Star Trek: The Original Series: No Time Like the Past

by Greg Cox

“You’re probably right.” His face was visible through the visor of his helmet. “For all we know, we’re on a different continent during a different century.” He sighed audibly. “Probably just as well. Yesterday’s sagas should be left as they were.”

  Seven had no reason to reminisce about past visits to the planet. She preferred to focus on the task at hand. She secured the two wedges in a backpack she had attached to her suit, then she held out her hand.

  “The remaining fragment, please. I would not want to misplace it in this environment.”

  “That would be unfortunate,” he agreed, handing her the component, which she added to her pack. He unhitched his phaser from his hip. “Hold on. I want to check something.”

  He directed a short burst of phaser fire at a nearby snow bank, which evaporated into steam. He nodded in satisfaction.

  “Good,” he said. “It still works.”

  Seven understood his concern. Spock and McCoy had found their own phasers inoperative during their earlier visit to Sarpeidon’s past. Spock had later speculated that the weapons had been automatically deactivated by the atavachron in order to prevent future technology from contaminating the past. No such problem had arisen on their return trip to Sarpeidon, suggesting that this was merely a function of the atavachron’s programming and not intrinsic to time travel on this planet. Seven shared Kirk’s relief that their phasers were still apparently in working order. She tested her own as well, simply to be certain.

  A crimson beam vaporized a patch of ice.

  “My phaser is also functional,” she reported, returning it to her hip.

  “Glad to hear it,” he said. “Not that I’m expecting trouble, but as I recall, this planet is not without its predators.”

  “That is correct,” she stated. The Enterprise’s computer library listed several potential hazardous forms of wildlife, most notably the sithar, a large carnivorous mammal known to hunt frozen wastes of the sort surrounding them. She cast an appraising look at the snow-heaped cliffs rising up to the east and west. A sizable quantity of accumulated whiteness clung to the slopes. Fractured slabs of ice the size of shuttlecrafts appeared barely held in place, edged by a frigid glaze of rime. “We should also step lightly . . . and be on the alert for avalanches.”

  Kirk tracked her gaze. “I see what you mean. Getting buried beneath a mountain of snow and ice would definitely put a crimp in our mission.”

  “Precisely. I suggest we use our phasers only as a last resort.”

  Their environmental suits provided needed protection from the elements, but were heavy and cumbersome compared to her shipboard attire. The additional weight was already tiring Seven, who recalled that Sarpeidon’s gravity was 1.43 Earth-normal, making physical activity more arduous than she would have preferred. She hoped that the final piece of the puzzle was nearby. Given her deteriorating condition, an extended hike through the wasteland was not advisable. Her limbs were already stiff and sore. Joints and implants felt out of alignment. Her organic right eye was dry and irritated.

  She attempted to get her bearings. The swirling snow limited visibility, so it took her a moment to realize that the topography surrounding them was notably similar to what she had encountered on a certain nameless planetoid in the Delta Quadrant. As before, she found herself in a rugged canyon studded with fallen boulders and heaps of rubble. The only difference was the heavy coating of snow and ice on the terrain, and the terminal red sun overhead.

  A coincidence?

  She doubted it.

  Her primitive tricorder picked up a familiar distress signal coming from farther down the canyon, much as it had on that distant planetoid. She felt as though she was retracing her steps, despite being thousands of years and countless light-years away from her starting point.

  “This way,” she instructed Kirk. “Follow me.”

  The ground was uneven, and trudging through the thick snow, which was often thirty centimeters high or deeper, added to the difficulty. Although her Borg respiratory system was more efficient than an ordinary human’s, she was soon breathing hard enough to fog the visor on her helmet, making the trek even more challenging. Her head began to throb, and she had trouble keeping her eyes open.

  “Careful,” Kirk said, tugging on her arm. He steered her away from the edge of a steep chasm running along one side of the canyon. The pervasive whiteness blurred the borders of the ravine, making them difficult to discern in the snow. “Another reason to watch our step.”

  “I concur.”

