Star Trek: The Rings of Time (28 page)

“What’s the plan?” Zoe asked. “Where are we going in these unflattering get-ups? Once we’re out of this space-age dungeon, that is.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here.”

“Hell, no!” she protested. “You can’t just leave me here!”

“It’s too dangerous,” he insisted. “I’ve had spacewalk training. You haven’t. And trust me, it’s not like taking a stroll back on Earth. You’re not equipped for this. I’m sorry.”

She glanced down at the cumbersome suit, which was at least one size too big for her. Her head barely poked out of the metal ring at the top of the rigid torso assembly. The gold-tinted visor covered her face like a veil.

“Then why am I dressed like Barbarella
before
her striptease?”

“To survive when I depressurize the airlock,” he explained. Even staying where she was, she was going to be exposed to the vacuum for a time. The life-support system on her back held at least eight hours of oxygen,
which ought to be more than enough. “Don’t worry. One way or another, this will be over before you run out of air.”

“Got it,” she said. “But what am I supposed to do while you’re out traipsing through space?”

“Keep O’Herlihy distracted as long as possible.” The scientist was bound to notice when the airlock was activated, if he wasn’t too busy collecting data while simultaneously piloting the ship to its doom. He might even come to investigate. “You think you can do that?”

“You’re kidding, right? I was born to distract people.”

Kirk could believe it.

Almost ready to depart, he had a few last tasks to handle first. A command via the tablet started the depressurization mechanism, which, to his relief, was more functional than the inner hatchway. As the air was rapidly pumped from the chamber, he took a metal hammer and shattered the lens of the closed-circuit camera beneath Zoe’s discarded top.

There,
he thought.
If Marcus wants to find out what’s happened here, he’s going to have to check it out in person.

That should give Kirk time to get where he needed to go.

As a final precaution, he tethered Zoe to the locked inner hatch to keep her from drifting out into the cargo bay with him. “Hold on to the door,” he urged her, “and don’t let go.”

“Not going anywhere,” she promised. “Don’t be too long, though. Okay?”

“You won’t even know I’m gone.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m missing you already.”

The green light over the outer hatch gave him the go-ahead. He secured the tablet to one of the clips on his suit, then tried to activate the second hatch. Despite the oxygen feeding into his helmet, he held his breath to see if the airlock would respond.

The metal slid out of the way, exposing the cavernous cargo bay beyond.

That’s more like it,
he thought.
Spock would be proud.

He turned to wave farewell to Zoe. She blew him a kiss through her visor, then held on to the other hatch with both hands. They had agreed to maintain radio silence from now on, just in case O’Herlihy tried to listen in.

“See you soon,” he whispered.

He floated out into the cargo bay, holding on to the handrails to control his progress. He had left the short-circuited jetpack behind. In all the tumult, they had never gotten around to repairing it; besides, its miniature jets could never have kept pace with the ship unless the pilot was deliberately trying to rendezvous with him. He was going to have to climb, not fly, to his destination.

The spacious bay reminded him of his first, disorienting introduction to the
Lewis & Clark,
right after he’d unexpectedly found himself in this century. It was hard to believe that less than five days had passed
since then; he felt as if he had already spent weeks in Shaun Christopher’s skin.

Here’s hoping I don’t end up dying in his place.

A ladder led out of the bay onto the hull. He climbed the ladder using carabiners of the sort used by mountain climbers to ascend rocky cliff faces. Kirk had always enjoyed climbing back on Earth; one of his long-term goals was to climb the towering peaks of Yosemite someday. Who knew? Maybe he would have time to accomplish that in this era, if any of them made it back to Earth.

Clambering onto the top of the ship, he paused to take his bearings. The
Lewis & Clark
was indeed cruising in a polar orbit, perpendicular to the rings. Its delicate solar panels had been retracted, no doubt to keep them from being shredded by the orbiting ring matter. Staring down the length of the ship, he spied the glittering tops of the rings spreading out from the equator, thousands of kilometers below. It was like gazing at the surface of a luminous river made of sparkling boulders and flakes of ice. The inner B Ring shone brighter than the planet itself, even as the rings appeared to be rushing up to meet the ship. Could he reach his destination before they passed through the rings again? Kirk wasn’t sure.

