Linkage: The Narrows of Time (34 page)

There was no response. He checked Heller’s
vitals— no pulse, no respiration.

He tilted Heller’s head back, pinched his
nose and covered the officer’s mouth with his own. He blew twice
into Heller’s mouth, but his chest didn’t expand. He put his hands
on Heller’s sternum, rapidly pushing down thirty times in
succession, before blowing air into Heller’s mouth again.

“Bruno, find Dr. McKnight. Dave’s
non-responsive,” Kleezebee said, continuing CPR on Heller.

“I’ll go,” Nellis said. Bruno had revived
her. She ran past the powerless jump pad, opened the emergency
hatch, and climbed down the exit ladder to Deck Two.

“Is there anything I can do?” Blake
asked.

“Both of you, grab what you can and get to
the escape pods. I’ll meet you on the surface,” Kleezebee said,
continuing CPR on Heller.

“Captain, I should remain here with you,”
Bruno replied.

“No, you need to go. That’s an order,
Commander. Make sure Chuck gets off the ship safely.”

Bruno nodded, helping Blake to one of three
escape pods along the rear wall of the bridge. He pressed a red,
flush-mounted switch on the wall to the right of the pod, raising
its hatch. Blake took a seat and Bruno strapped him in.

The egg-shaped pod was just big enough to
accommodate two adult passengers and a seven-day supply of battery
power, air, vegetarian ration packs, and water. Each pod was
equipped with an on-board navigation system, short-range
communications, two EVA spacesuits and a portable toilet that the
crew affectionately called a
bumper-dumper
. There were no
weapons.

Bruno turned around, unlocked the cabinet
below his weapons station, and retrieved all three stun guns plus
the four extra energy cells. “These might come in handy,” he said,
handing the energy weapons to the injured Blake. He hurried over to
the science station, opened a sliding panel door, and pulled out
the removable data drive before returning to the pod. He handed the
data core to Blake. “Keep this safe. As soon as I close the hatch,
press the green button to eject the pod.”

“What about you?” Blake asked, looking at the
open seat next to him.

“I’ll take the next one,” Bruno said. “When
you reach the surface, use the nav-system to locate the nearest
shoreline.”

“Then what?”

“Use the pod’s thruster assembly as a boat
motor. Just be sure to sample the atmosphere before popping the
hatch.”

“How will I find the others?”

“Hone in on the emergency beacons. They
activate automatically as soon as a pod is launched. Now go,” Bruno
said, lowering the hatch until it latched into place. Moments
later, he heard the pod eject.

“I thought I told you to evacuate,” Kleezebee
said, dragging Heller’s body away from the rising water.

“I know, sir, but you’re going to need my
help with Heller.”

“Did someone call a doctor?” McKnight asked,
climbing out of the emergency hatch, carrying a med-kit.

“Good to see you made it, Doc,” Bruno
said.

“Damn, I should have brought my swim trunks,”
McKnight said on his way to Kleezebee, high-stepping through a
portion of the water filling up the left side of the bridge. “What
do we have here?”

“He was hit by an energy discharge from his
station. I’ve been administering CPR, but he’s been unresponsive
for about five minutes.”

McKnight held up his flashing medical
scanner, passing it over Heller’s chest and head several times.

“I’m not detecting any brain activity and his
lungs have been thermalized. I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can
do for him. He’s gone, DL,” McKnight said, after scanning Heller’s
chest.

Kleezebee squeezed Heller’s hand gently, then
bent down close to his ear. “Goodbye, cousin,” he whispered,
thinking of all the times they’d played Ultimate Rummy together in
his quarters. “And just so you know, I never once let you win a
hand.”

“Captain, we’re running out of time,” Bruno
said, seeing the water level rising dangerously close to their
position.

“Where’s Lieutenant Nellis?” Kleezebee
asked.

“She’s helping evacuate the crew on the lower
levels,” McKnight said. “We’re taking on water all over the
ship.”

“All right, then, to the escape pods. Let’s
hope the bugs in engineering can’t swim.”

* * *

Kleezebee felt the bottom of the escape pod
scrape along the ocean floor, right before the capsule leaned
forward and came to a dead stop. He opened the hatch, feeling the
blistering rays of sunshine on his face. A hand appeared through
the open hatch from the outside.