  Concerned that fragile layers of snow or ice might conceal similar hazards, she devoted a portion of the tricorder’s sensors to scanning for hidden ravines. By now she had a definite sense of what direction the telltale Starfleet signal was coming from, coinciding with her memories of that other canyon, so she judged she could spare some of the tricorder’s computing power in the interest of ensuring the snow-covered ground before them was safe to tread upon.

  Her sense of déjà vu increased as they rounded a curve in the canyon and found themselves facing a dead end. She half-expected to find another monumental bust of Kirk, perhaps encased in ice, but only a frosted cliff face lay before them, approximately seventy meters ahead. Seven was relieved that she would not have to explain to Kirk about his colossal portrait in the Delta Quadrant. Despite her fatigue, she quickened her pace, eager to reach the base of the cliff, where she had every expectation of finding another hidden entrance.

  Perhaps her sojourn in the twenty-third century was truly nearing its end.

  “Spock and McCoy found refuge in a cave heated by buried hot springs,” Kirk recalled aloud. He was only a few paces behind her. “Maybe we’re looking for something along those—”

  A ferocious growl, louder even than the howling wind, cut him off abruptly. With little warning, a white shaggy beast sprang from a ledge, slamming into Kirk, who was knocked off his feet by the sithar’s attack. The creature, which had to weigh at least 350 kilograms, resembled a hybrid composed of equal parts lion and musk ox. Curved horns, jutting from its massive skull, were as sharp as the claws tearing at Kirk’s protective suit. A snowy mane and matching pelt blended in with the arctic terrain, providing far too effective camouflage. Any telltale musk or odor had failed to penetrate the humans’ airtight suits.

  Silver fabric, designed to withstand hostile atmosphere and vacuum, shredded beneath the beast’s attack, although the helmet and shoulder assembly protected Kirk’s face and throat from the sithar’s fangs. Kirk grappled with the creature, shouting inarticulately over the comm link. They rolled across the packed snow and ice, which suddenly collapsed beneath their combined weight. They plunged from sight into a hidden chasm.

  “Captain!”

  Her reflexes only slightly slowed by her depleted state, Seven raced to the edge of the exposed chasm. Peering over the edge, she spied Kirk and the sithar thrashing at the bottom of the ravine, approximately fifty meters below. Only momentarily stunned by the fall, the creature remained intent on devouring Kirk, so Seven drew her phaser. Palsied tremors forced her to grip the weapon with both hands to steady her aim, but a crimson beam stunned the sithar, which collapsed on top of Kirk, practically burying him beneath its bulk. Worsening snow flurries made it difficult to tell if Kirk was still moving at the bottom at the chasm, but Seven was distressed to see traces of red seeping through the fallen snow and ice. Did sithars bleed red? Seven could not immediately recall.

  “Captain? Can you read me?”

  “I’m here,” he responded, demonstrating that the communicator in his helmet was still operative. “And still in one piece, more or less. Good shooting.”

  Seven experienced a surge of relief, which was quickly supplanted by the realization that Kirk’s situation remained precarious. “Are you injured?”

  “I’ve been better.” A sharp intake of breath indicated that he was in pain. “I’m pretty sure my right leg is broken, and I’m bleeding from some pretty nasty lacerations.” His teeth chattered audibly. “I’m
suddenly feeling the chill, too. Not sure if that’s shock or just the cold seeping through the rips in my suit.”

  Probably both, Seven thought. She glanced around the frigid landscape, facing the challenge of extricating the injured captain from the ravine. No obvious solution presented itself. There had been little reason to anticipate a need for mountaineering equipment.

  She contemplated climbing down into the chasm.

  “Hold on, Captain. I am endeavoring to arrive at a proper response to your predicament.”

  “Forget it,” he replied. “The last thing we need is both of us trapped down here, and you’re in no shape to rescue me even if my leg wasn’t busted.” A groan testified to his discomfort. “You’ll have to go on without me.”

  Seven rejected the suggestion. “That is not an acceptable course of action.”

  Beyond humanitarian concerns, and her personal debt to Kirk, there was also the matter of his importance to the time line. James T. Kirk still had crucial parts to play in many events of significant historical importance, such as the V’Ger crisis and the Khitomer peace accords. He could not be lost in the past of a dead world thousands of years before his birth.

