Star Trek: The Rings of Time (11 page)

“I’m more worried about what might happen to you,” Fontana said. “We don’t know anything about that thing or how it might react. There could even be some sort of alien pilot inside. There are too many question marks.”

“That’s why we need to get a closer look,” Shaun said. To be honest, he wanted to check out the probe himself, not via remote control. “Don’t worry. I promise not to make any sudden movements that might alarm it. I wouldn’t
want to start an interplanetary war by mistake.”

Fontana frowned, less than amused by his glib remarks. “I hope to God you’re joking.”

Me, too,
he thought.

For several hours now, they had been maintaining a low polar orbit that brought them back over the probe on a regular basis, but the artifact had yet to react to their presence. Shaun chose to take that as a good sign. Braking thrusters had been deployed to keep them in the probe’s vicinity long enough to carry out this operation. “We haven’t been hiding from it,” he pointed out. “If it’s capable of spotting us, it doesn’t seem to care.”

“So far,” she said.

“Hey, astronauts are optimists, remember?”

“Yes,” Fontana countered, “but we’re not supposed to be daredevils—or bomb-demolition experts.”

Shaun hoped the probe wasn’t wired to self-destruct. “Don’t be silly. Who would bomb Saturn?”

“Pluto?” Zoe suggested. “Maybe it’s still pissed off about not being a planet anymore.”

The stowaway floated beyond the doorway, just outside the airlock. Fontana shot her a dirty look. “You know, it’s not too late to lock you up again.”

Fontana had proposed confining Zoe to the docking ring while they were using the airlock, but Shaun had vetoed that idea. For better or for worse, the intrepid blogger had been aboard the ship for months
and had never given them any reason to suspect her of malignant intent. Furthermore, her story had checked out, so he figured it was safe to let her act as an observer.

“Nah,” Shaun said. “This is possibly the biggest news story of all time. It would be a crime to exclude the only reporter in one-point-two billion kilometers.”

More importantly, if things
did
get hairy, he didn’t want anyone locked up with no escape route. What if they needed to evacuate part of the ship in a hurry?

“If you say so,” Fontana said grudgingly. “Say, if there
is
an alien, maybe we can trade her for the probe.” She thought better of the idea. “No, scratch that. I wouldn’t wish that on any species.”

“Love you, too,” Zoe retorted.

Fontana ignored her. “Let me go with you,” she volunteered. A second spacesuit hung in a niche on the wall. There was no suit for O’Herlihy; protocol dictated that one astronaut remain inside the vessel during every spacewalk. “I can help.”

He shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not risking both pilots. Somebody has to steer this ship if something happens to me.” Glancing down at himself, he thought he looked like a clown with oversized pants. “Let’s just finish getting me suited up. I’ve got an appointment with a probe.”

The other two astronauts held up the hard upper torso assembly so he could wriggle into it. He was grateful for the lack of gravity; the bulky suit would
have weighed more than a hundred pounds on Earth, and that wasn’t counting the jet pack, which he had yet to put on. The life-support system on his back was loaded down with oxygen tanks, fans, pumps, and a water supply. Fontana and O’Herlihy locked the two halves of the suit together and made sure the connections were airtight. Shaun put on his “Snoopy cap” himself. The headphones pressed against his ears. He adjusted the miniature microphone in front of his lips.

“We’ll be monitoring you every second,” O’Herlihy said. He handed Shaun a pair of thick white gloves. Molded rubber fingertips were meant to provide a better grip. He slipped the gloves onto Shaun’s hands and affixed them to metal rings at the end of the sleeves. “Take care . . . and good luck.”

“Thanks, Marcus. Don’t leave without me, okay?”

The doctor chuckled. “As if I know how to drive this thing.”

Fontana approached with Shaun’s helmet, which was made of a tough polycarbonate material. A gold-tinted visor provided protection from UV rays and any glare from the planet and its rings. Built-in cameras and lights were attached to the sides of the helmet.

“Don’t forget your hat,” she said. “I hear it’s cold out.”

O’Herlihy retreated to give them more room and perhaps a bit of privacy.

