both as the Beta-5 spoke at last. “Alternate time line established. New future deviates significantly from established parameters.”
“Point of divergence?” Seven demanded.
“2293 A.D. Khitomer Peace Conference. Assassination of Spock of Vulcan by anomalous temporal element prior to initial meeting with Pardek of Romulus. Result: elimination of Vulcan-Romulan reunification efforts in latter half of the twenty-fourth century.”
The twenty-fourth century? Roberta wondered, struggling to keep up with the computer’s revelations. When did we get on to the twenty-fourth century? What happened to 2269?
“I see,” Seven said thoughtfully. “Source of anomaly?”
“2269 A.D. Romulan Star Empire. Coordinates 83-62-171.”
Okay, Roberta thought. That’s more like it. She still had no idea what was going on, except that someone was going to kill Mr. Spock—who hadn’t even been born yet! Never mind the Age of Aquarius, her mind wasn’t expanding fast enough to keep up with all these bizarro concepts. She still had trouble believing that she had actually met an intelligent being from outer space; now she had to worry about his assassination, almost a hundred and twenty-five years from today? Help, she thought. I need an Excedrin.
On the rug, Isis meowed and rubbed her head against Seven’s trousers until he picked her up. Roberta wondered grumpily if the cat had figured out any more than she had.
Seven walked briskly across the office and retrieved his jacket from the back of his chair. “I’m afraid I have to postpone any movie plans,” he stated. “We have to leave again, immediately.”
“For 2269 or 2293?” Roberta asked, hoping that it was a blatantly ridiculous question. Please tell me he’s not saying what I think he’s saying.
Seven answered quite matter-of-factly. “2269. That’s the root of the trouble.” He placed Isis on the top of the desk and put on his jacket, then pushed down the pen attached to his pen and pencil set. Roberta heard a familiar clicking sound, and watched as, across from the desk, the shelves of decorative glassware receded into their hidden crevices, exposing the massive steel door guarding the fog chamber. A circular handle on the door spun automatically, and the doorway swung open once more. Roberta gulped as Seven hurriedly manipulated a control panel on the inner face of the door. She didn’t like the looks of this.
“Time travel?” she asked. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“As you may have noted, Miss Lincoln,” Seven replied, “I seldom joke.”
Isis sprung off the desktop and padded over to Seven’s side. To her dismay, Roberta saw an unnatural blue fog began to form inside the interior of the hidden chamber. “Why the big hurry?” she objected. Things were moving far too fast for her. “The future’s not going anywhere, is it?”
“The longer we delay, the further it may go off-track,” Seven explained curtly. Seeing the bewildered look on Roberta’s face, he paused to elaborate. “Future events can sometimes threaten the past, Miss Lincoln. Indeed, our own continuing knowledge that the future has been changed may have the effect of ensuring that change unless we take action to reverse it; even the primitive quantum theory of this era concedes that the act of observing reality can actually change the reality being observed.”
Roberta’s head was inclined to take Seven’s word for it. “This is one of those step-on-a-butterfly, change-the-whole-world kind of things, right?”
“Basically,” Seven confirmed, “but in reverse. It’s not common, and it’s certainly not reasonable, but it is possible, take my word for it. We have to act now, before any temporal backwash robs us of the opportunity.”
“Oh,” Roberta said, trying to come to terms with the concept. “Do I need to pack?”
Seven cracked a smile. “You’ll find the twenty-third century extraordinarily well-stocked.” He checked his suit’s inside pocket, drawing out a slim silver device the size and shape of a fountain pen, then replacing the device in his pocket. “I believe I have everything we need. Except—” A new thought seemed to occur to him. He rushed back to the desk and picked up the green cube. “Here,” he said, tossing the cube toward Roberta. “Take this.”
The cube chirped when she caught it. She snatched a psychedelic handbag off the plush orange chair by the couch, and stuck the cube into the bag.
The luminescent fog swirled within the confines of the chamber. It looked to Roberta like a glowing blue whirlpool, a vaporous vortex from which she might never return. Gary Seven stood to one side of the doorway, holding Isis against his chest. “After you,” he said.
Roberta swallowed hard. 2269. How long would it take to travel forward three hundred years? What would the world possibly be like then? She glanced back over her shoulder at the wooden doorframe on the other side of the office. Beyond that door, she thought, lay her world as she knew it: Manhattan, movies, and moon landings. “Here goes nothing,” she whispered.
Taking one last look at the twentieth century, she stepped back into the fog.
Chapter Two
Captain’s log, stardate 6021.4.
The Enterprise is on an emergency mission to the planet Duwamish. Massive flooding has endangered the Federation colony there, and Starfleet has directed us to deliver desperately needed food and medical supplies, as well as to assist any necessary evacuation efforts. As the Enterprise is the only Starfleet vessel in this sector, I can only pray that we get to Duwamish before too many lives are lost.