  “This is not your time,” she insisted.

  “Maybe it is now,” he answered. “Or perhaps you can come back for me after you’ve completed our mission. If you climb down here with all four components, and we assemble them together, then maybe—”

  A stone-tipped spear slammed into the snow at the edge of the chasm, barely missing Seven. A second spear slammed into the neck assembly of her suit. The spearhead failed to penetrate the rigid collar, but the impact staggered her, almost knocking her into the ravine. She threw herself backward to avoid tumbling in after Kirk.

  “Captain! I am under attack!”

  She dropped into a defensive crouch, presenting a smaller target. Squinting up through the snow, she glimpsed a handful of fur-clad figures at the top of a nearby cliff. They brandished spears, axes, and other primitive weaponry, while shouting excitedly at each other over the wind. She was unable to make out what they were saying, but she doubted that they were friendly overtures. Had her attackers been attracted by the noise of the sithar’s attack—or had they perhaps been pursuing the beast in the first place?

  “What?” Kirk asked. “Who is attacking you?”

  Seven considered the possibilities. Temporally displaced exiles, banished to the past for transgressions unknown, or simply ice-age hunters native to this era? Seven had no way of knowing, nor was this of particular relevance at the moment.

  “Unknown,” she replied, “but their intentions are clearly hostile.”

  A phaser blast stunned one of her attackers, who tumbled off the cliff into a heavy snow drift dozens of meters below. The other hunters retreated to a degree, seeking cover behind various icy outcroppings, but they continued to lob spears in her direction. Seven realized that she was in an untenable position, as her immediate surroundings offered little in the way of shelter. Her gaze turned instinctively toward the looming cliff face several meters away—and the hidden passageway she expected to find there.

  “Go!” Kirk shouted, as though reading her mind. “Don’t worry about me.”

  She wished that was an option, but Kirk was too important to history not to be concerned with. Her options were clearly shrinking, however. Rescuing Kirk from the chasm had been a daunting challenge before, but now that they were under attack . . . ?

  A snowball rolled down the side of the cliff, accumulating mass and volume along its way. Dislodged chunks of snow and ice followed after it. Seven glimpsed the hunters hacking away at the top of the cliff with their axes, while others used their spears as levers to pry loose frosty boulders and slabs of ice. They hollered and stomped their boots, almost as though trying to set off an avalanche.

  Then she realized that was precisely their intention.

  An efficient tactic, she conceded. The hunters could eliminate her and Kirk and later dig up their possession and carcasses with little risk to themselves. She wondered briefly if the fur-clad attackers were simply defending their territory or if intruders were considered an acceptable foodstuff before deciding that this was a question she preferred not to dwell on. She gazed with concern at the huge sheets of ice and snow suspended over the canyon. The sheer accumulation far exceeded her phaser’s ability to vaporize it all in time to avoid being swept away by an avalanche.

  “Seven?” Kirk demanded. “Are you still there? What’s happening?”

  Trapped beneath the stunned predator at the bottom of the chasm, injured and bleeding, Kirk was unable to witness what was transpiring. Seven could readily imagine his frustration.

  “Our attackers are attempting to set off an avalanche,” she informed him, hesitating only briefly before telling him the worst of it. “I am uncertain that I can prevent this.”

  “Then you have to save yourself before it’s too late.” The decisiveness in his voice overcame any hint of pain or infirmity. “Go! Find that last fragment and get back where you belong.” He coughed hoarsely. “That’s an order, Seven. Run for your life . . . and give my regards to the future.”

  “Captain . . .”

  She wanted to say more, find some flaw in the merciless demands of the situation, but an ominous rumble informed her that the time for debate was over. The avalanche was coming. She had to escape if she wanted to avoid being buried alive for all time.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Now!”