“I don’t like this,” she whispered. “Not one bit.”

“I know.” He retrieved his lucky dog tags from a hook on the wall, where he had hung them earlier. NASA frowned on accessorizing its high-tech spacesuits. He placed them around her neck. “Look after these until I get back.”

“You know I will.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “For luck,” she explained for the benefit of their audience. Zoe snickered in the doorway, while O’Herlihy refrained from comment. Shaun found a new appreciation for the cooling effects of his elastic undergarments. He was tempted to kiss her back, but the mike in front of his lips made that problematic.

“Thanks,” he said inadequately. “For everything.”

She lowered the helmet onto his head. “Be careful, Shaun. Come back to me.”

He nodded at her through the gold-tinted visor. Her emerald eyes seemed to exert their own gravity, pulling him in. For a moment, he forgot about the probe.

Why exactly did we break up again?

Something to think about later.

Even after he was sealed into the suit, there was much to do before he was ready to exit the ship via the cargo bay. They had to pressurize the suit, frequently adjusting the pressure until it was just right, then test the life-support system and radio communications gear. Not until all of the gauges showed green did the other astronauts lift the jet pack onto his shoulders. The cumbersome device, officially known as the EVA
Maneuvering Unit, fit over the life-support backpack. He didn’t want to think about how much the entire outfit would weigh on Earth or even Saturn.

“Very spiffy!” Zoe took a photo of him. “Now you look like a genuine spaceman.”

Shaun hoped the probe would approve, too. He gave her a thumbs-up as his crewmates exited the airlock, dragging Zoe with them. The hatch closed behind them, and he waited impatiently for the airlock to depressurize so he could enter the cargo bay and get on his way. The probe had been there for hours. He was anxious to make its acquaintance.

Eventually, a green light signaled that he was cleared to proceed. He opened the far hatch and floated into the ship’s cavernous cargo bay, which was large enough to hold more than six months’ worth of provisions and equipment, plus, he hoped, a captured alien probe. As on the rest of the ship, handrails were mounted on the interior walls.

The space doors were already open, and Shaun could look down on the vast expanse of Saturn’s pole. He was struck by how much smaller and more pallid its famous hexagonal vortex had become; it was now only a semblance of its former self, probably no more than fifteen thousand kilometers across. It was startling how much it had shrunk in the short time they had been there. At this rate, there might be nothing left of it by the time they got back home.

His visor shielded him from the glare of the planet.
The probe was silhouetted against the fading hexagon hundreds of kilometers below. Its metallic bronze casing reflected Saturn’s amber light. No longer buried inside a huge ball of ice, the probe’s true configuration had been revealed to resemble an hourglass with dishes mounted at both ends. A glowing turquoise ring orbited its midsection.

Okay,
he thought.
That’s as artificial as can be.

Holding on to the handrails, he made his way out into the cargo bay until he was above the open space doors. A momentary sense of vertigo assailed him. Even though his mind knew that there was no gravity, all of his senses told him that he would fall to his death if he let go of the rail. He tightened his grip.

Shake it off,
he told himself. He had experienced this sensation before; it was a fairly common reaction on spacewalks. He took a deep breath and loosened his grip.
You can do this.

“Christopher to
Lewis & Clark,
” he said into the mike. By now, the others would be in place on the flight deck, monitoring his transmissions. “Preparing to exit vehicle.”

“Copy that, Shaun,”
Marcus replied via the radio.
“Have a safe flight.”

“Just wait until you see the souvenir I bring back.”

Letting go of the rail, he activated the jet pack. A burst of nitrogen gas propelled him out of the cargo bay and into the endless void outside the ship. Two dozen miniature jets, pointed at various angles, allowed
him to direct his flight via the hand controls at his waist. Momentum carried him toward the probe.

Saturn’s crown loomed before him, seeming even larger and more intimidating than before. As even the ship was nothing but an infinitesimal speck compared with the magnificent gas giant and its glittering rings, Shaun suddenly felt like the smallest of subatomic particles. “There is no zero,” he whispered, quoting one of his favorite science-fiction movies. “I still exist.”

