After the recording had concluded, the forward console came to life. Kirk tapped at the gravity regulator and immediately felt a reduction in his apparent weight, confirming that the controls had, as promised, been unlocked. Before he did anything more, though, he sat quietly, attempting to process all that he had been told. Among other things, he wondered what had happened to his future self. According to the message, he had been aboard this shuttle when he’d transported Kirk out of the deflector control room, but he was not here now. Kirk imagined the sequence of events and their consequences. Because he had not been pulled from the Enterprise and into the nexus, he had also never exited the nexus, either to help Picard or to arrive on the world of the Guardian. He therefore had never leaped through the temporal vortex to the present, and so his future self no longer existed in this time period.

But then why didn’t the recording cease to exist now too? Kirk asked himself, but he then gave the matter little thought. He knew well that the apparent paradoxes of time travel and the mysterious functioning of the Guardian of Forever often defied explanation. Instead, he really needed to concentrate on what he would do next. That, of course, depended on whether or not he believed the content of the message.

He decided that he did.

He looked down at the console and reached forward to work the passive sensors. He saw that the energy ribbon had now moved away from his location, and that the Enterprise had now departed the scene, no doubt heading back to Earth, just as the recording had suggested would happen.

Cautiously at first, Kirk operated the helm, steadying the shuttle and engaging its impulse drive. Once he had moved away from the site where the Enterprise had encountered the energy ribbon, he plotted a course and took the shuttle to warp. Behind him, he realized, lay a life of joy and pain, of success and failure, a life that Scotty and Chekov and the crew of the new Enterprise-B now believed had been lost.

Ahead of him lay the Guardian of Forever.

SEVENTEEN

2293

Kirk worked the helm controls of the shuttlecraft-the Archimedes, he had learned during his voyage-and brought it down through the cloud cover. Below extended the dull plain of this ancient, barren world. Fissures and rock formations appeared here and there, breaking up the otherwise-featureless surface.

The journey to this planet had taken weeks. Kirk had traveled well away from normal starship routes and shipping lanes, periodically setting down on some empty moon or asteroid. His goal had been to move through space unobserved, thus avoiding making any alterations to the timeline. He’d also throttled the shuttle back to impulse power a number of times in an attempt to mask his trail.

Up ahead, Kirk saw the horizon drop away. He checked the sensors and read the measurements of the crater. It descended to a depth of two hundred meters and stretched a kilometer in diameter. Here, twenty-three years earlier, while Kirk had lain comatose in a turbolift aboard the Enterprise, Korax had taken his own wounded starship and raced through the atmosphere, intent on laying waste to what he believed to be the site of a new Starfleet weapon. Instead, the Klingon commander had destroyed-or killed-the Guardian of Forever.

Or at least, so Kirk had thought. So everybody had thought. But on the recording that had brought him here now, Kirk’s future self had revealed that when he’d left the nexus the second time and visited this place billions of years in the past, he had told the Guardian of its demise. More than that, he had asked both for its help and for it to save itself. It had seemed only reasonable to the future Kirk that a time portal would be able to move itself through time, and he had warned the Guardian to do just that before Korax’s ship reached the surface of this world. He had also requested that when it did so, it moved itself to now, to the days after the Enterprise had encountered the energy ribbon. Kirk, his future self had hoped, would then be able to use the Guardian to complete his plan.

The shuttlecraft Archimedes flew past the raised rim of the crater and out over the wide hollow. Within, the depression seemed empty, devoid of any characteristics beyond the radial lines reaching out from its center. The place seemed as dead as the rest of this haunted world.

Kirk performed a sensor sweep. He found no life signs, but he also scanned in particular for waves of time displacement, a singular trait of the Guardian. He studied the area within the crater itself and then out beyond that, to the limits of the sensors.

He detected nothing.

Kirk brought the Archimedes down, following along the rounded slope. Near the center of the crater, he landed the shuttle. Before disembarking, he went to the rear compartment and retrieved a tricorder. He hesitated for a moment, then pulled out a phaser as well.

Outside, the ground crunched beneath his boots. The air seemed still and stale, the surroundings inert. Kirk corrected his earlier appraisal: this place did not feel haunted; it felt abandoned.

Activating the tricorder, Kirk scanned the immediate area. The readouts reflected the crash here of a Klingon starship: specific types and levels of radioactivity, certain metallic fragments atop and within the soil, the residue of materials unique to the construction techniques of the Klingon Imperial Fleet. He also detected, deep underground, rock strata of wildly varying ages: one hundred years, one thousand, one million. But while the latter readings indicated the presence at one time of the Guardian, they showed no sign of it being here now.

Maybe the Guardian was destroyed, Kirk thought. Or perhaps, prior to the impact, it had taken itself backward in time billions of years, spending its existence in an eternal loop. It had claimed to be its own beginning and its own ending, and perhaps that was what it had meant.

Kirk raised his eyes and peered along the rim of the crater above him. “Guardian!” he called. His voice seemed shallow in the empty place, and it generated no echo.

He waited for a few moments, then called again. He received no response, nor had he really expected any. Finally, he turned and headed back to the shuttle.

Seated at the front console, Kirk gazed out at the vacant crater. If the Guardian did not do what his future self had asked, if it did not save itself from being destroyed by Korax’s ship by moving itself forward in time to now, then what would he do? Or maybe I’m too late, Kirk thought. Maybe the Guardian had already appeared during the weeks it had taken him to reach this planet, and then taken itself away again.

Whatever the case, if the Guardian did not appear, Kirk would have to choose another course. His future self had charged him with two responsibilities: work with Picard to stop Soran in 2371, and avoid changing history between now and then. If Kirk could not utilize the Guardian to reach Veridian Three at that time, then he would have to find another clandestine means of reaching the future.

Of course, you can always just live another seventy-eight years, he told himself. But he knew that he would need to live those decades in complete seclusion. In the years between 2293 and 2371, the universe had believed him dead, and in order to avoid altering the timeline, that would have to continue to be the case. Kirk did not relish the thought of living completely alone for all of that time, but even if he attempted to do so, and even if he managed to keep himself hidden away, he could not guarantee that he would even live to the year 2371. And at one hundred thirty-eight, just how much help will I be in physically trying to stop a madman?

No, much as he hated the idea, he needed the Guardian.

Kirk worked the sensor controls, programming to scan continuously for any indications of temporal displacement-and to be safe, for life signs. Then he stood up and moved to the rear compartment, where he opened the emergency survival cache. From it, he took a ration pack and a pouch of water.