“YOU SHOULD GET some sleep, Jim,” Dr. Leonard McCoy groused. “You look like hell.”
Captain James T. Kirk sat up in his chair upon the bridge of the Enterprise, strenuously resisting an urge to yawn. The ship’s chief medical officer hovered beside him like an anxious mother hen. “That’s a harsh diagnosis, Bones,” he protested. “Whatever happened to your bedside manner?”
“I’m a doctor, not a diplomat,” McCoy said
. “I’m serious, Jim. It’s been less than a week since that nasty business with Dr. Lester, and here you are, pushing yourself as if nothing at all had happened to you. For heaven’s sake, Jim, your entire mind was transferred out of your body and back again. That’s not exactly like getting over the flu.”
Thanks for reminding me, Kirk thought. It wasn’t one of his happier memories, although the experience of living within a woman’s body had been . . . educational, to say the least. He was glad to be back in his own flesh and bones, though. For a while there, it had looked like his five-year exploratory mission was going to come to an abrupt and singularly frustrating halt. “You said there were no side effects,” he reminded the doctor.
“I said I couldn’t find any side effects,” McCoy said. He shrugged his shoulders beneath his blue medical uniform. “I also prescribed plenty of rest, just to be safe.”
I don’t need rest, Kirk thought defiantly, I need action and a chance to get back to work. The last thing he wanted was to spend more wasted hours in his quarters, “recuperating.” Emergency quarters had to be prepared for refugees from Duwamish. Food rations and medical supplies had to be catalogued and prepped for immediate usage. Emotional counseling would need to be provided for those who had lost their loved ones and their homes. Kirk made a mental note to himself to make sure all the ship’s transporters were capable of functioning at maximum capacity, just in case they’d need to relocate large quantities of settlers in a hurry. He reached for the command intercom panel on the port console. Better check with Scotty, he thought. Get an update on the status of the primary energizing coils and pattern buffers . . .
“I’m serious, Jim,” McCoy persisted, placing a restraining hand on Kirk’s arm. “You have a good crew. Trust them to do their jobs without you for a few hours.”
“Spock, help me out here,” Kirk said, attempting a light, breezy tone. “Dr. McCoy is trying to drive me from the bridge.”
Spock stepped away from the bridge’s science station, where myriad lighted panels and controls glowed against the polished black surface of the science console. He descended into the sunken command module to stand near Dr. McCoy. “As unusual as it may seem,” he said, “I must concur with the doctor in this instance.”
“What?” Kirk exclaimed. “Spock, not you, too?”
The Vulcan first officer displayed no reaction to his captain’s look of betrayal. “Even at maximum speed,” he explained, “we will not reach the Duwamish system for 9.4 hours. It is only logical to conserve your strength until it is needed.”
“Hah!” A broad grin broke out on McCoy’s weathered face. “I never thought I’d have to fall back on Vulcan logic, but our pointy-eared friend here has the right idea. Save your pigheaded stubbornness for some time when it might actually do some good.”
“I guess I’m outnumbered,” Kirk said, deciding to concede defeat gracefully. He scanned the bridge, reassuring himself that all was in order. Sulu was at the helm, while Chekov and Uhura held down their usual posts at the navigation console and the communications station, respectively. On the main viewer at the front of the bridge, the stars zipped by at warp speed. One of the astronomical prints mounted above the duty stations caught his eye: a full-color reproduction of a swirling nebula, now forever frozen in space and time. The bridge of the Enterprise struck him at this moment as just as durable and unchanging as that two-dimensional nebula. Maybe Bones is on target after all, he thought, and the ship can get by without me for a few hours. He rose from his chair and stretched, no longer bothering to suppress a weary yawn. A nap was sounding better and better. “Mr. Spock,” he announced, “you have the bridge.”
He was just turning toward the bright red doors of the lift entrance when, without any warning, a tremendous vibration shook the bridge. The floor beneath his feet rocked from one side to another. Kirk seized the armrest of his chair to keep from being thrown to the floor. On the opposite side of the chair, McCoy was not so fortunate. The ship’s doctor staggered back and forth, then began to pitch forward. He fell toward the hard duranium floor, only to be rescued at the last second by Spock, who somehow managed to take hold of McCoy’s arm while simultaneously maintaining his own balance. Good work, Kirk thought as he struggled to keep standing. “Red alert!” he called out to his crew. Uhura, holding tightly onto the communications console, responded at once to his command. Red warning lights began flashing all around the bridge, accompanied by a high-pitched siren that drowned out the gasps of the other crewmen.