“Good to see you, Captain,” Bruno said,
helping him out of the pod.

Kleezebee was standing on a rocky beach in
the middle of a makeshift camp. Stacked up around the site were
corrugated containers, dozens of ration packs and water containers,
two bumper-dumpers, one quart-sized glass container filled with the
gooey nebula substance, and a portable communication unit. “How
many made it out safely?”

“Sorry, Skipper. Only twenty-four of our
ninety-nine made it.”

Kleezebee looked back at the ocean, through
the fourteen empty pods pushed up on shore, hoping to see
additional capsules bobbing their way across the whitecaps. There
were none. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then said,
“Any sign of the bugs?”

Bruno shook his head. “I don’t see how they
could have survived the swim from that deep in the ocean.”

“Have you determined our location?” Kleezebee
asked, looking at the crescent moon low on the horizon. He wiped
off the sweat dripping across his brow.

“It looks like we made it home,” Bruno said,
handing him an empty, rusty tin can of Maxwell House coffee, though
the label was in Spanish. “There’s more trash like this along the
beach.”

Kleezebee was surrounded by Lt. Nellis, Chuck
Blake, and Dr. McKnight, plus seven security team members, two
astrobiologists, one geneticist, two ensigns, two nurses, one chef,
the barber, two machinists, and one engineer: Lt. Roddenberry,
whose nickname was E-Rod. He’d known E-Rod since his first year in
the Science Academy. In all, six females and eighteen males had
made it out alive.

“Are we picking up any radio chatter?”
Kleezebee asked Bruno.

“Nothing on standard Fleet frequencies. But
we’re receiving several broadcasts on the lower AM band. Most are
in Spanish, but we did find a faint signal in English.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Bruno played the broadcast on the portable
comm. unit.

“. . . more following today’s top stories.
Casino Royale
’s premiere makes a splash with Sean Connery at
the helm.
Surveyor 3
successfully lands on the moon after
historic three-day trek. Violent war protests break out in San
Francisco over recent U.S. bombings in Haiphong. The Beatles sign a
contract to stay together for ten more years. Two thousand Red Sox
fans burned alive when gas main erupts and levels Fenway Park.”

“That’s enough, turn it off.”

“What do you think, Skipper? You’re the
history buff.”

“You’re right, sounds like we’re on Earth.
April, ’sixty-seven by the sounds of it. I would say we’re probably
in Mexico, given the excessive heat and the Spanish
broadcasts.”

“
Nineteen
sixty-seven?”

“Perhaps when the Krellians fired on the
rift’s event horizon, their weapons somehow ruptured the fabric of
subspace, sending us back in time,” Nellis answered.

“I thought time travel was not possible,”
Bruno said.

“It’s not. It’s simply a myth started by a
few over-imaginative science fiction authors of the twentieth
century. Einstein was proven wrong in twenty-one eighty-seven when
E-121 was first discovered and we used it to power our engines to
close to light speeds. Time does not slow down when you approach
light speed, it simply shudders, like a three-legged table in an
earthquake. What has already transpired cannot be undone.”

“But the radio broadcast?” Nellis asked.

“It may be a fake,” Bruno said.

“Or we’re not even on Earth,” Nellis added.
“It could be that we’re picking up an ancient radio signal that has
traveled from Earth, arriving here four hundred years later.
However, that would also mean someone went to all the trouble to
fake the rubbish along the beach, too. That seems unlikely.”

“What do you think, Skipper?” Bruno
asked.

Kleezebee bent down and picked up a crumpled
sheet of heavy-bond paper buried in the loose sand. He wiped off
the paper and read its contents aloud, “Playboy . . . February,
nineteen sixty-seven . . . Kim Farber . . . Playmate of the Month.”
He tossed the paper aside. “I don’t know how, but I’m pretty damn
sure we’re on Earth. But a couple things concern me . . . David
Niven was the star of
Casino Royale
, not Sean Connery, and I
don’t remember reading about a deadly gas explosion at Fenway Park
in nineteen sixty-seven.”

“Orders, sir?” Nellis asked.

Kleezebee was preoccupied with the 3D
holo-cell of his wife and son at the Grand Canyon, now buried deep
at the bottom of the ocean under a mile and a half of water. He
didn’t respond.

