The Folded World (8 page)

“Aye, sir.” He did. The steady drone of the shuttle's engines vanished. Now Kirk felt doubly vulnerable, in a tiny craft under no power at all.

“Engines are off, Mister Scott,” Bunker declared. He had a rugged face, and silver threads shooting
through his short, dark hair made him look older than he was. But he had the hands of a surgeon, and he knew how to fly a shuttle.

“
Here comes a shove,
” Scotty announced. “
Ye might feel a wee jolt.
”

“Hang on,” Kirk warned. He was glad he had. When the tractor beam reached them, the sensation was less a “wee jolt” and more like they'd been rear-ended by a craft twice their size.

“Everybody okay?” he asked when the shuttle had leveled off again.

A chorus of responses in the affirmative reached his ears.

“Mister Scott,” Kirk called.

“
Aye, Captain?
”

“When you push the second shuttle, you might want to try a lighter touch, Scotty. Or at the very least, make your warning a little stronger.”

“
Sorry, Captain. I didnae mean t' shake everybody up.
”

“Understood. Everything seems fine now. Kirk out.”

And everything
was
fine. The tractor beam pushed the shuttle gently through the vacuum of space. Through the forward ports, he could see the kaleidoscope of colors loom larger, signifying that the dimensional fold was growing closer and closer.

“Steady, people,” Kirk said. “We're about to go inside, and we haven't the slightest idea what we'll find there.”

“What do you think it'll be like, Mister Spock?” someone behind him asked. Kirk thought it was Vandella, but he wasn't certain.

“I am uncertain,” Spock replied, “but—”

Before he could finish his thought, the shuttle passed through the boundary of the fold.

“Captain!” Bunker called. “We've lost all our instruments!”

The comm system speakers crackled with static. Kirk could barely make out Scotty's voice. “
Captain
 . . .
lost you on
 . . .
status
 . . .”

“We're fine, Scotty!” Kirk called. He had no idea if his signal would reach the
Enterprise,
but the ship's communication systems were more sophisticated than the shuttle's, so there was a chance. “We're inside the anomaly, but we're fine!”

“Captain,” Bunker said again. He sounded beyond anxious. “I've got no control.”

“We didn't expect to, Mister Bunker. Steady as she goes.”

“I hope everybody's strapped in,” Bunker said. “Because we're—”

He couldn't get the rest of his sentence out, but his meaning was obvious. The shuttle was rolling to starboard, fast. Outside, violet lightning carved a jagged streak across Kirk's field of view, burning into his retinas. The light inside the shuttle was a strange shade of pink, flickering toward red near Kirk's fellow
passengers, as if they were throwing off energy that altered the light's properties.

He gripped the console, as if that, rather than the straps, would hold him in. Halfway through the roll, the shuttle's artificial gravity cut out. In a way it was a blessing, since it eliminated some of the nausea-making effects of the ship's motion. It had its own drawbacks, though, as everything loose in the shuttle's interior that had started to fall during the roll stopped and floated, bringing some of it back to where it could bump into the passengers. Kirk saw a tricorder heading toward him, and wondered who hadn't secured it.

“It's been a hell of a long time since I've been airsick,” McCoy said through clenched teeth. “But this trip just might do it.”

Kirk glanced over at Spock. Through his helmet, the Vulcan's flesh looked pale, his lips were clamped shut, his eyebrows arched.

“. . .
Kirk
 . . .
read me?
” Scotty's voice demanded. Most of the transmission was lost to static.

“Scotty!” Kirk called. “We're experiencing some . . . turbulence. But the shuttle's intact and we're okay.”

“. . .
cap
 . . .
jector
 . . .”

“Never mind that, Jim,” McCoy said. “He can't hear you and we can't hear him.”

The doctor was right. And Kirk had other things to worry about. The shuttle's interior lights flickered twice, then blinked out. At the same instant, the gentle
background hum of its climate control system stilled. With it, the voices of the passengers went quiet.