Despite the crucial and risky task before him, he took a moment to marvel at the awe-inspiring vista, which boggled the mind. He wondered if people would ever get used to unearthly sights like that. Part of him still couldn’t believe that he was really there, where no man had gone before . . .

That’s enough sightseeing,
he thought, snapping out of his reverie. His oxygen tanks held at least eight hours of air, but that was no reason to waste time gawking. He jetted toward the probe, letting Saturn’s meager gravity, which, despite the gas giant’s size, was roughly comparable to Earth’s, add to his acceleration. Within minutes, the probe was directly ahead of him, approximately three hundred yards away.

The alien artifact looked like no Earthly spacecraft that Shaun was familiar with. At least three meters long, it had not budged from its stationary orbit high above the hexagon. He would have whistled in appreciation, but that wasn’t an option; as generations of astronauts had discovered, pressurized space
helmets made whistling impossible. Inspecting the probe with his own eyes, he noted how shiny and undamaged it appeared, despite having traversed the solar system inside a comet. He wondered how long and how far it had traveled. All the way from another solar system?

Probably,
he thought. Millennia of observation of Earth’s brother and sister planets had never turned up even a hint of a civilization capable of launching a probe like this. The spacecraft had to have come from an extrasolar planet light-years away. Unless, of course, this was the world’s most elaborate practical joke.
You know, I wouldn’t put that past Zoe.

“Closing on target,” he reported. “Will conduct visual survey before attempting capture.”

“Take your time, Shaun,”
Marcus said.
“No need to rush this.”

“Copy that.” Shaun used his braking jets to slow his approach. He circled the probe cautiously, alert to any unexpected developments, yet the onetime comet continued to ignore him. That was fine with Shaun.

Where did you come from?
he wondered.
And why are you here?

The next step was to determine whether it could be easily moved. Its weight was no issue in space; as an astronaut, he had routinely carted two-thousand-pound satellites around. But it was still unclear what means of propulsion the probe employed to hold itself in place above the planet. It was very possible that it might
resist being relocated, in which case, they would have to rethink their plans.

Let’s try just a little shove first,
he decided. “Pre-paring to make contact with object. Stand by.”

He moved in closer, a meter at a time. Ten meters, six meters, three meters—

Without warning, the probe’s lower dish lit up. It fired pulses of incandescent cobalt energy at Saturn, straight into the heart of the faded polar vortex. The pulse crossed the distance between the planet and the probe at the speed of light. Shaun frantically hit the brakes to avoid flying into the path of the pulses.

“Crap!” he blurted. “What the hell?”

Despite the vacuum of space, a sort of drumbeat pounded in his head. He tapped the side of his helmet, but the staccato rhythm didn’t go away, making it hard to think. He jetted away from the probe, which fired one last pulse at the planet below.

What was it doing?

He stared down at the probe’s target. To his amazement, a bright blue glow flared up at the center of the vortex, then rapidly expanded outward. The image of a giant glowing hexagon, matching the storm’s original dimensions, was briefly imprinted on his retinas before he was forced to look away despite his tinted visor. A blinding glare lit up the vacuum.

“Shaun!”
Fontana shouted.
“Get out of there now!”

Before he could respond, what felt like a shock wave hit him, sending him tumbling away from the probe.
He struggled to regain control of his flight but found himself tossed through space like a piece of cosmic flotsam. His jets failed to arrest his headlong flight.

Damn!
he thought.
Maybe we should have used the robot arm after all . . .

And then it was over. The light subsided, and the shock wave moved past him. Testing the controls, he managed to come to a halt thirty meters away from the probe. Gasping, he sucked down precious oxygen. His heart pounded in his chest.

Fontana yelled in his ears.
“Shaun! Talk to me! Are you all right?”

“I think so.” He conducted a quick visual inspection of his suit but didn’t spot any burns or punctures. No vapor seemed to be escaping into the vacuum. All gauges read green. He patted himself just to be safe. “Just a little shaken up, that’s all.” He could still see the energy bursts pulsing in his memory. An afterimage of a shining hexagon lingered in his vision. “What just happened there?”