Greg Cox - Star Trek - The Original Series - The Rings of Time

“ Mission Control to Lewis & Clark,” a voice spoke to them from Houston. “You are cleared for departure. Bon voyage.”

“Copy that,” Shaun responded. “See you at New Year’s.”

He glanced over at Fontana. “You ready to get this show on the road?”

“Stop stalling and hit the gas,” she shot back. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not getting any younger.”

“All right.” He manually initiated the warm-up sequence. A chronometer on the instrument panel counted down to the precise moment they were scheduled to leave orbit. His father’s dog tags dangled around his neck. “Here goes nothing.”

The Lewis & Clark ’s spanking-new “impulse” engines were state-of-the-art. To date, the technology had been tested on unmanned probes such as Nomad, but this was the first time it had been employed to carry human cargo out into the solar system. The system employed powerful fusion reactors to generate a propulsive stream of high-energy plasma. In theory, it would make interplanetary travel feasible at last.

In theory…

The reactors had been online for hours. The engines idled, ready to go to impulse. The chronometer clicked down to zero, and Shaun felt a sudden surge of acceleration, nowhere near as potent as what he had felt blasting off from the Cape, but the ship was obviously speeding up. He kept a close eye on the gauges and monitors before him, on the lookout for the slightest irregularity or sign of trouble, but everything seemed in order. He had run through this sequence in the simulator more than a dozen times before. It was almost hard to believe he was finally doing it for real.

“Breaking orbit,” he said. “One-quarter power.”

Not wanting to stress the engines right away or accidentally plow into any unexpected space junk at top speed, they planned to start off slowly and gradually accelerate to their maximum speed of 556,000 kilometers per hour. At that rate, they would reach their destination in a little more than ninety days.

“Goodbye, Earth,” Fontana said. “Next stop: Saturn.”

Just a few years ago, the prospect of reaching Saturn in only ninety days would have been nothing but science fiction, but the impulse drive promised to change everything. The stars were still out of reach, except for sleeper ships such as the late, lamented DY-100, but at least it wouldn’t take years to reach the outer planets anymore.

Or so they intended to prove.

“Ninety days,” Fontana mused. “Good thing I loaded plenty of crossword puzzles into my personal reader. Gotta keep my mind sharp.”

Shaun kept his eyes on the gauges. “If your mind was any sharper, it would draw blood.”

“Thanks,” she answered. “I think.”

In truth, they had plenty to keep them occupied on the way to Saturn: observations of Mars, Jupiter, and the asteroid belt, among other things. He had spent a lot of time over the last several weeks explaining why they were bypassing those nearer destinations in favor of Saturn, but they certainly had their reasons, only some of which he had been able to discuss publicly. Mars would have to wait, maybe for the Ares missions. Plans for future interplanetary jaunts were already being drawn up, contingent on the fluctuating economy and the success of this mission.

No pressure there, he thought wryly.

“What the devil?” O’Herlihy exclaimed.

His shocked tone immediately put Shaun on alert. He glanced back over his shoulder at the doctor, who was staring wide-eyed at the display panel before him.

“What is it, Doc?”

“Hold on,” O’Herlihy muttered. “This isn’t possible.”

“What?” Shaun demanded. “Talk to me, Marcus.”

“I picked up an odd transmission, a wireless signal, coming from the habitat module.”

That didn’t make any sense. There were no ship-to-Earth communication systems in the habitat, and nobody was there to operate them in the first place. “Must be a glitch.”

“That’s what I thought, but…” O’Herlihy hesitated, as though he could scarcely believe what he was saying. “There’s activity in the hab. One of the computer terminals has been activated… and it appears that someone has just, er, used the facilities.”

It took Shaun a second to realize what the doctor meant. “The head?”

There were two gravity-free toilets aboard the ship, one in the hab and one mid-deck below the cockpit. Shaun and his fellow astronauts had personally insisted on that particular redundancy. Nobody wanted to get stuck out beyond the asteroid belt without backup facilities.

But nobody was using them right now.

Were they?

“That’s right,” O’Herlihy confirmed. He called up a systems report on his screen. “Waste-disposal suction was activated for approximately five seconds about two minutes ago.”

Shaun set the ship’s controls on automatic, then unstrapped himself from the pilot’s seat and floated over to see for himself. He peered over the doctor’s shoulder at the monitor. “Could it have turned itself on and off?”

“I don’t see how,” O’Herlihy said. “Certainly, it hasn’t been doing that while Alice and I have been testing things. Nor am I aware of any reports concerning such a malfunction.”

“That’s because there aren’t any,” Shaun said. He would have known about any problem with the ship’s systems and hardware, no matter how trivial. The toilets were not supposed to switch on at random, and neither were the computer terminals. And then there was that unaccountable signal O’Herlihy had noticed.

“You don’t think…?” Fontana exchanged a baffled look with the two men. “A stowaway?”

“Get real,” Shaun said. There had never been an actual stowaway in the entire history of human space exploration. That was the stuff of silly sci-fi movies and TV shows. Granted, the Lewis & Clark was bigger and roomier than an old-fashioned space capsule, with a lot more places to hide, but still… “It can’t be.”

“What’s the alternative?” Fontana asked. “A ghost?”

There was only one way to find out. He activated the video-com and hit the speaker button. “Hello? Is anybody there?” He felt ridiculous even asking. “Please identify yourself.”

Nobody answered, of course. The small video screen above the speaker remained blank. Shaun wondered what the hell he had expected. O’Herlihy chuckled and shook his head. “I must say, I didn’t really expect us to go space-happy quite so soo—”

“Oh, hi!” a female voice interrupted him via the comm. A palm covered the video feed. “Is that our skipper speaking?” A playful tone made the moment even more surreal. “I have to ask. Is it now safe for passengers to resume use of personal electronic devices?”

The astronauts stared in shock at the comm. “Oh, no,” O’Herlihy whispered in dismay. From the sound of his voice, only the lack of gravity kept the blood from draining from his face. “This can’t be happening.”

Fontana, on the other hand, acted more pissed-off than chagrined. Turning away from the comm, she glared at the hatch separating them from the habitat. “Did you hear that? Who the hell does she think she is?”

Shaun just wanted answers, pronto. “Who is this?” He pressed down on the speaker button with more force than necessary. “And what are you doing on my ship?”

“Come and see,” the stowaway replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

We’ll see about that, Shaun thought.

He launched himself toward the hatch.

Captain’s log. Stardate 7103.4

The Enterprise is nearing the end of its five-year mission. We have just finished surveying a previously uncharted star system. After nearly half a decade in deep space, seeking out new worlds and civilizations, one has to resist a tendency to take such accomplishments for granted. Exploring the cosmos has become almost routine…