I need to get a move on,
he realized,
and pronto.

He tore his gaze away from the dazzling spectacle to focus on the task at hand. The front half of the ship stretched before him, pointed straight down at the rings.
His goal was to reach the command module—and, most importantly, the docking ring attached to the nose of the command module. If he could just get there in time, he might be able to get back onto the flight deck and regain control of the ship. O’Herlihy was bound to have other ideas, but Kirk would cross that bridge when he came to it, after he crossed the rest of the ship.

Spacewalk exercises had been mandatory back at the Academy, and Kirk had always excelled at them. He was a bit rusty, though. Command of the
Enterprise
seldom required him personally to stroll outside the ship. At best, he took part in an EVA once or twice a year, usually as part of an emergency drill. He hoped that those drills would pay off now.

Guide rails mounted on the exterior of the modules provided foot and hand holds for careful astronauts. Kirk hooked his carabiners to the rail for safety’s sake, then pulled himself along hand after hand. He moved briskly, tempted to ditch the tethers to save time. They slid along the rail behind him, making no noise in the silence of space. His feet dangled behind him, avoiding contact with the hull. The last thing he wanted right now was for O’Herlihy to hear footsteps stomping outside the ship.

The captain wished he knew what the desperate scientist was doing right now. Feverishly transmitting priceless scientific data back to Earth in his last few hours or rushing to check on the airlock? It was possible that he’d
assumed that both prisoners had been flushed into space, but what if he guessed that a captive or two were attempting an unauthorized spacewalk? He was a brilliant man; he might well have figured out what Kirk had in mind, which could severely complicate matters later on. Given a choice, Kirk wanted O’Herlihy to be otherwise occupied when he attempted to reboard the ship.

Keep him busy, Zoe. You can do it.

The hab loomed before him, wider and more heavily insulated than the other modules. Its sides jutted out between the cargo bay and the command module like a section of snake that was digesting a large, lumpy meal. He had to scale its stern to reach the top of the hab, which he hurried across to make up for lost time. Arriving at the end of the module, he descended onto the vestibule connecting the hab to command, the same vestibule where he and Fontana had battled the fire only yesterday. Had they survived the blaze only to be torn apart and crushed by Saturn’s singularly violent atmosphere?

Not if he had anything to say about it.

He set out across the vestibule.
Almost there,
he thought. He looked ahead and saw the brilliant immensity of the rings towering over him like a tidal wave—or perhaps a colossal floating avalanche.

I was too slow,
he realized.
Here they come again.

He looked about for cover. A canopy-sized communications dish offered shelter, and he flew beneath
it only a heartbeat before the ship entered the rings. The light from countless reflective particles, spread across more than a hundred thousand meters, blinded him, forcing him to shield his eyes. Minute pieces of dirty ice, most no larger than grains of sand, pelted the hull. More substantial chunks of ice mingled with the tiny particles. The myriad obstacles orbited Saturn like billions of miniature moons. A hailstone the size of a pebble smashed through the communications dish, barely missing Kirk’s head. A second piece ricocheted off the hull, leaving a dent in the titanium shielding. He crouched low and kept his head down. The multiple layers of his spacesuit contained a lining of rubberized nylon to prevent damage from micrometeorite strikes, but he knew that if a fast enough or large enough piece struck his life-support system or helmet, he was as good as dead. A volley of lethal frozen bullets strafed the ship. He recalled that the temperature of the rings was minus one hundred ninety degrees Celsius. He could feel the cold even through his insulated suit.

Hang on,
he thought.
It will all be over in a minute.

Although they stretched above and below the ship for as far as the eye could see, the rings were only about twenty times deeper than the
Lewis & Clark
was long. The accelerating spaceship swiftly passed through the rings into the open space above Saturn’s southern hemisphere. An immense aurora, produced by charged particles captured by the planet’s powerful magnetic field, shimmered above the south pole. The ship wouldn’t
encounter the rings again, Kirk realized, until the ship passed over the pole and headed back up toward the equator on the opposite side of the planet. He decided that he wanted to be back inside before the next barrage.