“All systems are down, Captain,” Bunker said. “We're dead in the water.”

Everybody had an environmental suit on, so their temperature and oxygen needs would be met for a while—if
those
systems continued to work. If not . . . then coming into the dimensional fold was the mistake that many had believed it would be.

“We are on our own,” Spock said. “We cannot reach Mister Scott, nor can we warn the second shuttle to turn around.”

“Full speed ahead,” Kirk said. Then he thought better of his response. “There must be a way to fix this.”

“ ‘Fixing' it is beyond our capabilities,” Spock said. “The most we can do is hang on and hope.”

“Hope?” McCoy echoed. “That's the best you've got?”

“It is the only option available to us at the moment, Doctor.”

“Being upset with each other isn't going to help,” Kirk said. “And it'll use up your oxygen faster.”

“I know, Jim,” McCoy said. “Sorry, Spock.”

“No apology is required.”

“Oh, for Pete's sake, you—”

McCoy stopped in the middle of his sentence, because the shuttle shook as if it had just run into something solid. At the same instant, the interior lights returned, except—
reversed
was the only way Kirk could conceptualize it, like a negative image from
an old photographic process. The light being emitted from the fixtures was black, the deepest shadows pure white. Every other surface was a shade of gray: light ones darker and dark ones lighter.

And the shuttle began a reverse of its earlier roll. Halfway through, the artificial gravity kicked in. Floating objects began to fall toward the overhead. Kirk recognized the tricorder, and realized it was in the exact same position he had seen it before. The odds against that happening were astronomical, unless—

The captain glanced at Bones and Spock. They were in precisely the same positions they had been before, their facial expressions identical. Even he was gripping the console in the exact same way.

This was not
like
the earlier roll, in the opposite direction—this
was
the earlier roll, in reverse. They were reliving the moment, backward, with the only difference being his awareness of it.

It couldn't be happening.

But—unless a lack of oxygen was causing him to hallucinate—it was.

When the roll was finished, the lighting returned to normal, much to Kirk's relief. Nearly everyone spoke at once, and Scotty's voice blared from the speakers, still cut by static but not as completely obscured as before. “
canna read you, shut
 . . .
tain, are you
 . . .”

“We're okay, Mister Scott,” Kirk replied, hoping
that this time the chief engineer could hear him. “Repeat, we're unharmed.”

“All systems are back on line,” Bunker reported.

“
Roger that, Captain,
” Scotty said. “
I read ye loud and clear that time.
”

“And you, Scotty,” Kirk said. “Loud and clear.”

Sweat beaded McCoy's forehead. He probably wanted to mop it, but didn't dare remove his helmet. “That's a little better,” he said.

“It is indeed,” Kirk said. “Theories, Mister Spock?”

“It is possible,” Spock replied, “that the effects of the dimensional fold are more pronounced at its edges and that the interior of the fold is more stable. Having passed through what appeared to be a time reversal, we may have seen the worst of it.”

“I like the sound of that,” McCoy said.

“It is also possible,” Spock continued, “that what we are experiencing now is the exception and the other the rule. In which case, all precautionary measures should remain in effect.”

“Well, thanks for that,” McCoy observed.

“Point taken, Mister Spock,” Kirk said. “It appears that our environmental systems are back, but we can't count on them staying that way. Keep your helmets on and be ready for anything.”

“Captain,” O'Meara said from behind Spock. “Can we contact the second shuttle? See how they're faring?”

“Kirk to engineering,” Kirk said. “Scotty, any news on the other shuttle?”

“
We lost 'em as soon as they entered the anomaly,
” Scotty replied. “
Same as we did you.
”

“Give them a minute and then try again,” Kirk said. “How's our heading?”

“
You're still on course.
”

“Good.”

“
In fact—
”

“Yes?”

“Captain,” Bunker interrupted. “We're there.”