  Tearing herself away from the edge of the chasm, she raced toward the towering dead end of the canyon, even as the cliff behind her lost its grip on its icy load. With a thunderous roar, the avalanche came streaming down into the canyon, carrying tons of frozen debris. Billowing clouds of powder preceded a plunging wall of snow that gained speed and momentum at an alarming pace. Huge slabs of ice knocked loose more snow and rock, propagating a dangerous chain reaction. Glancing back over her shoulder, Seven saw the avalanche bury the chasm behind her, cutting her off from Kirk. A few more moments, and she would have been buried as well.

  “Captain?”

  He did not respond.

  Breathing hard, she reached the base of the cliff at the end of the canyon. Her muscles ached and her vision blurred, but her ocular implant located a distinctive delta-shaped insignia embedded in the stone beneath the frosty glaze. Shaking fingers operated the tricorder, transmitting the response code. Ice cracked and snow shook loose as a hidden door identical to the one on the planetoid sank into the bedrock, exposing a familiar-looking passageway leading deep into the interior of the cliff. Overhead lights clicked on before her.

  “Open Sesame.”

  The passage beckoned to Seven, but she paused and looked back the way she had come. Her heart sank as her worst expectations were confirmed.

  A mountain of fallen snow and ice filled the canyon behind her. Smaller avalanches funneled down the slope, sprinkling the top of the heap with a fresh layer of frozen rubble. In theory, Kirk’s environmental suit held approximately four hours’ worth of oxygen, assuming it hadn’t been too badly damaged by the sithar or the avalanche, but Seven could see at a glance that there was no chance of her digging him out in time. It would take a team of Starfleet engineers to reach him. She suspected that the hunters wouldn’t be able to recover their prey until the next thaw, if indeed it ever warmed enough to make that possible. Even if Kirk was still alive, she could not possibly recover him.

  “Captain?”

  Part of her wished that Kirk had been killed instantly by the avalanche. That struck her as preferable to a long, slow death beneath the ice and snow. Her exhausted mind struggled to grasp the implications of what had just occurred. James T. Kirk had been lost long before his time. The future would be forced to take another form.

  Unless this past could be erased.

  She heard the hunters whooping in victory. Another spear, striking the snow behind her, persuaded her not to linger. Turning her back on Kirk’s glacial tomb, she
plunged through the open archway into the tunnel beyond.

  Kirk was gone, but her mission remained.

  Panting, she staggered down a sloping corridor that bore an unmistakable resemblance to the one Voyager’s away team had discovered in the Delta Quadrant. The same divided-disk motif was repeated on the sloping tile floor of the tunnel, reminding her that she required only an additional red segment to complete the puzzle in her backpack, assuming she still had the strength.

  Seven dragged herself down the hallway, badly in need of regeneration. Her aching muscles felt every extra percentage point of Sarpeidon’s gravity. Her cheek twitched spasmodically. Her external implants chafed against the skin around them, which felt uncomfortably dry and raw. The nagging headache increased steadily in intensity. Her thoughts felt foggy, confused.

  A heads-up display within her helmet indicated that the temperature within the complex was significantly warmer than outside. Gasping for breath, she removed her helmet and retrieved a loaded hypospray from a sealed pouch on her suit.

  One more dose, she thought, to get me to the end.

  The hiss of the hypospray and the accompanying stimulant instantly provided a degree of relief. She was exhausted and far from functioning with peak efficiency, but her mind felt clearer and she no longer lacked the strength to proceed. The corridor felt uncomfortably warm, and she was tempted to discard the burdensome environment suit, but then she recalled that she might well end up back in space in the twenty-third century, so she refastened her helmet. She reached out to steady herself against the wall, then she yanked her hand back before it came into contact with the polished stone. Now was no time to carelessly risk triggering another booby trap, so she kept her hands to herself.

  The corridor led, as before, to a spacious chamber deep within the complex. Once again, graceful columns supported a vaulted ceiling, but instead of a central sarcophagus, a tiered circular platform occupied the center of the chamber. Three levels of wide concentric circles, stacked atop each other like an ancient Terran wedding cake, led to the topmost pedestal, roughly at the level of her waist, where the fourth and final component rested within a circular depression. The negative space within the depression clearly awaited the three segments Seven had collected throughout time and space. Now it was only a matter of completing the design—and reassembling the time-travel device.