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

“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “Why not? Provided you don’t try to blow up the ship between now and dinnertime.”

He wasn’t really worried about that anymore. NASA had checked out her story, and she appeared to be just what she claimed to be: an unusually nervy journalist out to make a name for herself. Over the last few weeks, he had been gradually letting her out of their improvised brig more often, for the sake of her health and sanity. He wasn’t about to grant her free run of the ship anytime soon, but as long as she behaved herself, there was probably no need to keep her locked up all the time. She actually wasn’t bad company, although he suspected that his copilot felt otherwise.

“Fontana won’t object?”

“Undoubtedly,” Shaun predicted. Fontana had not yet warmed to Zoe; she still regarded the stowaway as an intruder. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Rank has its privileges, huh?”

“And seniority,” Shaun said. “These gray hairs must count for something.”

“Yeah, you’ve been at this game for some time now, haven’t you? I did my homework on all of you before I boarded this cruise, as it were. You’ve got quite an interesting résumé, Colonel Christopher.” She kept up a steady pace on the treadmill. Shaun could smell the rubber soles of her sneakers heating up from the friction. “Say, Skipper, at the risk of pushing my luck, do you mind if I ask you some questions about your illustrious career — including your stint at Area 51?”

Oh, boy, he thought, going on alert. Here it comes . He’d been expecting this; it was a wonder that she had waited so long to bring it up. Probably wanted to ingratiate herself first.

“That’s classified, and you know it.”

“Even after all these years? C’mon, Skipper. Throw me a bone. What else are we going to talk about the next umpteen million miles?”

“There’s not much to tell,” he lied. “If you must know, yes, I was assigned to the Groom Lake Facility, popularly known as Area 51, for a brief time back in the nineties, where I helped test experimental aircraft that I can’t really talk about. Not exactly the stuff of tabloid headlines.”

That wasn’t the whole story, of course. In fact, he had been assigned to the development and construction of the DY-100, an experimental “sleeper ship” employing advanced technology reverse-engineered from a crashed “Ferengi” spacecraft recovered in Roswell back in 1947. If all had gone well, Shaun might have piloted the DY-100 on its maiden voyage, but the prototype had mysteriously vanished in 1996 under circumstances that puzzled him to this day. His friend and colleague, Shannon O’Donnell, had taken the fall for the loss of the DY-100, effectively ending her NASA career, but he’d always suspected that there was more to the story than she had ever let on. Last he’d heard, she had been involved with the Millennium Gate project in Indiana, and the DY-100 project had been tabled indefinitely. Maybe they’ll take those diagrams out of mothballs someday, he thought, if we pull this Saturn jaunt off without any more hitches.

He liked to think so.

“Why am I not buying this?” Zoe asked aloud. “You must have some good dirt from those days.”

“Sorry.” He tried to wave it off as if it was no big deal. “Believe me, Area 51 was not nearly as interesting as the TV specials and conspiracy theorists make out.”

“No alien autopsies or captured spaceships?”

“‘Fraid not.” He tried to change the subject. “Although my dad sighted a UFO once, back in the sixties.”

“Really?” Zoe sounded intrigued. “How did I miss that?”

“Well, there’s not much to the story.” Shaun fingered the dog tags around his neck. “The Air Force picked up a UFO on radar and sent my dad up in a fighter jet to check it out. He thought he glimpsed something in the sky over Omaha, but then it was gone in a blink. To be honest, he’s still not sure whether he really saw something or not.”

“What do you think?” Zoe asked.

“Who knows? It could have been a visiting spacecraft.”

As a kid, he had asked his dad to tell him about that UFO sighting over and over again; hell, it had probably helped inspire his lifelong interest in space travel. And his tour of duty at Area 51, years later, had certainly left Shaun open to the prospect of intelligent life from other worlds. He wasn’t about to dismiss what his dad had seen, however briefly, as just a trick of the light.

“Look at us,” he said, gesturing around at the cramped interior of the Lewis & Clark, which had been named after two legendary explorers. “We’re heading into space to see what — and who — might be out there. I have to imagine that other intelligent species are just as curious.” He chuckled, just so she wouldn’t think he was too much of a UFO nut. “Not that I’m expecting to run into any little green men on this mission.”

“Or any sexy green girls?”

“Sadly, no,” Shaun said. “But I like the way your mind works.” He saw another way to divert the conversation away from Area 51. “I’ve been reading some of your blogs, by the way. NASA transmitted them to me — as part of their background check. It seems you have something of a cult following on the Internet.”

Zoe beamed, clearly flattered. “So, what did you think?”

“To be honest, they were a little far-out for my tastes.” He called up one of her online exposés on the computer terminal. “You really think Khan Noonien Singh is still alive?”

A notorious dictator, Khan had wielded consider-able power back in the nineties. At the height of his influence, he was said to have been the de facto ruler of large portions of India, South Asia, and the Middle East. He had been overthrown in ’96—about the same time the DY-100 had disappeared, come to think of it. That had been a pretty tumultuous year.

“Maybe. They never found his body, you know — at least, not that it could be reliably determined. What’s more, according to my research, some eighty of his closest advisers and followers remain unaccounted for.”

Shaun hadn’t heard that before. “Where do you think they are? Tora Bora? A luxury estate in Kashmir?”

“Haven’t figured that out yet,” she admitted. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll find them waiting for us out by Saturn.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” he said. “Although you certainly have a vivid imagination, I’ll give you that.”

She grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

The timer beeped.

“That’s it,” he announced. “You’re done for the day.”

“Thank God!” She switched off the treadmill and unhooked the harness. “My feet are killing me. They’re not used to supporting all that weight, you know.”

“Don’t remind me.” His feet always felt positively raw when he got on the treadmill. He traded places with Zoe and strapped himself in. Back in orbit around Earth, he had once jogged in place for a full ninety minutes, just so he could say that he had literally run around the entire planet. He flicked the treadmill on. It felt as if he was walking on a bed of nails.

And he still had an hour to go!

“Oh, my poor little piggies.” She peeled off her socks and sneakers. Floating free, she massaged her aching feet. “Hey, Skipper, since we’re finally opening up and all, mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Not about Area 51, I hope.”

“Nah, although don’t think for a minute that I’ve given up on that angle.” She wiped off her sweaty face and limbs with a towel. “This is just for my own curiosity. Off the record.”

He started to pick up the pace. “Okay, shoot.”

“What’s the story with you and Fontana?”