Star Trek: TOS #75 - First Frontier by Diane Carey & Dr. James I. Kirkland

Author:Diane Carey & Dr. James I. Kirkland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1995-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

HIS SHIP UNDER ATTACK. And the captain off board. Two perilous situations, each demanding his attention. One to save his ship, the other, his civilization.

For a wild instant, the two were equal. Then his oath sank in, his promise to sacrifice one for the other.

“Negative. We’re on to something down here. Engage the enemy, Mr. Scott.”

“Aye aye, sir. Good luck.”

The communicator hovered at Jim Kirk’s lips. He couldn’t put it down. His eyes went to the sky.

Guilt gnawed at his gut, and he hungered for the option of halfheartedness. Only by mustering his deepest sense of priority could he turn his attention once again to the thing that dubbed itself the Guardian of Forever.

Such a wide term for so many blunt, dangerous seconds.

Something was botched but good. The lives of his crew depended on his next decision. All four hundred thirty-two of them could step through this machine, perhaps into the Vulcan past, and live out their lives, perhaps building their own destiny—the new Adams and Eves of the human race.

The planet moved at his side, the rocks swarmed like water, and somebody took his arm.

“Jim?”

He forced his back straight. “I’m all right.”

But with that physician’s glower, McCoy frowned at him. “I wish I was half as good a liar as you are. Let me at least have the ship beam down something for you to lean on.”

“A cane?”

“Of course, a cane. It’ll give you character. After that I’ll prescribe five o’clock shadow and a fedora.”

Kirk put his hand on McCoy’s communicator before the doctor got the grid open. “No. They’ve got their hands full up there. There’ll be time for me later.”

In his periphery, a reflection from the screen flashed on his own shoulder, creating a bulb of mustard gold. His uniform…

The gravity of his choices weighed him down. He couldn’t get away from it anymore than a cat could walk away from its tail.

“Jim.” McCoy shook him out of his molasses-covered thoughts. “You’re not thinking of going through that thing…”

Squeezing his fists, Kirk shuddered out a breath and gazed at the ovoid rock formation. “We might have to,” he said.

Even without looking he saw the doctor’s face flush white. Not pale, not dusky—absolutely stone white.

Kirk looked at him and suddenly saw only McCoy. Not until now had he realized the villification of the Guardian of Forever in Leonard McCoy’s eyes. The thing in front of them had worked a bitter trick on them a long time ago, especially on McCoy. Under the influence of a dangerous drug he had stepped through there and changed history with a sweep of his innocent hand. Mending the slip had nearly torn the innards out of them all and made them sensitive to the tender strands of time.

They’d barely gotten over those terrible hours, and to this day they were still soulsick.

Millions will die who did not die before…

“Now wait a minute,” McCoy burst in. “Time travel is one thing when it involves a few hundred years. What will the effects

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