The vibration lasted several seconds, during which he could feel the throbbing of the floor through the soles of his boots. Then the shaking began to subside, and the bridge gradually righted itself as the Enterprise stabilized its course. Kirk dropped back into his chair, all thought of rest forgotten. “All stations report, what the devil was that?”
“Captain,” Ensign Chekov called out. “Sensors report a transporter beam of astounding power, a hundred times stronger than anything we’ve got!”
A transporter? Kirk thought. He had never felt a transporter beam like that before, except for—his brain resisted the notion that occurred to him—but that was three centuries ago!
Spock’s mind seemed to be racing down the same channels. “As I recall, Captain,” he said, releasing his grip on McCoy, who had regained his balance, “we have experienced this phenomenon before. . . .”
“Captain, look!” Chekov interrupted as two blurry blue outlines suddenly materialized at the front of the bridge, only a couple of meters away from Sulu’s station at the helm. The figures were blurry at first, seemingly composed of a swirling blue energy, then quickly defined themselves. Alerted by his memory, Kirk recognized the intruders even before they fully solidified.
It was Gary Seven and his attractive young sidekick from the twentieth century. What was her name again? Kirk quickly retrieved the data from year-old memories. Roberta Lincoln, that was it.
But what were they doing aboard the Enterprise in this day and age? Kirk had never expected to encounter the pair again, let alone in his own time and on his own ship. Even their clothing, he noted, belonged on Earth a few centuries ago. Seven wore an antiquated suit and tie, while his female companion had dressed more casually in a loose-fitting, multicolored shirt and a pair of faded denim pants. They both looked like they had stepped out of some sort of historical costume drama.
Chekov leaped from his seat and drew his phaser. Sulu looked ready to do the same. Even McCoy instinctively placed his hand on the medical tricorder hanging from a strap over his shoulder. “Don’t move,” Chekov ordered the newcomers, “or I will fire.”
Seven ignored both the young ensign’s weapon and the blaring alarms. “Hello again, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock,” he said calmly. As usual, Kirk noticed, Seven had his cat with him. The sleek black animal nestled against Seven’s chest, seemingly unruffled and undisturbed by its journey through time and space. By contrast, Roberta Lincoln looked around with wide-eyed astonishment; Kirk guessed she’d never seen the interior of a starship before. “Forgive the intrusion,” Seven stated, “but I need your assistance.”
“Captain?” Chekov asked, sounding confused. He kept his phaser aimed at the intruders. “Do you know these people?”
“You can stand down, Ensign,” Kirk replied, rising from his own chair. Flicking a switch on the command functions panel on the starboard armrest of the chair, he deactivated the siren and blinking red lights. “Cancel red alert status.” It occurred to him that few of the crew had actually met either Seven or Roberta; only he and Spock had actually beamed down to Earth during that mission. “I don’t think you’ll need that phaser, at least I hope not. Meet Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln. They’re time travellers from twentieth century Earth, or so I assume.”
Cradled in Seven’s arms, the cat squawked noisily, as if angry at being overlooked. Kirk didn’t even try to remember what Seven’s pet was named, although he found it slightly odd that Seven never seemed to go anywhere without the cat. At least i
t’s not a tribble, he thought.
“Good Lord,” McCoy said, staring in amazement at the strangers on the bridge. Kirk wondered if the doctor was remembering his own harrowing trip to Earth’s Depression era, McCoy’s only firsthand encounter with the twentieth century. “Kind of a long way from home, aren’t they?” the doctor said. “In time and space.”
That was certainly true, Kirk thought. Earth was hundreds of light-years away from their present location, not to mention a century or three removed from Seven’s own time. This must be serious, he thought. Seven wouldn’t have come all this way without a strong reason.
“Excuse me, Captain,” Lieutenant Uhura spoke up from her post at the communications station. She pressed a compact silver receiver firmly against her ear. “Chief Engineer Scott is hailing you from engineering. He wants to know what’s happening.”
“Tell Scotty the situation is under control,” Kirk instructed.
“I’m glad you think so,” McCoy grumbled. The doctor gave his captain a dubious look.
Kirk shrugged, then turned his attention to their unexpected guests. “All right, Seven, what’s so important that you had to shake up my ship to get here?” His fists clenched at his sides. That damn beam almost shook my ship apart, he thought. Last time around, the Enterprise had intercepted Seven’s transporter beam by accident. Don’t tell me that this was just another coincidence. I won’t buy it.
“I’m here on an urgent mission, Captain, the nature of which I can’t fully disclose. Unfortunately, in this century, I don’t have access to all the resources I had in your past, so I need the Enterprise to help me complete my mission.”
“You’ll have to tell me more than that,” Kirk challenged Seven. He walked across the bridge, stepping up from the command module and circling around the navigation console until he was less than a meter away from Seven and his companions. “I suppose you are still working on behalf of some mysterious alien benefactors—”