An airlock sealed the bay from the rest of the ship. Its outer door slid open, and he drifted inside. Anxious faces stared at him through a small rectangular window in the sealed door at the opposite end of the airlock. The faces belonged to a handsome red-haired woman and an older man with a beard and a grave expression. He searched his memory for their names.
Fontana. O’Herlihy.
He would have to be careful what he said to them, Kirk realized, to avoid causing unwanted changes to history and the future. As he knew better than most, even a minor alteration to the past could send potentially catastrophic ripples down the timeline. He had learned that lesson the hard way. A lovely face surfaced from his memory, along with an aching sense of loss.
Edith…
He shoved the painful memory back. The door behind him closed. Moments later, a green indicator light indicated that the airlock had been fully pressurized. The door before him whooshed open.
“Shaun! Thank God!”
The woman, who had to be astronaut Alice Fontana, launched herself into the airlock. She hugged him tightly as they collided in midair, her momentum carrying them backward to the rear of the airlock. He could feel her enthusiastic embrace even through his spacesuit. Her own figure was clothed in a much more flattering blue jumpsuit.
“Er, I think there might be a misunderstanding here,” Kirk said, gently extricating himself from her arms. She had evidently mistaken him for Colonel Shaun Christopher, the leader of the expedition. He had no idea what had become of Christopher, but he suspected that the other two astronauts were in for a surprise. Unscrewing his helmet, he braced himself for their startled reactions. “I know this must be a shock, but—”
To his surprise, they didn’t look startled at all. The other man — Marcus O’Herlihy — approached him. “The only error, Shaun, was letting you get up close and personal with that probe in the first place. We should have taken more precautions.”
Kirk was confused. Why were they still addressing him as Shaun?
An alarming possibility occurred to him. He peeked at his helmet’s reflective visor.
The face of a stranger stared back at him.
The face of Shaun Geoffrey Christopher?
The astounding truth hit him with the force of a photon torpedo. Never mind his own time or ship. He wasn’t even in his own body anymore!
This is Janice Lester all over again, he thought, remembering the last time he’d found his mind inhabiting a body other than his own. He froze in shock. The helmet slipped from his numb fingers. It drifted away.
Fontana noted his stunned reaction. She gently took hold of his arm. “Shaun? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Think fast, Kirk thought. I can’t let them know who I really am.
History held no record of Colonel Shaun Christopher being possessed by the displaced consciousness of a starship captain from the twenty-third century. Kirk was pretty sure he would have remembered that part.
“It’s nothing,” he murmured. “I’m just a little shook up, I guess.”
“Small wonder,” O’Herlihy said. “After what you’ve been through. I think our first order of business is a thorough physical exam, once we get you out of that suit.” He held up his hand to forestall any protests. “No arguments, Shaun. You just got zapped by a presumably extraterrestrial probe. A physical is the very least that’s called for. Be thankful I don’t want to dissect you.”
“All right, Doctor,” Kirk said. “Just give me a moment to catch my breath.”
How long was he going to have to impersonate Shaun, he wondered, and how exactly did he expect to pull that off? Was there any way to get back to his own time and body?
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Fontana asked. “You seem… different.”
“Only a little fuzzy-headed, like I said.” Kirk tried to figure out what the real Shaun Christopher would say next. Probably the same thing I would.
“What about the probe? Do we still have it on sensors?”
“Sensors?” O’Herlihy sounded puzzled by the term. “You mean LIDAR? We lost track of the probe right after you got zapped. We should try locating it again, after we get you checked out, but the way it was moving, I suspect it’s long gone, possibly back to wherever it came from.”
“Good riddance,” Fontana said forcefully. She began to help Kirk out of his spacesuit. “I know, I know. That’s not a very scientific attitude, but I don’t like surprises, especially when they almost get one of us killed.”
“You’ve got a point there.” A new voice intruded on the discussion. “Who knew I was going to be the second-biggest wrinkle in your mission plans?”
The unexpected voice caught Kirk by surprise.
Who?
A petite, dark-haired woman stuck her head into the airlock. She was oriented at a one-hundred-eighty-degree angle to Kirk, so that she appeared to be hanging upside-down in the doorway. Unlike the other two astronauts, she was dressed like a civilian, wearing simply a T-shirt and shorts. A folded blue jumpsuit rested in her grip. She grinned at Kirk.
“Glad to have you back, Skipper. For a few moments there, I was afraid I was going to have to fill in for you on the rest of this cruise.”
Fontana frowned. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Who the devil? Kirk tried not to stare at the newcomer. He had read up on this groundbreaking mission before, most recently after a certain time-warped encounter with a Captain John Christopher a few years back, and he was certain that there had not been a second woman aboard the Lewis & Clark. History recorded that the first Earth — Saturn mission had been conducted by a crew of three: O’Herlihy, Fontana, and Christopher.
So, who was this, and what was she doing there?
“I always joke,” she replied, “especially after I’m nearly scared to death. You should know that by now.” She turned herself right-side up and floated past Fontana to give Kirk a friendly hug. “No more of that, okay? I don’t need a scoop that bad.”
“All right,” he said carefully. He didn’t even know this woman’s name, let alone what her relationship with Shaun was like. “Trust me, I wasn’t planning on any of this, either.”
At least he didn’t have to feign confusion or fatigue. In the last forty-five minutes or so, he had been jolted by an alien probe, nearly lost in space, and found himself stuck in another man’s body more than two centuries in the past. He had felt better.
With the others’ help, he began to change out of the heavy spacesuit into a fresh blue jumpsuit. Dressing in zero g was more challenging than he remembered, and he did so clumsily. Loose sleeves and pant legs floated about like underwater fronds. He thrust his leg into the jumpsuit too hard and accidentally launched his head into the ceiling. His scalp smacked against a bulkhead.
“Ow!”
Fontana shook her head. “Boy, you really are out of it, aren’t you?” She grabbed his ankle and pulled him back down to the center of the airlock. “No uncontrolled takeoffs, remember?” She held him steady while he worked his arms into the sleeves. The texture was different from that of his Starfleet uniform, rougher and more loose-fitting, but he supposed it would have to do. She zipped him into the suit. “Okay, that’s more like it.”
“Thanks.”
While it was mildly embarrassing to need help dressing himself, he appreciated her assistance and her obvious concern for his well-being. He couldn’t help noticing that both she and the mystery woman were quite attractive, something Shaun’s body noticed as well. He thought back again to that time he had switched bodies with Janice Lester.