Miranda Tikolo had hoped she might doze off on the shuttle trip. Her sleep the night before had been restless, riven by bad dreams. But stepping onto the shuttle, all the memories of that time off Outpost 4 had come roaring back to her. Her heart rate quickened and she had a hard time drawing breath. She took a seat, grateful to get off suddenly unsteady legs.

“Are you okay?” someone asked. In their environmental suits, everybody looked the same, and Tikolo was having a hard time focusing. Her vision seemed to have narrowed down to a slender tube, with darkness encroaching on every side. The suit felt as if it was squeezing in on her, compressing her chest.

“Fine,” she said. “I'm fine. Yeah.”

“Because you look a little pale.”

“I said I'm fine,” Tikolo snapped. “Sorry.”

“Okay, okay.”

The petty officer strapped herself in. The pressure of the straps made the claustrophobic sensations even worse, but she swallowed her discomfort. There was no way out of it; she had volunteered for the mission,
and when the captain had offered an opportunity to back out, she hadn't taken it. She was in it for the duration.

Within a few minutes, everyone had boarded, and the shuttle was in motion, leaving the
Enterprise
behind.

•   •   •

The forward ports were filled with the accumulated starships gathered around the big one in the middle. “Big” didn't actually begin to describe it. The closer they got, the more Kirk realized that it was gigantic, larger by far than any ship he had ever seen. From here, it didn't appear all that impressive from a technological viewpoint—almost primitive, in fact, as if all the effort expended on it had gone into size instead of sophistication.

Some of the ships clustered around it were of recognizable origins. The
McRaven
was clearly visible, dead ahead. Kirk thought another was also a Starfleet ship, though of a class not manufactured for many years. Some of the ships were decaying, seemingly rusted through despite the lack of an atmosphere, and jammed so close together that they seemed to have melted into one another, making identification impossible. He thought he saw a Romulan bird-of-prey, an Andorian cruiser, something that might have been Tholian.

The big ship in the middle, though, was of no genesis Kirk could determine. “Mister Spock, can
you determine the planet of origin of that huge ship?”

“No, Captain. I see no familiar markings or technology. In fact, there are no visible markings of any kind.”

That was strange in itself. Kirk couldn't recall an example of a completely unmarked starship. This one had scorch stains down its long central section, and visible decay, so it was possible that the markings had simply been worn away by time and the difficulties of its journey. “Anybody have an idea?” he asked.

He heard only negative responses.

“
Captain,
” Scotty's voice boomed over the speakers, almost as loud as if he had been in the shuttle with them. “
The second shuttle's reported in. They had a rough go of it for a while, but they're on course and under power.
”

“That's good to hear,” Kirk said.

“
They're fifteen minutes behind you.
”

“Understood,” Kirk said.

“
I'm reversing the tractor beam that's pushing you, to slow your momentum.
”

Kirk felt the difference as soon as the engineer made the transition; a stuttering hesitation in their forward motion, then an easy glide.

“That worked. We're about to dock, Scotty,” he said. “We'll keep you updated as we're able. Kirk out.”

The
McRaven
loomed ahead of them, larger with every passing second. “Engines on, Mister Bunker.”

“Aye, Captain. Engines on.”

“Do we dare, Jim?” McCoy asked as the faint rumble of the engines came on. “We don't know how—”

“You're right, we don't,” Kirk said. “But if we're going to reach the
McRaven
's hangar deck, we need thrusters.”

They were approaching the
McRaven
on its port side. As the most recent addition to the clustered mass, it was on the outside, some distance from the huge vessel in the center. To reach the hangar deck, they had to get to the rear of the ship, and hope the doors would open.

“Bring us in, Mister Bunker,” Kirk said.

Bunker was already concentrating on edging the shuttle into position. “Aye.”

The shuttle responded appropriately to Bunker's efforts. Kirk dared to hope that Spock had been right, and the effects of the dimensional fold were concentrated at its edges. If they had already seen the worst of it, then it would be more than possible to send other shuttles in to carry survivors back to the
Enterprise
.