“Occupational hazard,” O’Herlihy quipped, not unlike McCoy. “Just ask my wife.”
“Sorry for the delay, Doctor.” Kirk settled into the pilot’s seat. He guessed that was Shaun Christopher’s usual spot. “My fault. I guess I’m not exactly at the top of my game.”
“Don’t apologize,” O’Herlihy said. “If we were back on Earth, you’d already be on medical leave, if not under observation twenty-four/seven.”
Yes, Kirk decided. He definitely reminds me of Bones.
“We have a job to do, Doctor. I intend to do it.”
He had already started covertly studying the ship’s operations manuals. The technology was remarkably simple by twenty-third-century standards. Scotty would have been appalled by the unsophisticated systems and engineering. Why, they were still getting by on a first-generation impulse drive. Zefram Cochrane hadn’t even been born yet.
If nothing else, Kirk reflected, he had been given a front-row seat to space history in the making. The Lewis & Clark was a covered wagon compared with the Enterprise, which just made its crew’s dedication and courage all the more impressive. Fontana and O’Herlihy, not to mention Christopher, were true pioneers, venturing out into the unforgiving void with nothing but a crude titanium hull to protect them. They had no deflectors, no phasers, no photon torpedoes, no transporters. Not even artificial gravity or universal translators.
I need to appreciate this opportunity, he thought. Not take it for granted.
“All right, then,” O’Herlihy said. “Let’s get down to business.” He leafed through a stack of printouts. “We’ve received the latest updates from Mission Control. Seems they’re keeping a tight lid on any info about that probe, and they expect us to do the same.”
“So, they’re keeping the whole thing quiet,” Fontana said. “Just like they did about our unwanted guest earlier.”
Kirk observed that Zoe had not been invited to the briefing. No surprise there. He wondered what the enticing stowaway was up to at that moment. Just working on her “blog,” whatever that was?
“Exactly. They don’t want to stir up any more controversy about this mission, especially since we didn’t manage to retrieve the probe.” O’Herlihy clucked in regret. “A pity it zipped away like that. Just think of all we could have learned from it!”
Don’t worry, Kirk thought. We’ll run into it again — two hundred and fifty years from now.
“It’s completely gone?” Fontana asked. “There’s no sign of it?”
O’Herlihy shook his head. “LIDAR tracked it to the edge of the solar system before losing it. Hubble has lost sight of it, too. It’s long gone.”
Kirk frowned. He hoped that they hadn’t also lost their best chance of putting him back where he belonged, both physically and temporally. He remembered how battered and decrepit the probe had appeared in his time. What if the future version of the probe was too damaged to reverse whatever it had done the first time?
Is it already en route to Klondike VI, he wondered, or does it have other errands to attend to first? Maybe some other gas giants to observe?
“I wonder where it came from,” Fontana said. “And what it was doing here.”
“We may never know,” O’Herlihy said sadly. “In the meantime, however, NASA wants us to continue with our mission and complete our observations of Saturn and its moons. And, Lord, is there plenty to observe.”
“Such as?” Kirk asked.
“Take a look at this.” O’Herlihy relocated to one of the auxiliary terminals and called up an image on a monitor. Kirk and Fontana looked over his shoulder. “These are our latest photos of Saturn’s north pole, taken during our last pass.”
The famous hexagonal vortex looked just the way Kirk remembered it from the future, spread vibrantly for thousands of kilometers atop the planet. It looked just like the travel photos and calendar shots he had seen his entire life, not to mention his own personal memories.
“It’s back to normal,” he realized. “Just like before.”
“That’s right,” the scientist confirmed. “What’s more, I’ve been running an analysis of the rings. They’ve also stabilized. The vast majority of the ring matter has already fallen back into its usual formations.”
“Just in the last day or so?” Fontana stared at the monitor. She voiced the thought they were probably all thinking. “Was it the probe? Did it do something?”
“Possibly. Probably.” O’Herlihy scratched his beard. “There were those energy pulses right before you ran into difficulty, Shaun. As nearly as I can tell, the pulses were directed at the planet’s north pole, right into the heart of the vortex.”
Kirk pondered the scientist’s report. “What kind of energy, Doctor?”
“I’m not sure,” O’Herlihy admitted. “Possibly a stream of charged particles or directed plasma waves. Like a laser, almost.”
Or a phaser? Kirk wondered. Actual phasers would not be developed by Earth science for at least two centuries. Had the probe fired some variety of phaser at Saturn? Spock had not detected any defensive systems aboard the probe, but perhaps its phaser banks operated on different principles and were not recognized by the Enterprise’s sensors. Or maybe the beams were simply a previously unknown type of directed energy. In either case, they would be beyond O’Herlihy’s experience.
“So, the beams rebooted the hexagon somehow?” Fontana speculated, apparently more interested in their function than their nature. “Which stabilized the rings? That’s fantastic!”
But not unheard of, Kirk thought. He recalled the alien hieroglyphics on the probe and that obelisk back on Miramanee’s world. Once activated, the obelisk had projected a powerful deflector beam that had kept the planet from being struck by an oncoming asteroid. Was it possible that the probe had been designed to serve a similar purpose, fixing Saturn’s deteriorating rings? Or, more likely, resetting some other mechanism hidden somewhere deep within the mysterious hexagon?
“You may be on to something,” he told Fontana. “Perhaps the probe was here to repair Saturn’s rings.”
“And it left once it completed its mission?” Marcus seized on the idea, visibly fascinated. “But who sent the probe? And what interest would they have in maintaining Saturn’s rings?”
Good questions, Kirk thought. He wished he could tell O’Herlihy and Fontana more about the Preservers, not that there was much to tell. The ancient aliens were a mystery even in his own time. Had they anticipated humanity colonizing this solar system in the future and wanted to keep Saturn and its moons stabilized for Earth’s benefit? Or did they have another motive for fixing the ringed giant? Perhaps they simply wanted to preserve one of the sector’s natural wonders for conservation or aesthetic reasons. It would be funny, he mused, if the Preservers ultimately turned out to be some sort of cosmic park service.
“Shaun,” O’Herlihy asked him, “you were out there when those pulses fired. What did you see before the probe shocked you?”
You mean, what did Christopher see, Kirk thought, before I set up shop in his body. In truth, his last memory before finding himself in orbit was of touching the probe in the Enterprise’s transporter room. He hadn’t seen the pulses O’Herlihy was talking about.