That had been about as close to a firing squad as he cared to get.

Gliding out from beneath the punctured dish, he spotted numerous nicks and scratches on the hull, along with a few larger dents. A thorough inspection of the ship’s exterior was clearly called for, provided they survived the present mutiny. Ignoring the damage for the time being, he pulled himself along the guide rail, which was now warped and crimped in spots. Pushing against the thick suit and gloves from the inside was strenuous work. By now, his arms ached, and he was breathing hard. He couldn’t slow down, though. Not when time was running out.

He crossed from the vestibule onto the command module. Light shone from the windows, tempting him to scout out the situation before proceeding further. Moving stealthily, he peered through a porthole, which offered only a partial view of the flight deck. His eyes widened as he spotted Fontana bound to the same ladder she had tethered him to only hours ago. She appeared to be unconscious, but it was hard to tell. Hadn’t O’Herlihy said something about giving her something to sleep? He guessed that hadn’t been her idea.

Looking away from the drugged copilot, he searched for O’Herlihy at the helm and the computer terminals but failed to locate him. He hoped that meant that the saboteur was away from the command module at the moment. There was nothing downstairs, after all, but the blackened wreckage from the fire. Perhaps he was still investigating the disturbance at the airlock.

Good,
Kirk thought.
This is going to be tricky enough.

The docking ring was on the nose of the command module, attached to the mid-deck. Kirk prayed that the fire had not done serious damage to the airlock, or he could well find himself locked out in the cold. Descending past the cockpit windows, he got into position outside the docking hatch. Although procedure dictated that the hatch was to be opened only in conjunction with the onboard flight crew, the airlock had not been built to repel boarders. After all, space piracy was not really grounds for concern in this solar system yet. That was still generations away.

All the better for me,
Kirk thought. He mentally patted himself on the back for memorizing the ship’s specs when he’d had the chance. Zoe’s tablet remained clipped to his wrist, having survived the bumpy passage through the rings. He clumsily stabbed the controls with his gloved fingers.
Barring any untimely malfunctions, this should work.

He keyed in the final command.

The hatch slid open.

Let’s hear it for twenty-third-century know-how,
he thought.
I may have a future as a safecracker in this era.

Moving quickly, he entered the airlock and closed the hatch behind him. One more hatch lay between him and the mid-deck. He just needed to repressurize the compartment first, or else the force of the ship’s atmosphere rushing into the airlock would smash him into the outer hatch with bone-crushing force, if not blow out the hatch altogether. Unlike Spock, he could not instantly calculate exactly how many kilograms per square centimeter that would unleash, but he knew it was nothing to be taken lightly. Opening an unpressurized hatch would also set off alarms all over the ship, which he hoped to avoid if at all possible.

No need to alert O’Herlihy if he didn’t have to.

Waiting impatiently for the airlock to fill up with air, he peered through the six-centimeter porthole into the torched mid-deck, on the lookout for O’Herlihy, but all he saw was scorched rubble and the new fire extinguishers they had placed in the module as a precaution. He wished he knew where the treacherous doctor was hiding. For all Kirk knew, O’Herlihy was lying in wait just out of view, waiting to ambush him.

He reached instinctively for a phaser, only to realize his mistake.

Wrong ship, wrong century.

He would have to take his chances the old-fashioned way.

Ready or not, Doctor, here I come.

2270

“Captain on the bridge!” Yeoman Voss announced.

All eyes turned toward Shaun Christopher, who needed a second to absorb the sight of the
Enterprise
’s impressively large and colorful control center. Mr. Spock was seated at the center of the circular bridge, facing a wall-sized monitor or window. His crew was arranged around the perimeter, except for two officers manning a large console directly in front of Spock. From its look and position, Shaun guessed that they were doing the actual piloting. Seatbelts and straps had held the crew in place during the short-lived lapse in gravity. A bewildering array of displays, monitors, and instrument panels was enough to induce sensory overload. Shaun focused his gaze on the main screen.