“Captain?” Nellis asked again.

Kleezebee snapped out of his trance. “Let’s
set up camp for the night and see if any more survivors make their
way here. We’ve got about an hour or so before sunset, so let’s get
to it. In the morning, we’ll head inland for the nearest city.”

“Aye, sir,” several members of the crew said
in unison, before walking away.

Kleezebee grabbed one of the security team
members by the elbow. “Lieutenant, establish a secure perimeter at
fifty meters, and rotate your guards in three-hour shifts. Pull in
some of the other men if you need to fill shifts.”

“Roger that,” the lieutenant replied.

“E-Rod, do you have a moment?” Kleezebee
asked, looking to the rear of the crowd.

The engineer stepped forward.

Kleezebee put his right arm across the back
of Roddenberry’s shoulders. “Eugene, I need you to scuttle the pods
before we leave tomorrow, so make sure you’ve cannibalized whatever
you can from them tonight. We’ll also need the emergency beacons
deactivated. We don’t want any unfriendlies salvaging our
equipment.”

“You got it, DL.”

* * *

Just after sunrise the following morning,
Kleezebee woke up to the sound of a donkey braying. He rolled over
in the sand, sat up, and looked inland. A short Hispanic man
wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, a dirty, long-sleeved shirt, and
gray slacks, was leading a pack mule down the dirt path that led
directly to their base camp. His dark-brown face was almost as
weathered as his prehistoric leather sandals, looking as though he
had spent every moment of his life under a heat lamp.

“
Hola muchachos
,” the man said,
grinning from ear to ear.

Kleezebee sprang to his feet and rushed over
to the visitor. His security detail was only a few steps behind
him. “Do you speak English?”

“
S
í
, señor
. I speak very
much
Englesh
.”

“Can you tell me where we are?”

“You are on a beach,
mi amigo
.”

Kleezebee tried not to laugh, but couldn’t
stop himself. “Not what I meant. Is there a city nearby?”

“
S
í
. Very much close,” The man
held out his hand palm up. “For five dollars American, I will take
you.”

One of Kleezebee’s soldiers pressed the
barrel of his stunner pistol to the Mexican’s temple. “How about
you just tell us where it’s at.”

The man pointed inland to the north.
“Chicxulub. Two kilometers.”

“Thank you.” Kleezebee pulled the guard’s
hand down and away from the visitor’s head. “What’s your name?”

“Jose Cesar Enrique Humberto Ramirez,” the
man answered, pulling out a colorful Mexican blanket and a necklace
from one of his donkey’s packs. “You need blanket? Only two
dollars.”

“No, thanks.”

“I like you, Gringo, how about one dollar?”
The peddler pressed the blanket close to Kleezebee’s face. It
smelled of donkey and sweat. Kleezebee rolled his eyes, pushing it
away.

“What about this necklace. It was
mi
esposa’s
. Real turquoise. Good deal. Only one dollar.”

“No, but I’d be interested in your donkey and
packs. We’ll need them for our long trip home. How much?”

“For you,
mi amigo
, one hundred
dollars,” Jose said. “I give you blanket and necklace.”

Again, the soldier put the stunner to Jose’s
head.

“How about ten dollars,” Jose said without
hesitation.

“We don’t have any money. How about a
trade?”

Jose pointed at the soldier’s weapon.
“
S
í
,
señor
. The pistola?”

“Pick something else. We have food, water,
and supplies.”

“I very much like the watch,” he said,
staring at Bruno’s wrist.

“Deal.” Kleezebee motioned for Bruno to give
up his watch. Bruno handed it to Jose.

“
Gracias, señor
.” Jose slipped his
hand through the twist wristband. “
Muy Bueno
.” He stood
silent for at least a minute, playing with the orange buttons
around its perimeter.

“You should probably be on your way now,”
Kleezebee said, ushering the man gently with his hand.

Jose smiled, took off his straw hat, bowed
quickly, then turned around and walked back down the path, leaving
his mule, trinkets, and packs behind.

Kleezebee sat next to Bruno and E-Rod near
the campfire, rubbing his hands above the flames. “We’re going to
need cash, if we plan on surviving in this time period.”

E-Rod flicked a coal over with a stick. He
pushed it to the middle of the crackling fire. “I suppose a rescue
is impossible.”